Hong Kong returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. Since then a number of social, political, and economic incidents such as the Asian fi nancial crisis and the outbreak of SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) have an impact on the language use and language policy in Hong Kong. Against this wider social background, this paper traces the history of the complex language situation, reviews the relationships between Chinese Putonghua, Cantonese, and English in various social contexts, and explores the future positions of the languages and language varieties in Hong Kong people’s social life. The research finds that (1) while “biliteracy and trilingualism” is considered as the language policy of Hong Kong, the exact content of the policy is subject to different interpretations, and sometimes leads to debates and dispute; (2) Hong Kong people regard English as a very useful language and believe that it is important for children to learn English from early ages; (3) most Hong Kong people use Cantonese as their everyday language; (4) Putonghua gradually gains ground, but it still takes years to become part of the “mother tongue education”.
One of the signifi cant differences between early modern and modern Chinese language is the emergence of westernization in pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. The westernized linguistic expressions were rarely seen in early modern Chinese language, while in modern Chinese language they were more prevalent. The emergence of westernization in Chinese language was largely credited to the western missionaries. The earliest signs of westernization were observed in some Chinese books written by missionaries. In addition, numerous church publications, especially the Mandarin versions of The Bible, appeared at that time, featuring westernized vernacular texts which contributed to the vernacularization movement in late Qing Danasty and during the May Fourth Movement, and greatly shaped Modern Chinese. The missionaries were the earliest scholars who realized the inevitability of vernacularization movement in China, and they played an active role to promote that movement, a historical fact acknowledged by many modern Chinese writers such as Shen Congwen and Zhou Zuoren.