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Bridging the Locals vs Expat Divide

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  1. #191

    There's a confusion in this forum of local vs official language. Italians and immigrants to Italy moving to South Tyrol are not required to learn German. Their kids do in school as a secondary subject, but that's regulated by government. Spaniards and immigrants to Spain moving to Catalonia don't need to learn Catalan. English speaking Canadians and immigrants to Canada, even those from Hong Kong, moving to Montreal don't need to learn French. In all cases it's one of the official languages that is required to be spoken for official reasons, which in Hong Kong's case is either English or Cantonese. If the Cantonese locals want the English minorities kids to learn Cantonese then they can regulate education and require International/ESF schools to teach Cantonese as a secondary subject. Most expat parents would be happy about that and support this arrangement. However, that is not happening.

    I know as a fact that immigrants to Canada get free language lessons. It's the government that takes the first step in integrating these people. If there's disagreement between the majority and the minority group it's the governments responsibility to bridge the divide. Schools in Canada offer special ESL classes to children of newcomers where highly qualified teachers help the students with their homework one-on-one and explain any concepts that the student does not understand. Canada does well with integration. I wonder why?

    Last edited by civil_servant; 30-04-2016 at 12:53 AM.
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  2. #192

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    Quote Originally Posted by bugaboo:
    It is a good thing and there are no downsides.
    Then why are the focus on the kids and not on themselves? There are so many benefits as jgl listed.
    Truth is, many have already benefited in dealing with one language.

    If you think it's not good for your soul then you're not forced to deal with them even though you are able to speak the language.
    You got to speak in context if you want to discuss this. Why do you think people are learning Mandarin now and not 10 years ago? What is the underlying reason? From many threads written in Geo, does it sound like posters here want to make good friends with Mandarin speakers? Preparing kids to get along with kids in China?

  3. #193

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    Quote Originally Posted by Creative83:
    Then why are the focus on the kids and not on themselves?
    Anybody can benefit from knowing more than one language whatever their age.

    You got to speak in context if you want to discuss this. Why do you think people are learning Mandarin now and not 10 years ago? What is the underlying reason? From many threads written in Geo, does it sound like posters here want to make good friends with Mandarin speakers? Preparing kids to get along with kids in China?
    But you're saying that there's no point in learning Mandarin past a certain level because you'll meet bad people who'll destroy your soul. I just cannot see the logic in your reasoning.

  4. #194

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    Quote Originally Posted by nagernager:
    In all cases it's one of the official languages that is required to be spoken for official reasons, which in Hong Kong's case is either English or Cantonese.
    Sort of, I think the wording is English and Chinese, but it doesn't stipulate which Chinese language. As the majority of locals speak Cantonese it just defaulted to that.

    If the Cantonese locals want the English minorities kids to learn Cantonese
    I think the majority of locals couldn't care less.

    then they can regulate education and require International/ESF schools to teach Cantonese as a secondary subject. Most expat parents would be happy about that and support this arrangement.
    I would imagine there would be a vocal minority who object to their children wasting time learning a "non-useful" language.

    I know as a fact that immigrants to Canada get free language lessons.
    The operative word is immigrants. The vast majority of expats in HK are probably not immigrants but rather transient workers.

  5. #195

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    Quote Originally Posted by hullexile:
    Not to mention the extreme difficulty in using a Chinese dictionary to decipher characters
    If you find traditional printed dictionaries difficult to use you could use electronic ones. They've been around for ages, they have handwriting recognition and are pretty accurate even if you make a mess of writing the characters. Once you've found your word you can get the thing to speak it out loud so you can hear and learn the pronunciation. There's also a free app called Aard available for android phones (not sure about iphones) which can use a free wiktionary database to look up words and will show the pronunciation for Cantonese (in Yale and/or Jyutping) and Putonghua (in pinyin).
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  6. #196

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    Quote Originally Posted by bugaboo:
    If you find traditional printed dictionaries difficult to use you could use electronic ones. They've been around for ages, they have handwriting recognition and are pretty accurate even if you make a mess of writing the characters. Once you've found your word you can get the thing to speak it out loud so you can hear and learn the pronunciation. There's also a free app called Aard available for android phones (not sure about iphones) which can use a free wiktionary database to look up words and will show the pronunciation for Cantonese (in Yale and/or Jyutping) and Putonghua (in pinyin).
    When I was learning Mandarin they had only just invented the printing press

  7. #197

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    Quote Originally Posted by bugaboo:
    The operative word is immigrants. The vast majority of expats in HK are probably not immigrants but rather transient workers.
    Can you please provide proof of that?

  8. #198
    Quote Originally Posted by bugaboo:
    The operative word is immigrants. The vast majority of expats in HK are probably not immigrants but rather transient workers.
    Germany made the same mistakes. They called their first immigrants guest workers, being convinced that their stay was only transient. Some stayed for generations and their kids failed to integrate. The same misguided policies are applied in Hong Kong today.

  9. #199

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    Quote Originally Posted by HK_Katherine:
    My issue is that there is no pronunciations in the written language. For example given a few minutes with a pronunciation guide most people could read any romanic language out loud and be understood even if they had no clue what they were saying.

    To me, seeing words on a page strongly reinforces memory and recall. I can only learn place names by having someone write them down phonetically for example.

    So the lack of a proper alphabet and phonetics really hampers learning the spoken language. The point of this debate.
    Yep. Some locals don't seem to grasp how arbitrary and difficult memorising thousands of characters are as part of learning a language. Cantonese seems so much easier when looking only at phonetics.

    I like how Korean looks similarly like a mass of gibberish squiggles at first, but it's actually a phonetic written language. A long time ago someone up top had both the balls and the common sense to realise that a pictogram based written language was a seriously stupid idea and had everything done from scratch.
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  10. #200

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    I would love to meet more expat in Hong Kong, as I find out that it can be interesting to learn about different cultures, although I lived in europe for a long time