The accents of Hong Kong’s Eurasian, Portuguese communities are dying out – and with them a rich local culture, too
Cantonese first-language inter-ference with non-native English speakers' pronunciation is widely known, and unconsciously amusing up-and-down inflections have been the butt of cruel humour for decades. Examples are legion; elision of L and R sounds into "flied lice" and the like are weary staples for racist-tinged "humorists".
Less remembered are the distinctive accents - now largely vanished - of Hong Kong's minority communities, for whom English was (mostly) a first tongue, yet heavily influenced by other languages. Until broader educational opportunities in recent decades dramatically reduced this speech variant, most Eurasian and local Portuguese English speakers had a distinctive, immediately recognisable "sound", usually more deprecated than celebrated among themselves.