plunet

I think I read over in the CX forum that Cathay are doing pretty much the same shuttering their outstation bases. Not that it makes it any better

Phil the Flyer

NeedstoFly

On my few visits to HK, I've been surprised by how little english is spoken. I was expecting something like SG where its common.

mrploddy

AMEN to that. As someone who speaks Japanese well - to be able to serve a Japanese customer well you need to be pretty darned fluent in the language and be able to speak keigo well (eg you've lived in the country for a few years) or you just come across as rude. Especially for high flying premium cabin customers if you can't speak the language well just don't bother and stick to English as you'll just make a bad impression and the high spending Japanese customer will just run off back to ANA / JAL.

Ancient Observer

Many, many "local" Chinese restaurants in HKG have zero English speakers. Travel outside the Tourism and Banking areas nowadays, and English is quite rare. And we are not going to send out the gunboats to change it.

And BA closing its local presence is completely daft.

Fly2Where

IF you mean Hong Kong, I don't know where/how/why you have this impression, and I respectfully disagree. I visited HK at least once up to 4 times a year, I can HARDLY, but not impossible, find a local Chinese restaurant (ie Tea Restaurant) servers are not able to communicate in English, they have English menu nonetheless. While I understand NOT all server can speak English, they certainly have someone who is able to communicate in English. Even "Hawkers" in Shenzhen/HK boarder would able to communicate in English, not fluent, but one certainly can understand what they are selling.

English is VERY common and basic in HK, just like Singapore. They teach English in their school system, so basically anyone finish/attend their high school (Form 1-5) in HK, should able to communicate basic English (I am definitely not saying all can speak well). I am probably exaggerating, but I felt, more ppl speak English than Mandarin (different language to Cantonese). They don't even have Mandarin class until maybe 20 years ago (around 1997), but English as a study subject forever. Therefore, your statement probably true if this is 20-30 years ago, but not anymore.

kaka

erm. no. there are bus-loads of chinese from southern china who is on the back of the a-bus. cuz canlhr flies on silly hours.

on the good side BA may get rid of these low-yielding pax.

kaka

it REALLY depends on your extent of hong kong. not only some kids cant be bothered to learn english, 150 chinapersons are sent to hongkong every day so there is now a million of them, mostly non-skilled on a "family union" reason who will divorce shortly after they get into the "husbands" social housing.

SO, if you go to those social housing estate, i shall bet on my last penny english wouldnt get you anywhere.

Some of the hawkers near the border originates from the closest village groups in rural HK from back in the days. So no surprising they speak some english - it runs down the group.

ermen

I laughed when I read that. I am willing to bet that you have not ventured out of within 3KM of Central / Soho.

Standard of HK English has been going down for years from what I understand. When I first arrived 6 years ago I thought that English would have been ubiquitous (as a formal English colony), however that is not true. In fact, young people these days are more fluent in Mandarin than English.

Try hopping onto a taxi and saying some place in English and see here that gets you (though I have taken taxis where some old man spoke very good English - those are rare).

My landlord's son is ~35 and can't communicate in English (or even Mandarin) at all. His Dad can't too.

And on the local "Tea Restaurant" or "Chaa Chan Teng" - let's pick a random one not visited by tourists even in Wan Chai. Chances are they can't speak English (or even have an English menu). Or try going to the wet market and using English... its really tough!

:D!

My experience is that it varies. Sometimes there are more HK people and sometimes there are more PRC flyers and sometimes there are more people of a European ethnicity, both on BA and CX, at least in the vicinity of my seat, in the three lower cabins (not been able to fly in F yet).

I think it's more accurate to say that HK people who fly to the UK are more likely to speak English to a reasonable standard, compared to people from the PRC, possibly because a lot of the HK people live in the UK.

Wrt the previous quote, it may be the case that more Mandarin speakers are required on HKG flights. There are more Mandarin speakers than Spanish.


English is a lingua franca between the residents of Singapore and is the first/native language of many Singaporeans.

In Hong Kong English is only used professionally (e.g. in medicine and law) and to communicate to tourists and expats. It is almost never the native language of a HKer unless they were raised in an English-speaking country.


It's always been the case not just nowadays. If you failed English at school then you are hardly going to get a job where you need good English. If you don't interact with any English speakers (which you don't if you run a shop / cafe in a housing estate), there is no need or opportunity to improve your English.

The gradual influx of mainland Chinese over the past 20 years means that a lot of them have found jobs in restaurants, and those people didn't learn English at school (and may not have gone to school at all). Some of them can barely speak Cantonese although they try.


So you just visit HK a few times, do you ever go anywhere outside of the main urban areas? Plenty of places that stuck their menu into some translation service or had someone who did a reasonable translation many years ago but have never updated it. Though you are probably right that chances are there will be one person who can speak some English, because they are younger and remember some of it from school.

drvannostren

I seriously doubt this...London is chock full of people from every nation. Just like Air Canada, (who may or may not have an HK base, I don't know) it's plenty easy for them to recruit cabin crew of differing origins who speak other languages. I do feel for the people who lose their jobs, I don't really think it impacts the passengers much.

mrploddy

Yeah you're right but are those people really going to want to go and work for BA on the current starting salaries at London wages ?.

If someone has got any form of decent language skills ( by this I mean University level graduate / spent time in the country ) they will be able to get a job with a much higher stating salary than BA.

I am not well versed in Cantonese works but I can tell you that someone with GCSE / A-Level Japanese will NOT cut it in premium cabins trying to communicate to a high flying Japanese customer in their native language. Japanese has very complex speech patterns depending on who you are talking to and the most demanding customers can look down VERY much on the slightest language mistakes.

At the very simplest level you could say its like knowing how to say "Wanna drink?" vs "Would Sir care for a drink?".

Not to mention being able to read when a Japanese client is using tatemae as well - knowig when they are saying one thing and meaning something else.

Phil the Flyer

milgom

I just moved to HK after living in Malaysia for a while and I have to say that English is much less common in HK than in Malaysia. If you go to Central, Wanchai, yes it's easy to meet people speaking English, but if you go a bit outside of those areas, there's a lot of places where nobody speaks English, even in Kennedy Town where I live, people working in Cha Chaan Teng don't speak English at all. And on the Kowloon side, English is much less common (Mandarin is quite common there though).

I was surprised when comparing to KL and Penang because the level of English of the average Malaysian is definitely higher (even if it is similar to Singlish and has cute expressions like Can can lah).


Back to the topic on hand, I'm flying first class from HKG to LHR in January, I selfishly hope the base doesn't close before that (and that the crew is not depressed because of that)

Donkitravel