Mixing English with Cantonese(mother tongue of HongKonger) in daily speech is a normal phenomenon in Hong Kong community. We take for granted at mixing single English word or common phases in our Cantonese conversation. But when someone mixes English heavily, audiences will be irritated although normally not express in their faces. What they think are similar to me, the guy pretends to be high-class. It may due to historical reason that most of the Chinese regards someone has linkage with western civilization to be high-class. Or western civilization is indeed better than ours. Anyway, learning a second language should be praised. No matter it is English, Japanese, Korean or Spanish. It can broaden our horizon to see the world in a new way. We should keep our mind opened and there is no room for envy.
Learning second language is marvelous but mixing that with mother tongue should be a bad idea. When someone mixes English words with Cantonese, they always copy the rhythm and accent of Cantonese into English. Making English word sounds like Cantonese can let the mixing not so odd and becomes natural. Rhythm of Cantonese is straightforward. Every word in Cantonese shares the same tone, stress and time frame. Pronunciation of one word does not affect the next word. That is totally different from English speaking. You may imagine English is like a flow of river while Cantonese is rocks and stones.
Why we always mix English with Cantonese? I practice English every day in this year and also find I am tempted to do so. I have no intention to pretend to be high-class but some English words always surge to my throat. Someone says:"This is a good news. That means you can think in English!" But I know that is not the real story. When we are talking, we always talk intuitively and seldom study every word before speak. I find there are some common words/phases in English which are not so common in Chinese/Cantonese. For example, common sense(常識) , stubborn(頑固) , just in case (以防萬一), pay safe (安全起見),etc. Then I will promptly use the word which is most familiar for me. No matter it is Cantonese or English. But when I speak/think in English with complete sentences, this mechanism functions as well! As a native Cantonese speaker, I need to swallow some Cantonese words when I speak in English. Therefore, mixing English with Cantonese has no way to improve our English but even worsen it. It just means that you always use the easiest,laziest way to speak. And just like Jesus said : "No man can serve two masters well".
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