159
These words occur in certain Hakka dialects, not in others, and we do not know whether they occur or not in non-standard Cantonese dialects such as Tung Kwun. Are these words, then, Hakka loans into Cantonese? Cantonese loans into Hakka? or loans into both Hakka and Cantonese from a third language? The evidence is difficult to interpret. Furthermore, that most Hakka-Cantonese bilinguals are native speakers of Hakka, not Cantonese, makes Hakka more likely to realign itself with Cantonese than the reverse. Indeed, the Hakka dialects of the New Territories (Sung Him Tong, but also Sathewkok) have undergone in their recent history a series of phonological changes that bring them closer to SC: loss of the /n-/ vs. /l-/ contrast; loss of the /-iu/ vs. /-eu/ contrast; loss of medials [w, y] in combinations that are not permissible in SC; etc.
In sum, a certain amount of interloaning may be expected to have taken place between way t'au wa and Hakka since these two languages have come into contact. Yet there is no doubt that way t'au wa existed well before the first Hakka settlers arrived in the area, and that way t'au wa is not the result of dialect mixture.
The 'dialect of the walled villages' must then be regarded as the main local variety of the Cantonese group of dialects. It is now threatened in its existence by the expansion of SC, and deserves further studies before it becomes extinct.
1
NOTES
Baker, H. D. R. (1966) "The Five Great Clans of the New Territories" J.H.K.B.R.A.S., 6:25-45.
2 All my thanks are due to Mr. So Chung, Mr. So Nam, Mr. Tang Kee-hon for their kind help during the first stage of the project.
* "Fangyan Diaocha Zibiao" (Character charts for dialect surveys). Shangwu, 1981, Beijing.
* McCoy, J. (1965) "The Dialects of Hongkong Boat People: Kau Sai" J.H.K.B.R.A.S., V: 46-64.
5 Yuan, J. H., et al. (1960) "Hanyu Fangyan Gaiyao" (Elements of Chinese dialectology). Peking.
Barnett, K. M. A. (1974) "Do Words from Extinct Pre-Chinese Languages Survive in Hongkong Place-Names?". J.H.K.B.R.A.S., 14:136-159.
Ball, J.D. (1890) "The Tung-kwún dialect". China Review 1890, Vol. 18: 284-299.