[Valencia1]

Originally Posted by InstructerJames

Ohh lets face it learning the language takes all the fun out of guessing how angry they are with you

so heck you cant be insulted if you havnt got the fientest idea of what they are saying.

Hello Instructer,

You're not the only one,neither are the others, doing the guessing game. 90% of the people I run into everyday are mainlanders, and I sometimes hear them speak in their own dialects(not mandarin). I don't really speak mandarin and I have to use my only bit of mandarin knowledge to guess what they're talking, making me very suspcious at times.

[Mat]

Originally Posted by Valencia1

90% of the people I run into everyday are mainlanders.

You must be living in China then

[coolgirl]

Originally Posted by KnowItAll

>>
English has been and remains an offical language here.

That is an overstatement. Locals BARELY speak English, which is one of my current frustrations. I'm not talking about HK managers though, just people on the street. Even attendants in our apartment complex speak broken English. It can't be an official language because it's not spoken well.

[Mat]

Originally Posted by coolgirl

That is an overstatement. Locals BARELY speak English, which is one of my current frustrations. I'm not talking about HK managers though, just people on the street. Even attendants in our apartment complex speak broken English. It can't be an official language because it's not spoken well.

It is an official language no matter people speak it well or not.

As for not speaking it well... it all depends but as a whole I would say it is far from bad...even "ppl from the street" (try to ask "ppl from the street" in your home country to see whether they speak another language....and we will see)

[kombuchakid]

I have a friend who insists that his 6 year old twins speak to me in English, which makes for long meaninful silences.

When dear old dad is away the kids will chatter away in Cantonese forever asking me what 'this' or 'that' is in English.

The Dad has to use English at work but is not capable of talking in the language-yet makes a point of 'conversing ' with me in English in public.

Something like 'Yes,okay thank you,i go lunch bye bye' will have him swaggering around for a good half hour.

Its a good thing I learned his language.

[Netfiend]

To avoid all problems, I intend to learn the local language

[Vrindavan]

not good, but not bad

enjoy hk style spoken english here

[coolgirl]

Originally Posted by Mat

It is an official language no matter people speak it well or not.

As for not speaking it well... it all depends but as a whole I would say it is far from bad...even "ppl from the street" (try to ask "ppl from the street" in your home country to see whether they speak another language....and we will see)

Proud to say, yes, we do - we speak fluent English even if English is not our official language But that is deviating from the topic anyway.

nevertheless, it's just weird that English is the official language in HK - I barely get by with English alone, which is understandable because Hong Kong's native tongue is Cantonese. Even Mandarin is hard. With my real estate agent, we have to resort to writing in Chinese just to understand each other.

The good-bad spectrum is relative, I guess. But compared to SG for example, HK is far behind in English. Where I come from, we also speak English better.

[Mat]

Originally Posted by coolgirl

nevertheless, it's just weird that English is the official language in HK - .

Ever heard of the fact that HK was a british colony?

Portuguese is an official language in Macao..yet less than probably 1% of the population speak it....

[afro]

don't get stuck in this language thing, what language you speak dosen't make you any superior or lower to the others what you do does.