THE GRAPHEMIC REPRESENTATION OF ENGLISH LOANWORDS IN CANTONESE

粵語中的英語借詞書寫方法

包睿舜(Robert S. Bauer)

《Journal of Chinese Linguistics Monograph Series》 24期 (2010/12) Pp. 227-246

摘要

Down through the history of their contact over more than 200 years, Cantonese has borrowed many words from English and assimilated them into its lexicon primarily via phonetic transliteration. Although Cantonese has developed a written form, it has never been formally standardized. One result of the lack of standardization has been variation in both the phonetic and graphemic representations of loanwords, with some loanwords having two or more competing pronunciations and written forms; further, the means of graphemic representation also varies with some loanwords being written entirely with Chinese characters, or entirely with letters of the English alphabet, or in a combination of Chinese characters and letters together. Some degree of systematicity underlies this variability and so allows us to identify five main ways by which English loanwords are being graphemically represented in the contemporary Cantonese language of Hong Kong.

關鍵字

Cantonese ； English loanwords ； Graphemic representation

並列摘要

兩百多年前，在廣東省粵語和英語已經開始有歷史性的接觸關係。粵語與英語之間的密切接觸，使這兩種語言的發展相互影響。很明顯的標誌之一，是粵語從十九世紀開始一直到現在，使用音譯方法借用很多英語詞彙。同時這些借詞也豐富了粵語的詞庫。在1997年以前香港是英國殖民地,所以在香港英語是一種重要的政治和經濟語言。不過在社會方面，粵語不但是香港人口頭的優勢語言，同時也逐漸演變成書面語。由於書面粵語還沒通過標準化書寫的過程，所以英語借詞不一定有固定的發音或寫法，換言之，在發音和書寫方面，有些借詞有變異現象，有些借詞可能有兩種或兩種以上的發音和寫法。因此，我們發現有些借詞是完全用漢字寫成的，也有一部分完全是用拉丁字母寫成的，還有一些借詞是把漢字和拉丁字母合併而成﹒雖然借詞有變異情況，不過它們的書寫方法還具有系統性的特點。據此，我們可以說，現代香港書面粵語使用五種基本的書寫方法來代表英語借詞。

並列關鍵字

粵語 ； 英語借詞 ； 書寫方法