Tuyển tập các báo cáo nghiên cứu khoa học ngành toán học được đăng trên tạp chí toán học quấc tế đề tài: The status of Cantonese in the education policy of Hong Kong | Lee and Leung Multilingual Education 2012 2 2 http 2 1 2 o Multilingual Education a SpringerOpen Journal RESEARCH Open Access The status of Cantonese in the education policy of Hong Kong Kwai Sang Lee and Wai Mun Leung Correspondence waimun@ied. Department of Chinese The Hong Kong Institute of Education Hong Kong Springer Abstract After the handover of Hong Kong to China a first-ever policy of bi-literacy and tri-lingualism was put forward by the Special Administrative Region Government. Under the trilingual policy Cantonese the most dominant local language equally shares the official status with Putonghua and English only in name but not in spirit as neither the promotion nor the funding approaches on Cantonese match its legal status. This paper reviews the status of Cantonese in Hong Kong under this policy with respect to the levels of government education and curriculum considers the consequences of neglecting Cantonese in the school curriculum and discusses the importance of large-scale surveys for language policymaking. Keywords the status of Cantonese bi-literacy and tri-lingualism policy language survey Cantonese language education Background The adjustment of the language policy is a common phenomenon in post-colonial societies. It always results in raising the status of the regional vernacular but the language of the ex-colonist still maintains a very strong influence on certain domains. Taking Singapore as an example English became the dominant language in the workplace and families and the local dialects were suppressed. It led to the degrading of both English and Chinese proficiency levels according to scholars evaluation Goh 2009a b . This interesting situation urges us to seriously consider the impact of the absence of mother tongue in education policy on the society. Hong Kong is a city with a similar language situation to Singapore and it is worth evaluating the success of Hong Kong s language policy in .
