Fading Voices of Hakka In Hong Kong

With reference to the our results collected from the interviews, it can be observed that native Hakka speakers in Hong Kong have developed a mixed identity: on one hand, they describe themselves as “Cantonese in Hong Kong”[1] (Cheung, 2015); on the other hand, they too identify themselves as “Hakka in China”[2] (Cheung, 2015: Ng, 2015).

The arising of the mixed identity between Hakka and Cantonese is chiefly due to speakers’ rare use of Hakka under Hong Kong’s social context where Cantonese is the dominant language spoken by the majority of society. According to Li Wei (2007), we use languages to help define “self” and “other”[3] (Auer, &Li, 2007). According to our interviewees: Mrs. Ng admits that she has very few Hakka-speaking friends and rarely has the opportunity to speak in Hakka, even when she communicates with her Hakka family members, she often code-mixes between Hakka and Cantonese[4] (Ng, 2015); although Ms. Cheung claims that she almost uses Hakka everyday, she only has around 10 neighbors who speak Hakka and affirms that she seldom speaks Hakka with each other[5] (Cheung, 2015). This shows the Hong Kong’s social milieu does not enable a linguistic environment where Hakka speakers are capable of having sufficient practice of their language. The lack of practicing the language leads to a weak foundation on which speakers of Hakka construct their identity as a Hakka. It is because, by the seldom practice of a language, the function of the language as an identity marker becomes insignificant since the classification between “self” and “other” is rarely reinforced. This is exactly the case of Hakka in Hong Kong society and therefore gives rise to a mixed identity to Hakka speakers as both “Cantonese” and “Hakka”.

Apart from the lack of practice of Hakka, being competent bilingual speakers of Hakka and Cantonese is also a factor leading to the mixed identity of Hakka speakers. According to Derwing (2003), accents are considered as a major component, which constitutes a social identity because it points to ones’ social groups or countries of origin[6] (Derwing, 2003). The idea of accent being an identity is also supported by Hammer (2007) as he points out that it is a common social practice that ones’ cultural background are ascribed by their accents[7] (Hammer, 2007). From our interview results, both native Hakka speakers, Ms. Cheung and Mrs. Ng contended that they do not speak Cantonese with a particularly noticeable Hakka accent[8] (Cheung, &Ng, 2015). It is also evident that their competence in speaking Cantonese is comparable with that of native Cantonese speakers, which make up the majority of the Hong Kong society as, with reference to Ms. Cheung’s confession, “People won’t know I can speak Hakka if I don’t tell them”[9] (Cheung, 2015, A11). Since their native language and native Hakka accent do not produce an easily recognizable difference from the Cantonese speakers, who are the linguistic majority in Hong Kong, the language loses its function in enabling Hakka speakers to differentiate themselves from the others. Therefore, native Hakka speakers are incapable of constructing a strong and