FRIDAY, JULY 9, 197
SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
Law students' report of much value to Language committee
A report compiled by 10 law students of the University of Hongkong proved of great value to the Legal Sub-Committee of the Chinese Language Committee which studied the subject of Court Proceedings and the Language of the Law.
·
In their report published yesterday, the members of the Sub-Committee said:
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"We particularly want mention the report of the Legal Sub-Committee of the Chinese Language Study Committed to the 131h Representative Council of the Hongkong Federation of Students.
"It is obvious that they have done a lot of research and have thought deeply and objectively on the subject. This is much appreciated by us. In arriving at our conclusions, we have derived considerable assistance from this report."
SATURDAY JULY 17, 1971
SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
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'DECLARE CHINESE AN OFFICIAL LANGUAGE'
The Hongkong Federation of Students, Language Action Committee yesterday' demanded that legislation be enacted to the effect of declaring both Chinese and English official languages of Hongkong.
It also demanded that the mother tongue of the Chinese population be given an absolute status, with its usage defined in specific arcas. The committee's views were presented to the Government Chinese Language Committee at a mecting in Beaconsfield House, Central.
The Chairman, Mr James Chui, stated that the legislated declaration of Chinese as an official language was necessary to guarantee its usage.
"Whereas when Chinese as
an official language is provided for in the law, any Grown servant who fails to comply with the law could be compeiled by ine Court t perform his public duty,”
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languages equality in status."
HKFS
Mr Chui said that the wholeheartedly agreed with an extract from the third report of the Chinese Language Committee that "equal status does not necessarily imply equal use in every single instance. Status denotes the rank of one language in relation to another, whereas use concerns communication.”
"But it was a sharp contradiction when it stated in the second report that it was working on the principle of giving ‘as near equality in status and usage to the Chinese language as English'.
"We believe that the matter of ronition of Chinese as an official language
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Mr James Chui The students' report was drawn up after three months of intense research and interviews
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the practical problems involved in the use of Chinese in the Law and law courts.
They came to the conclusion that it would be difficult to apply Chinese in all courts, but they strongly recommended its introduction at the magistracies level as a first step.
They also favoured inaking Chinese and English the of! languages of Hongkong, with equal status in law.
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