Lexicography in early Hong Kong: contexts, texts and facilitators

Abstract

The main goal of this paper is to study early lexicography in Hong Kong in the 1841-1914 period by focusing on the contexts, the texts and their facilitators. It also aims to explore the problems and issues emerging from the discussion of Chinese-English-Chinese lexicography in early Hong Kong.

Lexicography in early Hong Kong grew out of the increasing need for intercultural communication between the Chinese and the foreign communities there. The pre-existing lexicographical traditions established in Mainland China and Macau in the nineteenth century created the foundations for lexicography in early Hong Kong. Learning and borrowing a great deal from their predecessors, two groups of lexicographers in colonial Hong Kong, Chinese and Western, contributed much to facilitate intercultural communication by compiling English-Chinese and Chinese-English dictionaries for two different groups of target users: Chinese learners of English and Western learners of Chinese. Such lexicographic works have both merits and defects. Also discussed in this paper are the use of written Cantonese, culture, phraseology as well as tradition and innovation, all of which are as relevant today in the fields of lexicography and linguistics as they were more than 100 years ago.

This paper ends by summarizing the main findings and pointing out the limitations of the study like the unavailability of some editions of the lexicographic texts discussed. In addition, it suggests possible implications for future research such as building a large database of Cantonese as observed in the early English-Chinese and Chinese-English dictionaries for diachronic studies on Cantonese.