Language Contact: Sociolinguistic Context and Linguistic Outcomes

In this chapter, we will first outline the sociolinguistic context of language contact between Hong Kong Cantonese, Standard Written Chinese (SWC) and English. Then we will exemplify the typical language contact phenomena in terms of salient patterns of linguistic outcomes, namely: Lexical borrowing or transference from SWC and English into Hong Kong Cantonese; Translanguaging in speech: more commonly at the intra-sentential level (traditionally termed ‘code-mixing’) than the inter-sentential level (code-switching); and Translanguaging in writing: written Chinese may range from formal Hong Kong Written Chinese (HKWC), where SWC has been infused with classical Chinese (wenyan) and Cantonese elements, to informal colloquial written Cantonese, which is modeled on the norms of speech, including the free insertion of English words.

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