Abstract
Hong Kong and Bei**g represent great diversity in language- and literacy-learning. In Hong Kong, most children (age 3.5 years) begin formal literacy training approximately two years before their Bei**g counterparts (age 5.5 years). Cantonese is the native spoken language for the majority of the population in Hong Kong. In Bei**g, the language of oral communication is Mandarin. Hong Kong Chinese children learn to read in the traditional script whereas Bei**g Chinese children learn to read in the simplified script. Despite using different scripts, standard written Chinese is used across Chinese contexts. That is, the grammar and syntax of written Chinese across both cities closely resembles the oral language of Mandarin. As a result, Hong Kong children struggle with a mismatch between the language of text and their spoken language, Cantonese. Contrastingly, Bei**g children tend to speak in Standard Mandarin, which is almost identical to standard written Chinese. As a consequence of this mismatch, Hong Kong children tend to make more errors in word order and word usage in writing. They are also more prone to grammatical difficulty in reading comprehension compared to Bei**g children. We have found that parents from Bei**g tend to explicitly emphasize the structure of words and characters more than parents from Hong Kong. Thus, the diglossic context of Chinese learners has some clear linguistic effects; these effects are further influenced by additional challenges related to Chinese literacy experiences across societies.
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Notes
- 1.
Unless otherwise specified, all phonetic transcriptions of Cantonese pronunciations of Chinese characters are in Jyut**, all phonetic transcriptions of Mandarin pronunciations of Chinese characters are in Pinyin, and all phonetic transcriptions of English pronunciations are in IPA.
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Cheang, L.ML., McBride, C. (2022). Diglossia in Chinese? It’s Complicated. In: Saiegh-Haddad, E., Laks, L., McBride, C. (eds) Handbook of Literacy in Diglossia and in Dialectal Contexts. Literacy Studies, vol 22. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80072-7_7
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