POPULATION
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and most Hakka men can speak Cantonese, except in the remotest
areas.
The Hoklo have frequented the area since time unknown. They are traditionally boat dwellers, but in some places they have been settled ashore for several generations. There are influential Hoklo land communities on Cheung Chau and Peng Chau (South). Their name suggests that they originated from Fukien Province (Hokkien), but this is probably a misnomer, Fukien being only one of their places of origin. The more primitive types of Hoklo dwelling are distinguishable by the use of thatch and mud bricks, instead of tiles and stone.
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The Tanka are boat dwellers who very seldom settle ashore. They themselves do not much use this name, which they consider derogatory, but usually call themselves 'Nam Hoi Yan' (people of the southern sea) or 'Shui Sheung Yan' (water-borne people). They are the principal seafaring people of South China, owning large sea-going junks and engaging in deep-sea fishing. Their entire families live afloat. Like the Hoklo, whom they resemble in many respects, they have been in the area since time unknown. The Tanka speak their own distinctive dialect of Cantonese, indeed of every thousand of the boat population 930 speak this dialect, 50 speak Hoklo and the rest are splinter groups. At Tai O, on Lantau Island, there is an example of something not often seen away from the rivers of the Canton area-a fairly large group of Tanka living ashore, or rather half-ashore, in huts built on stakes over a muddy inlet.
The linguistic balance of the New Territories has been altered by the coming in recent years of new settlers, who when they first arrived were usually called refugees. The newcomers are mostly from Kwangtung Province (even in Tsuen Wan, which has the highest proportion of northerners, the biggest northern group Shanghai is only one in ten and is outnumbered three times by immigrants from the Canton area) and where they are not from Kwangtung they usually become assimilated to the Cantonese. As a result, only in Sai Kung district now are the indigenous people still in the majority, and out of each thousand residents anywhere in the New Territories 641 give Cantonese as their usual language, 234 Hakka, 46 Hoklo, 26 Shanghai, 23 Sze Yap, 13 English, nine Kuoyu and nine all other languages. During the census, evidence