香港人的英語水平爲何不如上海

On the first day of my recent trip to Hong Kong, the South China Morning Post had a front-page story bemoaning the neglect of English.

我不久前去香港，剛到的第一天，《南華早報》(South China Morning Post)在頭版刊發了一篇感嘆英語受到忽視的文章。

While Hong Kong was officially bilingual, local ministers were increasingly giving speeches and blogging in Chinese without providing an English translation, the paper said.

該報稱，儘管香港官方使用兩種語言，但政府部門首長在講話和寫博客時越來越多地使用中文，而且不提供英語版本。

It is not just officials abandoning English. There are frequent complaints that Hong Kong generally has lost its ability to communicate in the language.

拋棄英語的不只是官員。經常有人抱怨，香港人普遍喪失了用英語交流的能力。

This was my third visit to Hong Kong in a year, and I too have been struck by how many people struggle to speak English. It is a contrast with everywhere else I have travelled in recent years.

這是我一年內第三次去香港，對香港那麼多人講不好英語，我感到很吃驚。這跟我近年來去過的所有其他地方形成了對比。

I have written before about how hard it is to practise European languages because people insist on replying in English.

以前我寫過文章，講述學說歐洲語言是多麼困難，因爲人們執着地用英語回答。

Because English has Germanic and Romance roots, with plenty of Greek words, it is, of course, far easier for Europeans to learn English than it is for Chinese speakers.

由於英語的源頭包括了日耳曼語和羅曼語，其詞彙裏有大量的希臘語單詞，所以，歐洲人學英語當然比講中文的人學英語要容易得多。

But it is not just in Europe that people appear to speak better English. Singaporeans seemed, when I went there last year, to speak English more fluently — and with a playfulness and joy that I missed in Hong Kong.

但是，英語講得好的地方並不限於歐洲。去年我去新加坡時，發現當地人的英語似乎講得更流利，帶着一種香港人講英語時沒有的活潑和歡快。

In Shanghai, which I visited in 2009, I was struck by the number of people who spoke excellent English. Some had been to university in English-speaking countries, but others had just worked hard on the language at home.

在上海——2009年我去過那裏——我對很多人英語講得特別棒感到吃驚。有些人曾經到講英語的國家讀大學，其他人只是在國內下了很大功夫學英語。

More extensive surveys have reached the same conclusion. The EF English Proficiency Index, which analysed test data from 750,000 adults in 63 countries, found that Hong Kong was well behind Malaysia and Singapore. The survey found that South Korea, Japan, Indonesia and Taiwan were all ahead of Hong Kong in English.

覆蓋面較廣的調查得出了相同的結論。對63個國家75萬名成年人的測試成績進行分析得出的英孚英語熟練度指標(EF English Proficiency Index)顯示，香港的英語熟練程度遠遠落後於馬來西亞和新加坡。調查發現，韓國、日本、印尼和臺灣的英語水平都好於香港。

For the first time ever, the survey said, Shanghai had overtaken Hong Kong in English proficiency.

該調查表明，上海的英語熟練程度有史以來第一次超過了香港。

Answering a question in the Legislative Council in December on how this had happened, Eddie Ng, Hong Kong’s education secretary, said the EF index was based on the responses of self-selected online participants and that more objective tests, both internal and external, showed that Hong Kong’s English was either steady or slightly improving.

去年12月在香港立法會回答爲何會出現這個局面時，香港教育局局長吳克儉(Eddie Ng)表示，英孚指標是基於自行選擇的在線參與者的應答，而更客觀的測試，無論是本地的還是國際測試，都顯示香港人英語水平保持平穩或有輕微進步。

It is true that the EF index is not a scientific survey. And worries about declining English standards in Hong Kong are not new.

沒錯，英孚指標並非科學調查的結果。而對香港人英語水平下降的擔憂也不是新鮮事兒。

In 2000, David Eldon, then Hong Kong-based head of HSBC in Asia, complained that recruits from Beijing and Shanghai who had never left China spoke better English than those in Hong Kong. “If you are going to have multinationals investing here, they are going to want people who are conversant and fluent in English. Today, they would be hard pressed to find them,” he said.

2000年，當時駐香港的匯豐(HSBC)亞太區主席大衛•埃爾登(David Eldon)抱怨稱，在北京和上海招募的從未離開過內地的員工，比香港的員工英語講得更好。“如果你想讓跨國企業到這裏來投資，他們會想要精通英語並且表達流利的員工。如今，他們要找到這樣的人才會很困難，”他說。

Several people I spoke to blamed the decline on local education policy which, since the 1997 handover from Britain to China, prevents most schools using English as the language of instruction for other subjects.

好幾個跟我交談過的人認爲原因在於香港的教育政策。自1997年從英國迴歸中國之後，本地政策阻礙大多數學校把英語作爲其他科目的授課語言。

But complaints about English predate the handover. The first Financial Times article on the decline appeared in 1988, when we reported that the University of Hong Kong had become so concerned about students’ English that it had added a foundation year to its three-year courses.

對港人英語水平下降的抱怨在迴歸之前就有了。在1988年，英國《金融時報》刊登了第一篇有關這一話題的文章，我們報道稱，香港大學(University of Hong Kong)對學生的英語水平特別擔心，於是決定爲三年期的課程增設爲期一年的預科。

You could argue that, with China’s growing power, it is natural for young people today to turn away from English. But Johannes Chan, a law professor at the university, told me there were few signs that their Mandarin was improving as their English deteriorated.

你可能會說，隨着中國實力上升，年輕人如今疏遠英語是自然的事。但香港大學法學教授陳文敏(Johannes Chan)告訴我，英語水平下降的同時，香港人的漢語水平也沒有提升的跡象。

While he said his law students still spoke good English, “in general, if one goes into the community and looks at the young people, there is a decline not only in their English, but in their Chinese as well. Their Mandarin is not as good as it should be. Their written Chinese is awful.”

儘管他表示，他的法學系學生英語還是說得不錯，“但總體看，如果你到社會上，看看年輕人，會發現他們不但英語越來越差，而且中文水平也在下降。他們的漢語水平沒有達到應有的水平。他們的中文寫作慘不忍睹。”

In any case, Hong Kong wants to be more than China’s window on the world. It sees itself as a world city, a match for London or New York, and world cities speak English.

無論如何，香港的目標並不只是充當中國面向世界的窗口。香港把自己視爲一個世界性城市、一座可與倫敦或紐約媲美的城市，而世界性城市都說英語。

It takes a lifetime to master a foreign language and, everywhere, people have poured their efforts into English. They are not going to switch suddenly to Mandarin, much less to Cantonese.

我們用一生時間才能精通一門外語，在世界各地，人們都在努力學習英語。他們不會突然轉向學漢語，更別提粵語了。

Whatever happens to the international balance of power, English will remain the world’s language for years. Hong Kong’s rivals in Singapore and Shanghai understand that.

無論國際力量對比發生何種變化，英語在未來多年仍將是世界性語言。香港在新加坡和上海的對手們瞭解這一點。