Racism in Hong Kong: why ‘your English is very good’ is not a compliment, it’s actually very insulting
An Australian of Chinese descent reveals why she is offended every time she is praised for her excellent English-language skills
There are many ways to respond to a compliment, but stabbing the flatterer is rarely recommended. Yet that was the impulse I once felt when a colleague commented that my English was “pretty good”. He may have said “really good”, for all I care, because it wasn’t the matter of degree that had me throwing visual daggers. His careless praise was an insult because it implied his English was somehow better than mine – meaning more idiomatic, perhaps, or just more authentic because it was spoken by a Westerner with a white face. The thing was, we were both native speakers of English.
For context: I’m an Australian of Chinese descent whose mother tongue is English, a language I was taught in Malaysia (by British schoolmarms, no less, a decade after the country had gained independence from Britain). From age 10, when my family moved to Sydney, I was schooled in Strine. So maybe I should have been more specific when referring to idiomatic English. The fact is, people like me (many Hongkongers included) speak idiomatic Englishes. But let’s leave academia out of this discussion so everyone can join in.
Similar emotions simmered while I was growing up in Sydney, where my English was praised by white Australians who would have had difficulty locating Malaysia on a map. But things have improved. Thanks to globalisation, migration, television, travel and a host of other world-shrinking developments, fewer people now connect English proficiency to an accent or skin colour.
Or do they? (“Is it?” my mother would say.)