Cantonese culinary lexical interaction between Hong Kong and Singapore English

Abstract

The English language continues to function as a form of linguistic capital in former British colonies. Although previous studies on World English lexicon documented how and what English lexical items entered another language, few studies have been conducted to investigate the typology of lexical interaction between two postcolonial English varieties. This paper aims to describe how Cantonese-origin English culinary lexical terms were spread from either Hong Kong or Singapore, whilst illustrating the possible multitrajectory pathways of lexical interaction in the Cantophone world by demonstrating five types of translingual practices of food words with Cantonese roots. The lexical examples of food words discussed in this paper were taken from Instagram, Google Map, Google Search, Google Trends, and Oxford English Dictionary. Drawing on the theoretical notion of the ‘sunflower model’, this qualitative study argues that Sinograph (a logographic written system; also known as Honzi) is a space of mediation, which plays an influential role in shaping the trajectories of culinary lexical terms across multilingual Asia. Findings also suggest that individuals’ multilingual competencies and the bidirectional influences between two Sinitic varieties (Cantonese and Mandarin) could shape spelling variations and conventions in Asian Englishes.