I Love Plain English
I love plain English. The whole point of language is to communicate. So what better way than to do so plainly? Tung Chee--hwa does not speak plainly; the Civil Service does not speak plainly; a lot of people do not speak plainly. Yet, few of us protest enough. I like to start a campaign in Hong Kong to speak plainly--at least in English. We need to do this desperately because the standard of English here is poor. Trying to speak plainly will help improve our English. Do not let people tell you that simple English is not good English. It's the best English. Do not believe that formal English is better than informal English. Or that there is a "business" English. Or that conversation English should not be written. English is English. If there is any rule, it is that plain English is best.
In speech, avoid using "I mean", "I mean to say", "actually", "you know", "well". Practise by writing short sentences--like what I am doing now. There was a very famous English judge called Lord Denning. He was my hero when I was at Law College. He was also a hero to a lot of people because he understood the need to communicate plainly. He cut through all the complicated legal language to defend individual rights. He appreciated justice, rather than the law, more than anyone else. I wished he was our Justice Minister. If you read his judgements, you will find that he only wrote in short sentences. And he was a very educated man. So don't be shy about writing short sentences.
Also, when asked a question, answer it plainly. If someone asks you "Where are you?", you must reply by saying, "I am at ......." But very often, we say in answer, "We are coming" or "We are on our way". This cannot be an answer to the question "Where are you?". This must be the most unanswered question in the world--and it is because we do not pay attention to plain English.
Do not use big words. Being fluent in English is not about vocabulary. It's about use. You cannot learn English by learning from or reading the dictionary. You have to learn how to use the words together. And choose the correct word. Never, for example, say to someone: "You smell". As Dr Johnson, who wrote a dictionary, said, "I smell, you stink". I wished he was our Education Minister. And remember accents do not matter. Having a Chinese accent should not be embarrassing. Often it is nice to have an accent. Much more important is to speak in plain words.
I speak English quite well. I promise you that if you begin to speak in plain English, you will improve your English. Everyone in Hong Kong wants to learn English--nothing wrong with that. But the teaching of English in Hong Kong is all wrong. It must be wrong because even the chancellors of Hong Kong universities tell me that their undergraduates' command of English is bad. They often do not understand lectures in English. That can only mean we have not taught our students properly. When I was at La Salle, I scored zero in English. I did not learn the language properly. I was not taught the language well. When I went to England, I could not speak a word of it. So do not expect your children to be taught well at school.
The situation is made worse because with l997, we are all told to learn Mandarin. (Please note that the word "Putonghua" is not English. Neither is it Chinese. It is a word in an artificial language. So in English, we should avoid it. It is pretentious to use it.) I don't really understand why we are now asked to speak three languages in Hong Kong. If we value our independence, we should try to improve our Cantonese. (If nothing else, we need it for rhyming in many Tang Dynasty poems.) Mainlanders cannot then understand us. That would always be an advantage for us. If we are not careful, we could end up like Singapore--nobody speaking any one language properly. I call it Tiger Balm. Tiger Balm is reasonably good for a lot of things, but not good at any one thing. We don't want Tiger Balm in Hong Kong. Our humourless Government has already got rid of the Tiger Balm Garden, which should have stayed. It would have reminded us how ugly Tiger Balm is.
So let's all start speaking and writing plainly. Shortening all your sentences would be a good start. Try writing in short sentences. This style of writing is known as "staccato". Staccato is the plucking of a string on the violin. As we all know, this can sound as beautiful as when the strings are played with a bow. So if we can be beautiful as well as plain, what more can we want?
David Tang is the founder of the China Club, Shanghai Tang, Pacific Cigar and Cipriani in Hong Kong. He was born in Hong Kong and educated in Kowloon, Cambridge, London and Peking, where he taught English at Peking University.---19/7/2004, Apple Daily
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