Wednesday, March 2, 2016

blog#7 linguicism

The topic linguicism in different countries all over the world is very thought provoking and reflects the issues some disadvantageous countries are undertaking.
As a Chinese, I would like to address my personal experience when I traveled to Hong Kong this summer. Before I went to Hong Kong, my friend told me that I would speak English rather than Chinese so that people there would not treat me very differently. And I decided to do an experiment to see if it is true that Hong Kong people would treat me differently according to the language I speak. There was nothing happen on the first day when I arrived my hotel to check in because there were so many travelers from mainland staying that fancy hotel. But on the next day when I went to the shopping center, I decided to speak mandarin to see the sales’ reaction. Unfortunately, they did react very cold and mean when I asked some questions about their products. They only answered the question and had no intention to introduce more about the products. Even worse, a mid-age gentlemen sales said to me that “ on sale items are over there”, pointing with his fingers when I was browsing in the store. So I tried to speak English the next day to see the difference when buying a ferry ticket. Staffs in the office stared at me during my purchase, their sight turned friendly from surprising because I am obviously Asian, but I speak English fluently so that they could not tell where I am from. This contributed to their nice and friendly service instead of impoliteness to people from Mainland China. 

The experience related to the linguicism occurred to me. And I do agree the opinion from most people from mainland that people from Hong Kong are able to resist or dislike the Chinese government, but it is injustice for them to deny their ethnics.

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