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English was the sole official language of Hong Kong from 1883 to 1974. Only after demonstrations and petitions from Hong Kong people demanding equal status for Chinese [7] [better source needed] did the language become official in Hong Kong from 1974 onward.
In 1974 Chinese was declared as another official language of Hong Kong through the Official Languages Ordinance.The ordinance does not specify any particular variety of Chinese although majority of Hong Kong residents have Cantonese, the language of Canton (now called Guangzhou), as their mother tongue and this is considered the de facto official variety used by the government.
The Official Languages Ordinance is an ordinance of Hong Kong enacted for the purpose of specifying the status and use of official languages of the territory. Both Chinese and English are declared official languages with equal status in the ordinance, and are to be used in communication between the government and members of the public. [2]
Cantonese is the de facto official language of Hong Kong (along with English) and Macau (along with Portuguese), though legally the official language is just "Chinese". It is the oral language of instruction in Chinese schools in Hong Kong and Macau, and is used extensively in Cantonese-speaking households.
Southeast Asian languages such as Tagalog and Malay-Indonesian speaking communities also live in Hong Kong. Other minority languages with significant speakerbases in Hong Kong include French, Dutch, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Hindustani, Japanese, and Korean, among others. [336]
The official languages of Hong Kong are Chinese and English, as defined in the Hong Kong Basic Law. [23] The Chinese language has many different varieties , of which Cantonese is one. Given the traditional predominance of Cantonese within Hong Kong, it is the de facto official spoken form of the Chinese language used in the Hong Kong Government ...
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However, it has been noted that language use is highly politicised and compartmentalised in Hong Kong, where the two official languages are seen as having different and distinct uses. Indeed, it has been argued that even English language teachers in Hong Kong would refuse to acknowledge the local variant of English within a classroom setting ...