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| China and Hong Kong Home » Hong Kong » Languages of Hong Kong |
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Languages of Hong Kong |
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There are 2 official languages in Hong Kong- Chinese and English. In fact, Chinese is the most important language of the people of Hong Kong. Chinese is the mother tongue of most of the people of Hong Kong. It is taught as the first language in most of the schools and collages in Hong Kong.
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Although Chinese enjoys a primal position amongst the languages of Hong Kong, the language itself has many dialects. The Shanghainese Chinese is definitely different from the Mandarin Chinese. Chiu-Chow is also a noteworthy Chinese dialect.
English is taught in most schools of Hong Kong as a second language. This is the reason why visitors and tourists do not have much linguistic difficulties in Hong Kong. Most of the official sign boards and displays in the market are bilingual. They are written in both Chinese and English scripts for the convenience of all, both natives and foreigners.
Most of the major hotels authorities in Hong Kong can speak international languages like Mandarin, German and French. Hong Kong is a significant commercial hub of the world. Thousands of professionals, who cannot speak Chinese or English, visit Hong Kong. For their convenience, most of the important business centers offer translation services. It is interesting to note that all the policemen in Hong Kong who can speak in English, wear a red tag along with the shoulder number.
The Japanese tourist department uses a color scheme to suggest the languages of Hong Kong spoken by an individual. This color scheme is used in tourist information centers and gift shops, where the salesperson wears a colored badge. Purple badge means that the person can speak in German. Green suggest Mandarin and blue means French.
Few of the other popular languages of Hong Kong are as follows:
- Korean
- German
- Japanese
- Indonesian
- Vietnamese
- Arabic
- Thai
- Tagalog
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