...ItGOesON::::::: Bilingual

Friday, March 10, 2006

Doing a research about bilingualism. Well, it's quite funny that Hong Kong looks like a bilingual city. You'll know by just looking at the street signs and the food packages; listening to the transportation announcements. Everything's in Chinese as well as English. We Hong Kong people live in a very bilingual enviornment. But most of us are not really bilingual, which is pretty ironic.

Most Hong Kong people have difficulties with using English, especially with speaking and listening. Our reading and writing are okay. I can tell because we read textbooks written in English; write assignments in English.

Now our government's promoting English learning (Despite the fact that we need Putonghua more than any languages). There's a commercial my aussie mates find funny. There's an English speaking guy asking for something in a shop. The shop keeper doesn't speak nor understand English, so that the English guy storms out the shop. Then a "Learn English" slogan comes up... Well, I know the commercial sucks... It makes English speaking people so arrogant... But I know many Hong Kong people agree to the commercial...

Well, am I a bilingual? Haha, I don't know. There're too many definitions of bilingual. Not sure which one I should buy... I think the term doesn't bother me much. As long as I can communicate with the peopel around me, I'm happy.