THE DIALECTS OF HONG KONG BOAT PEOPLE
61
Given these obstacles in the way of locating KS origins geographically, I will continue to speculate that the most fruitful area for further research in the problem would be in the regions bordering the northern part of the Pearl River delta. Furthermore, and on firmer ground, it seems clear that the anthropological and the linguistic data put this group of Boat People well within the mainstream of Han Chinese culture and it would take some new type of evidence to assign other origins to them. I repeat the point that similar research should be done on other Boat People groups in Hong Kong before the full picture can develop. On the basis of this one study and a series of more casual observations I would also expect to find support for the thesis, shared by others, that the Boat People are not of a single origin but come from various regions of China at various times.
NOTES
1 The Kau Sai village and anchorage are located on Kau Sai Chau in the Port Shelter area off Sai Kung in the New Territories. My sincere thanks are due to those people of Kau Sai who gave so freely of their time to help with this project.
I am especially grateful to Mrs. Stella Lau Fessler of Hong Kong for her generous assistance during all the collection phases of the research in Kau Sai and Sai Kung; she also served as informant for Standard Cantonese against which base the Kau Sai speech was compared.
By Standard Cantonese I refer to the dialect spoken by the majority of persons residing in Canton, Hong Kong, and now possibly Macau.
2 See Egerod (1956) for some notes on the Hoklo and a detailed study of the dialect spoken by one particular group of Fukien Province immigrants in south Kwangtung.
3 These three terms are not technical but may be self-explanatory. For a more precise definition reference should be made to Hockett (1958 pp. 137-8). My term grammar might include his terms grammatical and morphophonemic; my term lexical is roughly equivalent to his term semantic.
4 The distinction between a phonetic and a phonemic description is highly significant in scientific linguistics and in oversimplified terms represents the differences between a close transcription of the gross sound features of a language and a transcription of this same language in an unambiguous script with a minimum number of symbols. Thus, a good phonetic transcription might indicate all the differences in the 'h' of he, hat, and home since the 'h' is articulated in slightly different areas from the roof of the mouth to the back of the throat as these words are pronounced. A good phonemic script, as English happens to be in this instance, would use one symbol with the guiding principle that these three 'h' sounds are nearer to each other than to other sounds in the language and that as a group they signal...
THE DIALECTS OF HONG KONG BOAT PEOPLE
61
Given these obstacles in the way of locating KS origins geographically, I will continue to speculate that the most fruitful area for further research in the problem would be in the regions bordering the northern part of the Pearl River delta. Further- more, and on firmer ground, it seems clear that the anthropological and the linguistic data put this group of Boat People well within the mainstream of Han Chinese culture and it would take some new type of evidence to assign other origins to them. I repeat the point that similar research should be done on other Boat People groups in Hong Kong before the full picture can develop. On the basis of this one study and a series of more casual observa- tions I would also expect to find support for the thesis, shared by others, that the Boat People are not of a single origin but come from various regions of China at various times,
NOTES
1 The Kau Sai village and anchorage are located on Kau Sai Chau in the Port Shelter area off Sai Kung in the New Territories. My sincere thanks are due those people of Kau Sai who gave so freely of their time. to help with this project.
I am especially grateful to Mrs, Stella Lau Fessler of Hong Kong for her generous assistance during all the collection phases of the research in Kau Sai and Sai Kung; she also served as informant for Standard Cantonese against which base the Kau Sai speech was compared,
By Standard Cantonese I refer to the dialect spoken by the majority of persons residing in Canton, Hong Kong, and now possibly Macau.
2 See Egerod (1956) for some notes on the Hoklo and a detailed study of the dialect spoken by one particular group of Fukien Province immigrants in south Kwangtung.
3 These three terms are not technical but may be self-explanatory. For a more precise definition reference should be made to Hockett (1958 pp. 137-8). My term grammar might include his terms grammatical and morphophonemic; my term lexical is roughly equivalent to his term semantic.
4 The distinction between a phonetic and a phonemic description is highly significant in scientific linguistics and in oversimplified terms repre- sents the differences between a close transcription of the gross sound features of a language and a transcription of this same language in an unambiguous script with a minimum number of symbols. Thus, a good phonetic transcrip tion might indicate all the differences in the 'h' of he, hat, and home since the 'h' is articulated in slightly different areas from the roof of the mouth to the back of the throat as these words are pronounced. A good phonemic script, as English happens to be in this instance, would use one symbol with the guiding principle that these three 'h' sounds are nearer to each other than to other sounds in the language and that as a group they signal
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.