MP-lingualism - It's not what you think!

[R. A. Stegemann]

ANTHEA

Thank you for your thorough response, but please forgive me, if I do
not respond in kind. I will address what I consider to be worthy
points, however.

1) I find the way that you write about Hong Kongers to be very similar
to the way that many Hong Kongers who have fairly good fluency in
Cantonese, English, and Mandarin speak about all of Hong Kong -- in
vague, sweeping generalities that simply do not hold water upon close
observation.

Just what do you consider a large proportion of Hong Kongers? Five,
ten, or fifteen percent who one might consider trilingual? Ten, twenty,
or thirty percent who one might consider bilingual? For this, all of
Hong Kong should be considered a trilingual, biliterate territory? This
is what Hong Kong's Education and Manpower Bureau would have the world
believe.

3) How is it that a nation can read, what is not spoken? It is quite
easy. One develops a spoken form of L2 that employs an L1 phonological
system. In Japan it is called katakana-English and written above
English language text to facilitate pronunciation. In Hong Kong they
have the audacity to call this same phonological distortion English.
Unlike Japanese, however, Hong Kongers never developed a way to write
their L2 phonology above English language text. The absence of such a
writing system, also makes it difficult for Hong Kongers to learn to
speak written Cantonese.

What most Hong Kongers have mastered is a fairly good verbal
understanding of the English alphabet. Simply they have difficulty
sounding the letters together without a piece of paper and pencil. The
next time you are in Hong Kong for anything more than an overnight
visit, count the number of times that you are asked to spell a word.

Moreover, the dependency on sound for understanding what one reads in
the West simply does not exist in the East to the same degree. East
Asian languages are far more graphic than their Western counterparts.
As such, one often understands what one cannot speak even in one's
native language.

4) Your functional definition of bilingualism is exactly what I am
seeking to eschew with mp-lingualism. I can tell a lost Hong Konger how
to get from one point to the next in his own native tongue, but I
hardly consider myself bilingual in Cantonese.

5) Literacy and speech are indeed two different aspects of language
that need to be taken into account when measuring one's degree of
mp-lingualism. You will probably agree that most people who depend on a
particular language for their livelihood find themselves highly
disadvantaged, if they cannot read what others can.

6) If defining a multilingual society means that different people speak
different languages, and some people speak more than one, then most
societies are likely multilingual.  Certainly there are many people who
are satisfied with others acting as go-betweens on their behalf. Then
too, most are probably like me, they like to be able to find their own
way. How about you?

Hamo

R. A. Stegemann
EARTH's Manager and HKLNA-Project Director
EARTH - East Asian Research and Translation in Hong Kong
http://homepage.mac.com/moogoonghwa/earth/
Tel/Fax: 852 2630 0349
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