Thursday, December 09, 2004

 

Hong Kong Mandarin

Is Hong Kong losing its ability to speak English?

...in 2002 the basic English exam test pass rate was 80 percent, this year it was 65 percent.
[...]
Earlier this year, Singapore’s founding father Lee Kwan Yew said Hong Kong’s failing English standards and its race to embrace Mandarin would deprive it of the very internationalism that enables it to call itself “Asia’s World City”.
[...]
“China is actually promoting English, and in fact Beijing is worried and embarrassed by the poor English here as its own standards are improving so quickly.”
Read the whole thing; hard to say if this trend is deliberate or not.