The Needs, Practices, and Benefits of Learning Cantonese for the Work Context — Case Study in Hong Kong

While it seems natural to learn some French or German if you plan to work in Europe, or to take the TOEFL/IELTS test before you are enrolled in a higher education institution there; surprisingly very few people seem to care about learning Cantonese, or taking a Cantonese test/course before they come to work or study in Hong Kong. A major reason as to why learning Cantonese has not been taken seriously is because people have far underrated the importance and advantages of learning this local language in the work context. This research paper outlines the needs, practices, and benefits, to promote the learning of Cantonese as a local language in the work context.

Resources available to beginning learners of Cantonese are very few; reference books on Cantonese that have a good academic standing are even scarce. Matthews and Yip (2011) and Yip and Matthews (2000, 2001) are probably the only few textbooks on Cantonese that were written by linguists. While there are free/paid online resources or mobile apps that are designed to aid Cantonese learning, their reliability remains doubtful. For instance, the Cantonese introduced there in fact is not the colloquial Cantonese, but Cantonese pronunciation of standard Chinese. For instance, the third person plural pronoun ‘they’ would be introduced as 他們 taa1mun4 instead of 佢哋 keoi5dei6; sample utterance such as ‘he can speak English’ would be translated as 他會説英文 Taa1wui5syut3jing1man2 rather than 佢 會講英文Keoi5wui5gong2jing1man2. Another potential problem is that these resources tend to focus too much on the learning of vocabulary. For instance, they tend to just group vocabulary items into categories (e.g. kinship terms, body parts, etc.) and give their pronunciation, without putting them into any contexts or syntactic constructions. What is even worse is that many of the pronunciations given are not in standard jyutping romanisation.

Besides these mixed-quality works on Cantonese, materials designed to aid learning Cantonese for the work context is close to none. Taking domestic helpers in Hong Kong as an example (contributing more than 5% of the population), this paper stresses the demand for specifically designed context-based materials to suit the needs of different non-Cantonese speaking workers in different job sectors. Based on findings from questionnaires (via the author’s connection with several agents) and results from using specific materials designed for domestic helpers piloted by the author, this paper further emphasizes the benefits of speaking the local language, including how it can help the workers assimilate and integrate themselves into the Hong Kong society so that they can work more effectively and communicate more effectively, which in the end would benefit the employers and the society as a whole. This research paper will lead to the publication of a resource book for domestic helpers to learn Cantonese (possibly supported by mobile apps). The paper also attempts to offer some insights as to how Cantonese can be assessed in a more standard way in response to the demands from the job market.