Multilingualism in Decline: Language Repertoire, Use and Shift in Two Hong Kong Indian Communities

This paper reports on a questionnaire study of language repertoires, use and shift within two Hong Kong Indian communities - the Sikhs and the Sindhis. The findings suggest that among the Sindhis, knowledge and use of Sindhi, Cantonese and Hindi are all declining and use of English has greatly increased even within the family. Among the Sikhs, however, despite some decline in knowledge and use of Punjabi and Hindi in the younger generation, there does not seem to have been such a marked reduction in mutlilingualism as among the Sindhis. In particular, the shift away from mother tongue and into English is less apparent. It is interesting that although both communities are Indian communities within the same sociopolitical contexts, they appear to exhibit different patterns of language repertoire, use and shift. Some possible reasons for this are suggested