The Dialects of Hong Kong Boat People
fong 'square',
kong 'harbor'.
fu ‘lake', & u ‘black', fu 'to transfer'.
ku ‘ancient',
59
-ui
k sui 'water',
kui 'sentence', hui 'sea', ui 'to love',
cui ‘mouth'.
lui 'long time', lui 'to come',
cui 'crime', fi sui ‘tax',
-ut
ut 'life'.
-uk
muk 'wood', buk 'to cry', fuk 'wealthy', iuk 'meat', luk 'green', fè cuk ‘common',
-un
fun 'broad', thun 'to swallow',
un 'to change',
pun 'native',
iun 'round', † chun 'inch'.
tung ‘east',
iung ‘old man',
chung 'insect',
hung 'to bear',
#chung 'to follow',
hung 'breast',
iung ‘to use'.
-ung
sung 'to send',
lung 'to farm',
-o
A ng 'five', m2 'not'.15
III. Conclusions
At this point it is possible to make some comment on the original question, 'How does the language of the Kau Sai Boat People compare with Standard Cantonese?' Obviously the two are not the same but equally obviously KS is well within the limits of phonological diversity found within the Cantonese sub-dialects of Kwangtung and Kwangsi Province. Although the criteria are not available for making precise objective statements on the differences between closely related speech groups, in impressionistic terms KS phonology is much closer to SC than are many other subdialects of the Cantonese group. Any naive speaker of SC, that is, one with no experience outside his own subdialect, might recognize KS as a distinct accent but he would probably have no great difficulty in carrying on a conversation. On the other hand, some of the Szeyap forms might frustrate communication altogether. Unfortunately it will take a good deal of cooperation between the linguist and the psychologist before we have the techniques for making quantitative statements about cross-dialect intelligibility; my comment on this score are at best educated guesses.