POPULATION
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About half the urban population is now of Hong Kong birth, but most of these and the greater part of the immigrant population hail from Kwangtung Province. The districts of Kwangtung which have supplied the largest elements of Hong Kong's urban Chinese population are neighbouring Po On and Tung Kwun, Wai Yeung and Mui Yuen (principally Hakka), Chiuchow, Sze Yap or the so-called Four Districts (really five-Hoi Ping, Hok Shan, San Wui, Toi Shan and Yan Ping), Nam Hoi, Pun Yue, Shun Tak and Chung Shan. Other elements in the urban population include a Fukien community and numbers of overseas Chinese whose families originally came from Kwangtung or Fukien.
Cantonese, by which is meant not any dialect of Kwangtung Province but the dialect of Canton City and others sufficiently like it to be intelligible, is the lingua franca of the urban area and is the mother tongue of 806 out of every thousand inhabitants of Hong Kong, Kowloon and New Kowloon. Another 137-speak other languages of Kwangtung-Hoklo, Sze Yap and Hakka in that order-28 speak Shanghai, 13 English, 10 Kuoyu and six some other language. Among families originating in North China there is a tendency for the children to adopt Cantonese as their first language. Knowledge of English may be increasing, but Kuoyu seems to be on the ebb and its use is now almost confined to the academic world.
Certain languages are found clustered in particular parts of the town: for instance on Hong Kong Island there is a concentration of Chiuchow speakers in Western District, of Fukien speakers (and a smaller knot of Shanghai speakers) at North Point and of Sze Yap speakers in Wan Chai; across the harbour the Chiuchow concentration is at Wong Tai Sin opposite Kai Tak Airport, the Sze Yap concentration in Mong Kok and Cheung Sha Wan, and the Shanghai concentration in Hung Hom. The only notable numbers of Kuoyu speakers are around Hong Kong University and Rennie's Mill, and the only districts where Portuguese speakers reach three figures are Tsim Sha Tsui (275) and North Point (116).
NEW TERRITORIES
The indigenous inhabitants of the New Territories consist of four principal groups: Cantonese, Hakka, Hoklo and Tanka. Although these groups show differences in physical appearance,