Segmental Features of Hong Kong English: A Contrastive Approach Study

The current study employs a contrastive approach to analyze five consonantal features (TH stopping/ fronting, L vocalization, [n, l]/[s, ʃ] conflation, /r/, /v/, /w/ substitution and consonant cluster modification [CCM]) of Hong Kong English (HKE) from 37 online sound clips from 29 speakers. Compared to the traditional contrastive approach, the current study uses a world Englishes paradigm to analyze the data, which aligns more with the recent movement of world Englishes. The result shows that all the five features exist in the corpus; however, TH-stopping/fronting and CCM are more common than others. The results behind the features in HKE could be hinted from the comparison with Cantonese, the L1 of Hongkongers. Moreover, the results help to develop the categorization of HKE speakers—Hong Kong English Continuum—which potentially facilitates the discussion of HKE under the world Englishes paradigm in the long run.