Hong Kong: sign discrimination

Harold Schiffman hfsclpp at gmail.com
Thu Aug 7 15:12:02 UTC 2008


 Sign discrimination<http://sungaigweilo.blogspot.com/2008/08/sign-discrimination.html>
Hong Kong has two official languages - Chinese and English. It is pity that
sometimes English is only used and some 60% of the population are excluded.
While the use of Chinese only affects only 5% (340,000) of the population,
it is still a sizable number of folks who are left in the dark.  In some
parts of the world, language policy is used to stop the free movement of
people. It is a barrier to pluralism.
Often in Hong Kong, decision makers will defend such policies as saying
"foreigners don't come here". Other examples are when rude and threatening
memos accusing domestic helpers of rubbishing parts of a housing estate or
public area are only posted in Tagalog or Bahasa Indonesia.

Below are some examples of Chinese only signs.

I believe the one with the "$320" refers to some kind of impounding fee
while the others are part of instructions on how to get from one floor to
another due to problems with an escalator.
<http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_vGwrA9KOiw0/SJp0v1z4JPI/AAAAAAAABvA/-Qxlvb6_Ek8/s1600-h/lang+disc+-+1.jpg>
<http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_vGwrA9KOiw0/SJp0v6yUWWI/AAAAAAAABvI/l16xv2086lA/s1600-h/lang+disc+-+2.jpg>
<http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_vGwrA9KOiw0/SJp0v-ljT9I/AAAAAAAABvQ/XcysBx9-gSc/s1600-h/lang+disc+-+3.jpg>
<http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_vGwrA9KOiw0/SJp0wAhU1vI/AAAAAAAABvY/zc5eMRqIRzE/s1600-h/lang+disc+-+4.jpg>
<http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_vGwrA9KOiw0/SJp0wCnZfvI/AAAAAAAABvg/SHVL6E5IJlA/s1600-h/lang+disc+-+5.jpg>


http://sungaigweilo.blogspot.com/2008/08/sign-discrimination.html
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