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Hong Kong English
Hong Kong English is a variety of the English language native to Hong Kong. The variant is either a learner interlanguage or emergent variant, primarily a result of Hong Kong's British overseas territory history and the influence of native Hong Kong Cantonese speakers. Background English is one of two official languages in Hong Kong – the other being Chinese (Cantonese), and is used in academia, business and the courts, as well as in most Government materials. Major businesses routinely issue important material in both Chinese and English, and all road and government signs are bilingual. Since the Handover, English in Hong Kong remains primarily a second language, in contrast to Singapore where English has been shifting toward being a first language. The falling English proficiency of local English language teachers has come under criticism. The proportion of the Hong Kong population who report using English (that is, all forms) as their "usual spoken language" increas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta in South China. With 7.5 million residents of various nationalities in a territory, Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated places in the world. Hong Kong is also a major global financial centre and one of the most developed cities in the world. Hong Kong was established as a colony of the British Empire after the Qing Empire ceded Hong Kong Island from Xin'an County at the end of the First Opium War in 1841 then again in 1842.. The colony expanded to the Kowloon Peninsula in 1860 after the Second Opium War and was further extended when Britain obtained a 99-year lease of the New Territories in 1898... British Hong Kong was occupied by Imperial Japan from 1941 to 1945 during World War II; British administration resume ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hong Kong Government
The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, commonly known as the Hong Kong Government or HKSAR Government, refers to the Executive (government), executive authorities of Hong Kong Special administrative regions of China, SAR. It was formed on 1 July 1997 in accordance with the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1983, an international treaty lodged at the United Nations. This government replaced the former British Hong Kong, British Hong Kong Government (1842–1997). The Chief Executive and the Principal officials of Hong Kong, principal officials, nominated by the chief executive, are appointed by the State Council of the People's Republic of China. The Government Secretariat (Hong Kong), Government Secretariat is headed by the Chief Secretary for Administration, Chief Secretary of Hong Kong, who is the most senior principal official of the Government. The Chief Secretary and the other Secretary of State, secretaries jointly oversee the administration of Ho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stress (linguistics)
In linguistics, and particularly phonology, stress or accent is the relative emphasis or prominence given to a certain syllable in a word or to a certain word in a phrase or sentence. That emphasis is typically caused by such properties as increased loudness and vowel length, full articulation of the vowel, and changes in tone. The terms ''stress'' and ''accent'' are often used synonymously in that context but are sometimes distinguished. For example, when emphasis is produced through pitch alone, it is called ''pitch accent'', and when produced through length alone, it is called ''quantitative accent''. When caused by a combination of various intensified properties, it is called ''stress accent'' or ''dynamic accent''; English uses what is called ''variable stress accent''. Since stress can be realised through a wide range of phonetic properties, such as loudness, vowel length, and pitch (which are also used for other linguistic functions), it is difficult to define stress ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stress And Vowel Reduction In English
Stress is a prominent feature of the English language, both at the level of the word ''(lexical stress)'' and at the level of the phrase or sentence ''(prosodic stress)''. Absence of stress on a syllable, or on a word in some cases, is frequently associated in English with vowel reduction – many such syllables are pronounced with a centralized vowel (schwa) or with certain other vowels that are described as being "reduced" (or sometimes with a syllabic consonant as the syllable nucleus rather than a vowel). Various phonological analyses exist for these phenomena. For example, in the following sentence, a speaker would typically pronounce ''have'' with a schwa, as /həv/ or /əv/ (homophonous with ''of''): : Al and Bob have arrived. But in other contexts where the word carries stress, it would be pronounced in its "strong" (unreduced) form as /hæv/ (homophonous with ''halve''). For example: : Al and Bob have three children. : n response to the question "Have Al and Bob arri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Schwa
In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (, rarely or ; sometimes spelled shwa) is a vowel sound denoted by the IPA symbol , placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English and some other languages, it represents the mid central vowel sound (rounded or unrounded), produced when the lips, tongue, and jaw are completely relaxed, such as the vowel sound of the in the English word ''about''. In English, some long-established phonetic transcription systems assert that the mid central vowel as an unstressed vowel and transcribed with schwa (ə) is always a different vowel sound from the open-mid back unrounded vowel as a stressed vowel and transcribed with turned v ( ʌ), although they may recognize allophony between the pair. As Geoff Lindsey explains, within these systems, it is said that "schwa is never stressed"; but other authorities (including Lindsey himself) recognize that in some varieties of English, such as General American Engli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Latte
Caffè latte (), often shortened to just latte () in English, is a coffee beverage of Italian origin made with espresso and steamed milk. Variants include the chocolate-flavored mocha or replacing the coffee with another beverage base such as masala chai (spiced Indian tea), mate, matcha, turmeric or rooibos; alternatives to milk, such as soy milk or almond milk, are also used. The term comes from the Italian ' or ', from ', literally "coffee and milk"; in English orthography either or both words sometimes have an accent on the final ''e'' (a hyperforeignism in the case of *''latté'', or to indicate it is pronounced, not the more-common silent final ''e'' of English). In northern Europe and Scandinavia, the term ''café au lait'' has traditionally been used for the combination of espresso and milk. In France, ' is from the original name of the beverage (caffè latte); a combination of espresso and steamed milk equivalent to a "latte" is in French called and in German '. Ori ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "building blocks" of words. They can influence the rhythm of a language, its prosody, its poetic metre and its stress patterns. Speech can usually be divided up into a whole number of syllables: for example, the word ''ignite'' is made of two syllables: ''ig'' and ''nite''. Syllabic writing began several hundred years before the first letters. The earliest recorded syllables are on tablets written around 2800 BC in the Sumerian city of Ur. This shift from pictograms to syllables has been called "the most important advance in the history of writing". A word that consists of a single syllable (like English ''dog'') is called a monosyllable (and is said to be ''monosyllabic''). Similar terms include disyllable (and ''disyllabic''; also '' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rhotic And Non-rhotic Accents
Rhoticity in English is the pronunciation of the historical rhotic consonant by English speakers. The presence or absence of rhoticity is one of the most prominent distinctions by which varieties of English can be classified. In rhotic varieties, the historical English sound is preserved in all pronunciation contexts. In non-rhotic varieties, speakers no longer pronounce in postvocalic environments—that is, when it is immediately after a vowel and not followed by another vowel. For example, in isolation, a rhotic English speaker pronounces the words ''hard'' and ''butter'' as and , whereas a non-rhotic speaker "drops" or "deletes" the sound, pronouncing them as and . When an ''r'' is at the end of a word but the next word begins with a vowel, as in the phrase "bette''r a''pples", most non-rhotic speakers will pronounce the in that position (the linking R), since it is followed by a vowel in this case. The rhotic varieties of English include the dialects of South West E ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
L-vocalization
''L''-vocalization, in linguistics, is a process by which a lateral approximant sound such as , or, perhaps more often, velarized , is replaced by a vowel or a semivowel. Types There are two types of ''l''-vocalization: * A labiovelar approximant, velar approximant, or back vowel: > or > or * A front vowel or palatal approximant: > > West Germanic languages Examples of L-vocalization can be found in many West Germanic languages, including English, Scots, Dutch, and some German dialects. Early Modern English L-vocalization has occurred, since Early Modern English, in certain ''-al-'' and ''-ol-'' sequences before coronal or velar consonants, or at the end of a word or morpheme. In those sequences, became and diphthonged to , while became and diphthonged to . At the end of a word or morpheme, it produced ''all'', ''ball'', ''call'', ''control'', ''droll'', ''extol'', ''fall'', ''gall'', ''hall'', ''knoll'', ''mall'', ''pall'', ''poll'', ''roll'', ''scroll'', '' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Singaporean English
Singapore English (SgE, SE, en-SG) (similar and related to British English) is the set of varieties of the English language native to Singapore. In Singapore, English is spoken in two main forms: Singaporean Standard English (indistinguishable grammatically from Standard British English) and Singapore Colloquial English (better known as Singlish). Singapore is a cosmopolitan city, with 37% of its population born outside the country. Singaporeans, even those of the same ethnic group, have many different first languages and cultures. For example, in 2005, among Chinese Singaporeans, over a third spoke English as their main language at home while almost half spoke Mandarin, and the rest spoke various mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese. In the Indian community, most Singaporeans of Indian descent speak either English or a South Asian language. The English language is now the most popular medium of communication among students from primary school to university. Many fam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Indian English
Indian English (IE) is a group of English dialects spoken in the republic of India and among the Indian diaspora. English is used by the Indian government for communication, along with Hindi, as enshrined in the Constitution of India. English is also an official language in seven states and seven union territories of India, and the additional official language in seven other states and one union territory. Furthermore, English is the sole official language of the Indian Judiciary, unless the state governor or legislature mandates the use of a regional language, or if the President of India has given approval for the use of regional languages in courts. Status After gaining independence from the British Raj in 1947, English remained an official language of the new Dominion of India and later the Republic of India. Only a few hundred thousand Indians, or less than 0.1% of the total population, speak English as their first language, and around 30% of the Indian populatio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Schneider's Dynamic Model
Edgar W. Schneider's dynamic model of postcolonial Englishes adopts an evolutionary perspective emphasizing language ecologies. It shows how language evolves as a process of 'competition-and-selection', and how certain linguistic features emerge. The Dynamic Model illustrates how the histories and ecologies will determine language structures in the different varieties of English, and how linguistic and social identities are maintained.Kirkpatrick, Andy (2007). ''World Englishes: implications for international communication and English language teaching''. Cambridge UP. Chapter 3. Underlying principles Five underlying principles underscore the Dynamic Model: Schneider, Edgar (2007). ''Postcolonial English: Varieties around the world''. Cambridge UP. Chapter 3. # The closer the contact, or higher the degree of bilingualism or multilingualism in a community, the stronger the effects of contact. # The structural effects of language contact depends on social conditions. Therefore, h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
