Mandarin has historically been used to refer to a common language spoken by officials during the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1912) dynasties.¹ Mandarin is now used as a term to refer to a family of Northern Chinese dialects. The national standard language of Chinese is referred to as Putonghua.²

A mass influx of migrants from the mainland of China into Hong Kong began in 1945 during the civil war. It is estimated that some 1.28 million people arrived in Hong Kong from mainland China between 1945 and 1949. While most of them were farmers, a minority were senior officials of the National Party as well as rich businessmen who fled to avoid political persecution. Then, from 1976 to 1981, about 400,000 mainland Chinese immigrants entered Hong Kong.¹

Prior to the handover to China, Putonghua was not widely spoken in Hong Kong although Mandarin was the national language of China from 1909. Many waves of immigrations to Hong Kong from China spoke different Chinese languages, including Shanghainese, Teochew (Chiu Chau), Hokkien (Fukien) and Taishanese (Sze Lap).

In the 1991 Hong Kong Population Census - 57,577 residents stated they spoke Putonghua as their usual language, which was 1.1% of the population. A further 17% stated they used Putonghua as another language; in 1996, 65,892 Hong Kong residents stated they spoke Putonghua as a usual language, which was 1.1% of the population, with a further 24.2% stating they spoke it as another language.³

After the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from British to People’s Republic of China rule, Putonghua increased in importance in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong government had introduced Putonghua as a compulsory school subject several years after the handover. As a result, many Hong Kongers are now trilingual in Cantonese, English, and Putonghua.

In 2001, 55,410 Hong Kong residents stated they spoke Putonghua as their usual language, which was 0.9% of the population. A further 25.3% stated they used it as another language. In 2006, 60,859 Hong Kong residents stated they used Putonghua as their usual language, which was 0.9% of the population, with a further 39.2% stated they used it as another language. In 2011, 94,399 of Hong Kong’s residents stated they used Putonghua as their usual language (1.4% of the population), with a further 46.5% of the population stated they used Putonghua as another language. In 2016, 131,406 Hong Kong residents stated they used Putonghua as their usual language, 1.9% of the population, with a further 46.7% stating they used it as another language. In 2021, the number of Hong Kong residents that stated they used Putonghua as their usual language had increased to 165,451, which was 2.3% of the population. A further 51.9% stated they used it as another language.3 These numbers are shown in the figure below:

Immigration from Shanghai to Hong Kong began in the 1930s, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, and continued during and after the Chinese Civil War. It is estimated that 1.4 million people immigrated to Hong Kong from Shanghai during this time period.¹

Many immigrants from Shanghai were affluent textile manufacturers or in finances and banking services and helped transform Hong Kong into a financial and textile powerhouse.¹ Shanghainese set up textile factories in North Point; in 1950, North Point became known as 'Little Shanghai'.² Immigrants from Shanghai were also in the movie industry and helped set up Hong Kong’s movie studios, including Shaw Studios.

Shanghainese is still in use in Hong Kong, through there has been a decrease in use as a ‘usual language’ from 3% of the population in 1949 and 2.67% of the population in 1961, to 0.7% of Hong Kong’s population in 1991 and 0.5% in 1996. The number of speakers of Shanghainese as a ‘usual language’ in Hong Kong further decreased to 0.4% in 2001, 0.3% in 2006 and 2011, 0.2% in 2016 and 2021. The number of speakers of Shanghainese as an additional language has also decreased in Hong Kong, from 1.1% in 1991, 1996 and 2001, 0.9% in 2006, 2011, and 2016 to 0.6% in 2021.3 This decrease is illustrated in the figure below.

It is estimated that there are 14 million speakers of Shanghainese worldwide, with the majority of these in the city of Shanghai and surrounding regions. It is the dialect of Wu with the most speakers.⁴

The use of Shanghainese is on the decline in mainland China, with few people under the of 40 able to speak it well.5 A recent survey of Shanghainese proficiency in Shanghai found that ability in Shanghai was low among younger residents, with 8.7% of those under 18 not able to use Shanghainese at all, and 39.13% of this group able to understand Shanghainese but unable to speak it. Use of Shanghai in everyday life also decreased with younger residents, with only 21.74% of Shanghai residents aged under 18 using Shanghainese with family members.⁶

According to a language preservationist, Shanghainese will become extinct in 50 years if efforts to preserve the language are not increased.⁵

Compared to other Chinese dialects, Shanghainese is in general more SOV oriented, although Mandarin influence has created many new SVO expressions as well. The language has 30 consonants and 14 vowels. It has voiced initial stops and fricatives consonants unlike both Cantonese or Putonghua.

The Shanghainese vowels are [i y ɪ e ø ɛ ə ɐ a ɑ ɔ ɤ o ʊ u]. Shanghainese consonants include [b d ɡ ɦ z v dʑ ʑ].⁴

The tonal system is closer to that of Japanese and differs significant from other varieties of Chinese, with 2 tonal contrasts instead of the 4 in Putonghua.⁴

¹Exodus of the business class:https://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2054251,00.html

²History of North Point: Heritage Impact Assessment on the Former Clubhouse of Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club at 12 Oil Street Vol 1 Part 1, pp. 9–70 https://www.amo.gov.hk/filemanager/amo/common/form/AAB_20_2011-12_v1_p1.pdf

³HKSAR Population Census: https://www.censtatd.gov.hk/en/

⁴Shanghainese:https://plc.sas.upenn.edu/shanghainese

⁵Boreham, A. (2016, September 5). The life and death of Shanghainese. Sixth Tone. https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1286/life-and-death-shanghainese

⁶Gui, T., & Zhou, Y. (2021). A survey of Shanghainese dialect: Its current situation and future. Journal of Student Research 10(2), 1-9.

⁷Zhengzhang, S., & Zheng, W. (2015). Wu Dialect. In W. S.Y. Wang & C. Sun (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Linguistics. Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199856336.013.0003

While there are no exact figures on the number of Suzhou speakers in Hong Kong, immigration from Suzhou to Hong Kong began in the 1930s, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, and continued during and after the Chinese Civil War. The Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department notes that of the 3,712,600 residents of Hong Kong in 1966, 499,120 came from regions of China outside of Guangdong.¹ In 1981, the Hong Kong Government Census reported that 351,454 of Hong Kong’s population of 5,021,066 came from the the regions of Shanghai, Taiwan, Zhejiang, Fujian, and Jiangsu, which was 7.04% of the population in 1981.

In 1971, 2.27% of the population of Hong Kong spoke an ‘Other Language of China’ as a usual language (excepting Taisanese, Hakka, Cantonese, and Southern Min dialects). In 1991, 1.0% of Hong Kong’s population spoke another Chinese dialect (excepting Putonghua, Chiu Chau, Hakka, Southern Min dialects, Sze Yap, and Shanghainese) as their usual language. This increased to 1.5% in 2001, decreasing to 1.3% in 2006 and 2011, and to 1.0% in 2016.¹

It is estimated that there are 5-7 million speakers of Suzhounese across Suzhou and the southeast Jiangsu province in China.

The use of the Suzhou dialect is on the decline in mainland China, with a recent survey showing that only 2.2% of Suzhou locals aged 6-20 could speak Suzhounese fluently.²

The Suzhou dialect is featured in Zhang Yimou’s (2011) film The Flowers of War.

Suzhounese belongs to the northern branch of the family of dialects called Wu (吴语 or 吴方言) of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Wu is one of the seven major dialect/language groups of Chinese. The Wu dialect group is one of the oldest language groups in China, originating more than 2,000 years ago.³ Suzhounese was once considered the prestige dialect of the Wu dialect group.

Suzhounese is mutually intelligible with some Wu dialects, but it is not mutually intelligible with either Cantonese or Mandarin Chinese (Putonghua).

Suzhounese, like other Wu Chinese dialects, is a consonant rich language. It has 26 consonants, with voiced/voiceless contrast for stops, and palatalized and nonpalatalized dental affricates.⁴ Different accounts exist of the vowel inventory of Suzhounese; it is likely that it has at least 12 single vowels (monophthongs) and 8 different diphthongs.

Suzhounese retains features of Middle Chinese, including syllable-initial voiced obstruents. ⁵ Suzhounese has also preserved 7 out of the 8 original tones of Chinese; Suzhounese has one level tone, one level and rising tone, one rising falling tone, one falling and rising tone, one falling tone, and two short tones. ⁵

Waitau is a distinct variety of Cantonese spoken by the indigenous Punti ethnic group in the New Territories since the Song Dynasty (420-479AD) ¹. The Punti were among the earliest to settle in Hong Kong and the name Punti means ‘original resident’.² Waitau means ‘walled village’.

In Hong Kong, ‘indigenous language’ refers to the Chinese varieties spoken by the ethnic groups that settled in the New Territories before the British colonized Hong Kong – namely Punti, Hakka, Ping-po, Da-peng, Tanka, and Hokkien.²

The Punti ethnic group is comprised of peoples from 5 main clans – the Tang, the Hau, the Liu, the Pang, and the Man. They owned lands in various parts of the New Territories, including in Yuen Long, Sheung Shiu, Shatin, Tai Po, and Fan Ling.²

Fewer and fewer people speak the dialect and it is becoming extinct. The name means ‘walled village.’ It is still spoken by a few residents of Chung Uk Tsuen Village in Lam Tsuen, Tai Po and in villages in Yuen Long, including Tai Kiu Village.

The language is spoken, increasingly rarely, within the walled villages in the New Territories and among older generations in Shenzhen. It is used in Hong Kong TV dramas to characterize people who come from walled villages (see for example the 1992 movie “Now You See Love, Now You Don't" (我愛扭紋柴).³

Waitau has been designated as one of Hong Kong’s intangible cultural heritages.⁴

Dongguan Cantonese is native to the Dongguan locality in the Canton (Guangdong) region of China. Significant migration to Hong Kong from Canton began in the 1840s, after Hong Kong became a British colony, due to trade. There was a significant influx of Cantonese speakers to Hong Kong during and after the Civil War in China beginning in 1949.¹

¹Bolton, K. (2003). Chinese Englishes: A sociolinguistic history. Cambridge University Press.

²Liang, Y. (2018). Merger and transfer: Tone variation and change of Dongguan Cantonese. Lingua 208, 19-30.

³Yue, A. O. (2002). Dialect variations in Chinese. Papers from the Third International Conference on Sinology, Linguistics Section 2002-4-001-002-000037-2

⁴Written Cantonese and Implications for Hong Kong. Hong Kong University. ttps://www.fe.hku.hk/clear/doc/WC%20and%20Implications%20for%20HK%20HO.pdf

In the 1930s and 1940s, many Chinese immigrated to Hong Kong due to the civil war in China. A large number of immigrants came from Fujian province, where Hokkien is spoken widely.¹

North Point has historically been a place of residence for immigrants from Fujian province starting in the 1950s, with the Chun Yeung Street area nicknamed ‘Little Fujian.’ This part of North Point was known as ‘Little Shanghai’ as it was settled by affluent textile manufacturers from Shanghai. Settlement by Fujianese in this area grew by the thousands in the 1970s and by 1980, 18% of the population of North Point were Fujianese.²

However, despite the large Fujianese population, only 0.8% of the population in Hong Kong use Hokkien as their usual language, according to the 2021 population by-census, a decrease from 6.33% in 1961 and 8.05% in 1966. As of 2021, 2.3% of Hong Kong residents used Hokkien as another language/dialect, an increase from 1991, when only 1.7% of the population spoke Hokkien as another language/dialect.3 A profile of the use of Hokkien (also called Fukien and Hoklo in the Hong Kong Census Reports) from 1961 until 2021 is shown in the figure below.

South Fujian and the coast southwards, also in Taiwan and Hainan. There are approximately 27,700,000 users in China; with global total users of over 48,537,190. Of these, the vast majority (48,150,190) use Hokkien as a first language. It has served as the lingua franca among Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, and is widely spoken in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines.⁴

Hokkien is a Southern Min Chinese language of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Min is one of the seven major dialects/languages of Chinese.

While immigration to Hong Kong from the Teochew regions of China dates back to the late 19^th century, the largest waves of immigration occurred after World War II.1 Hong Kong census reports of 1897 indicate that there were 4,278 Teochew in Hong Kong; this increased to 6,592 in 1911, 8,033 in 1921, and 11,373 in 1931. The number increased to approximately 20,000 before World War II, with the population increasing to 371,000 by 1971.¹. In the 1961 Hong Kong Census Report, 8.22% of Hong Kong’s population was found to have Chiu Chau as their place of origin; this increased to 10.83% in 1966. This increased to 11.35% in 1981.

Many Teochew immigrants settled in the Nam Pak Hong area of Western District of Hong Kong Island, working in the import-export trade, particularly with countries in Southeast Asia as well as with China.^1,2 Tung Wah Hospital was founded by an important Teochew trader in Hong Kong.¹
In the 1950s, Teochew traders began moving to Kowloon, and particularly the roads of Haiphong, Hankow, and Canton.¹

The use of Teochew has been in steady decrease in Hong Kong since the 1990s, when only 1.4% of the population spoke Teochew as their usual language; this decreased to 0.5% in 2016 and 2021. In 1991 4% of Hong Kong’s population used Teochew as an additional language; in 2021, this had decreased to 2.3% of the population.³

Teochew is a dialect of Southern Min, or Hokkien. Min is one of the seven major dialects/languages of Chinese. Teochew is mutually intelligible with Hokkien. Teochew is mainly spoken in Chaoshan, a coastal region of Guangdong Province in China.⁴ There are approximately 27,700,000 users in China (as of 2018).⁵ As a result of immigration, it is also spoken in Thailand, Cambodia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Indonesia. Teochew speakers also live in Australia, New Zealand, North America, and Europe, with approximately 48 million users globally.^4,5

While there are no exact figures on the number of Suzhou speakers in Hong Kong, immigration from Suzhou to Hong Kong began in the 1930s, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, and continued during and after the Chinese Civil War. The Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department notes that of the 3,712,600 residents of Hong Kong in 1966, 499,120 came from regions of China outside of Guangdong.¹ In 1981, the Hong Kong Government Census reported that 351,454 of Hong Kong’s population of 5,021,066 came from the the regions of Shanghai, Taiwan, Zhejiang, Fujian, and Jiangsu, which was 7.04% of the population in 1981.¹

In 1971, 2.27% of the population of Hong Kong spoke an ‘Other Language of China’ as a usual language (excepting Taishanese, Hakka, Cantonese, and Southern Min dialects). In 1991, 1.0% of Hong Kong’s population spoke another Chinese dialect (excepting Putonghua, Chiu Chau, Hakka, Southern Min dialects, Sze Yap, and Shanghainese) as their usual language. This increased to 1.5% in 2001, decreasing to 1.3% in 2006 and 2011, and to 1.0% in 2016.¹

It is estimated that there are around 120 million speakers of Sichuanese in China.³

Sichuanese is often referred to as a ‘Chengdu-Chongqing dialect’. However, Sichuanese is best understood as an umbrella term for a range of dialects, some of which are not mutually intelligible.

Sichuanese has 19 different consonants while Standard Mandarin has 21 consonants.Sichuanese differs from Standard Mandarin in the type of initial consonants: /z v ŋ nʲ/ exists as initials in Sichuanese but not in Mandarin. In contrast, the initials [tʂ], [tʂʰ], [ʂ], [ʐ] and [l] exist in Mandarin but not in Sichuanese.² The retroflex consonants of Mandarin are realized as fricatives in Sichuanese.

One key feature of Sichuanese is /l/ and /n/ variation: /l/ and /n/ are allophones of the same phoneme, and /n/ is often realized as [l].⁴ Sichuanese has 5 phonemic tones: high level, low falling, high falling, low rising, and middle level/high level.⁵

There are no official numbers of the number of speakers of Wenzhounese in Hong Kong. In the Hong Kong Population Census, Wenzhounese has often been grouped together with Shanghainese, another Wu Chinese dialect, although these dialects are not mutually intelligible.

Wenzhounese is spoken primarily in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province. According to the Hong Kong Population Census, in 1081, 351,454, or 7.04%, of Hong Kong’s population had Zhejiang, Shanghai, Taiwan, Fujian, and Jiangsu as a place of origin.¹

Wenzhounese is spoken by people in the Wenzhou region of Zhejiang Province, China. It is also spoken in parts of Fujian Province, and in the United States (Queens and Brooklyn in New York City), Italy, France, and Spain.²

There are approximately 4.92 million speakers of Wenzhounese.

Wenzhounese is a Wu Chinese dialect, one of the seven major languages/dialects of China. It is a southern Wu dialect.

Due to geographic isolation of Wenzhou, and the immigration to Wenzhou by people from Fujian Province, who are speakers of Southern Min Chinese, the Wenzhounese dialect has evolved to be significantly different from other dialects of Wu Chinese.¹ It is not always intelligible with other varieties of Wu Chinese. It is not intelligible with Putonghua and other Chinese language/dialects.³

It is nicknamed a “living fossil” as it contains many features of ancient Chinese.⁴

Wenzhounese has been nicknamed the ‘Devil-Language’ due to its difficulty; it is consistently ranked as the hardest Chinese dialect.⁵ It may sound closer to Japanese or Korean to some people.⁵ It is considered so difficult that it was used in military codes during World War II.⁶ “Do not fear the Heavens, do not fear the Earth, but fear the Wenzhou man speaking Wenzhounese.” is a popular couplet in China.⁶

Wenzhounese has a series of 28 (or 29, according to some sources) consonant initials, including both voiceless and voiced stops, and both aspirated and unaspirated stops. It also has both voiced and voiceless fricatives and affricates.⁷ It has 4 phonemic tones and 8 phonetic tones.⁷

Wenzhounese has its own dictionary, called The Wenzhou Dialect Dictionary.⁴ This was published on 30 September 2021. It includes over 9000 words.⁴

The Wenzhounese dialect was featured in the American drama Blindspot (NBC).

Hakka originated in the Ka Ying State, which was in the Northeastern part of Guangdong province The first wave of immigration of Hakka speakers to Hong Kong took in the early part of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912), with settlement primarily in the eastern part of the New Territories. The second wave of immigration took place after 1949.¹ Descendants of the first wave were given ‘indigenous inhabitant’ status in Hong Kong in the 1970s.¹ Hakka people are also referred to as Kejia, which means guests.

To preserve rich coastal land for farming and to lessen over-crowding in the existing Hakka territory, more than 400 Hakka villages were built in Hong Kong, mostly in what is now known as the New Territories. A number of Hakka villages still exist in the New Territories in Hong Kong, including Luk Keng Chan Uk (鹿頸陳屋), Fung Hang (鳳坑), Kuk Po (谷埔), Lung Yeuk Tang Village, Yung Shue Au (榕樹凹),though many are now abandoned. One of these villages, Lai Chi Wo (荔枝窩), is currently undergoing revitalization and is part of the Hong Kong UNESCO Global Geopark.²

Hakka was widely spoken in rural areas of Hong Kong until Hong Kong farmland began being developed into a series of New Towns, in the areas of the New Territories.

In 1911, approximately 15% of the population of Hong Kong spoke Hakka. There has, however, there has been a sharp decline of the number of Hakka speakers in Hong Kong since 1961; only 0.6% of the population spoke Hakka as their usual language in Hong Kong in 2016. and 2021.³

The number of people who speak Hakka as another language has remained relatively stable since 1991, when it was 3.7% of the population; in 2016, it was 3.5%, decreasing to 3.0% in 2021. Most speakers of Hakka in Hong Kong today are over 60 years of age; Hakka is considered a ‘vanishing’ dialect in Hong Kong.⁴

The decreasing usage of Hakka is presented in the figure below. As the figure shows, over 100 years, the use of Hakka as a ‘usual language’ decreased from 15.10% of the population (1911) to 0.60% of the population in 2021. It is likely that this number will decrease to 0.00% as Hakka is not widely spoken among the younger generation in Hong Kong.

The language is spoken in China, Taiwan (Republic of China), Hong Kong, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and overseas Chinese communities around the world. There are around 36,600,000 speakers in China, and 43,241,190 total speakers worldwide.5 Around ½ of all Hakka speakers reside in Guangdong Province, China.⁶

Hakka is not mutually intelligible with Cantonese.⁵

Hakka is becoming extinct in Hong Kong and is considered an endangered language in many regions, including in China, as only older generations are able to speak Hakka, and it is not passed on to younger generations.⁶ Hakka language preservation efforts are ongoing in Taiwan (Republic of China); this includes official language status for Hakka through the Hakka Basic Act.^{7 3}

The language follows SVO order. It has six tones.⁵

Hakka has both voiceless aspirated /p t k/ and voiceless unaspirated stops /b d g/ but no voiced stops. It has unaspirated and aspirated affricates /ts/ and /tsʰ/, the nasals /m n ɲ ŋ/, four fricatives /f s ç h/ and three approximants /l j ʋ/. It has 7 single vowels /i e a u ə ɔ/ and 9 diphthongs /ai ia au eu ɔi iɔ ui iu ie/ and one triphthong /iau/.⁸

¹So, D. W. C., & Lau, C.-F. (2013). Rapid large scale intra-nationality language shift in Hong Kong 1949-1971. Journal of Chinese Linguistics 41(1), 21-51.

²Lau, J. (27 July 2017). The ghost villages: A guide to Hong Kong’s abandoned Hakka settlements. Zolimacitymag.com.

³HKSAR Population Census: https://www.censtatd.gov.hk/en/

⁴Lau, C. F. (2005). A dialect murders another dialect: The case of Hakka in Hong Kong. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 173, 23-35.

⁵Eberhard, David M., Gary F. Simons, and Charles D. Fennig (eds.). 2022. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. Twenty-fifth edition. Dallas, Texas: SIL International.

⁶Night Talk: Hakka Language & Hakka Culture. February 24, 2019. The Chinese University of Hong Kong. https://www.cuhk.edu.cn/en/article/3759

⁷Huang, T. (30 January 2018). Hakka revivalism: A story of language conservation in the 21st century. Sigma Iota Rho: Journal of International Relations.

⁸Lee, W.-S., & Zee, E. (2009). Hakka Chinese. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 39(1), 107-111.

The Tanka people are considered one of Hong Kong’s indigenous peoples. The name Tanka (Soi Seung Yan – or ‘those born of water’¹) refers to ’water people’ or ‘boat dwellers’. ‘Tank’ means boat in Cantonese and ‘ka’ means people.

Tanka people have traditionally been fishermen; due to urbanization and a general decline in the fishing industry in the South China Sea, many now live and work offshore.¹

Tanka people originated in southeast China; after displacement by northern Chinese during the Qing dynasty (221-207BC), the Tanka began living on boats and moving along the coastal waters of China.² In Hong Kong, Tanka communities have mostly resided in Tai O, Aberdeen, and typhoon shelters.

Before World War II, Hong Kong’s Tanka population was estimated to be around 30,000; this has declined significantly due to the increase in manufacturing in Hong Kong after WWII, and the decline of the fishing industry.³

Tai O, which currently has a population of 2,000, is still predominately populated by descendants of the original Tanka settlers.³ Tanka settlement in Tai O originated over 300 years ago. Tai O is well-known for the Pang O, houses on stilts, built by members of the Tanka community, as well as its shrimp-paste industry.³

In Hong Kong, there are very few speakers left, as most Tanka indigenous people now speak Cantonese.

The largest Tanka community today lives in Datang, Guangdong providence.⁴

Tanka is an endangered language due to the significant decrease of the number of speakers of this dialect. There are only a few speakers of Tanka remaining in Hong Kong.

The origin of Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL) dates back to the 1930s, with the introduction of formal Deaf education in Hong Kong in 1935 when the Hong Kong School for the Deaf was founded by missionaries.¹ From 1935 until present, 9 Deaf schools and clubs were established in Hong Kong; only 1 of these schools, the Lutheran School for the Deaf (1968 to present) is still open.¹

The Overseas Chinese School for the Deaf and Dumb (OCSD) was established in Hong Kong in 1948; the founders, a Deaf couple from China, likely used – and taught - a mixture of Shanghai and Nanjing signs for communication in the school.¹ These signs, called the OCSD, were increasingly adopted in other schools and clubs for the Deaf in the 1950s and 1960s.¹ At the same time, it is believed that the local Deaf community in Hong Kong developed their own signs for communication, particularly in informal settings, and that gradually the OCSD and local signs merged to form the roots of HKSL.¹

According to the HK Population Census, there were 155,200 individuals with hearing difficulty in Hong Kong in 2013, which is 2.16% of the population.² It is estimated that there are 7,500 users of HKSL in Hong Kong, as of 2019.³

Chinese Sign Language

HK Sign Language Programme: http://ling.cuhk.edu.hk/ml_hksl_res.php

Hong Kong Society for the Deaf: https://www.deaf.org.hk/en/signlang.php

Hong Kong Sign Language Association: http://www.hksla.org.hk/m/?q=en