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Anders Nelsson (right) and Rowena Cortes rehearse for their charity show at the Sunbeam Theatre in North Point. Photo: Jonathan Wong

Famed Swedish pop singer laments decline in Hong Kong's English standards

Veteran musician Anders Nelsson bemoans fact Asia's World City is increasingly monolingual

Hong Kong is losing its international sheen and its increasingly monolingual scene will take some getting used to for expatriates, a veteran English-language pop singer has observed.

Anders Nelsson, a Swedish singer and producer who has called Hong Kong home since 1950, laments the gradual decline in the use of English in the city's daily life.

A sign of the times is the publicity material for a four-night run of shows, featuring Nelsson and 80s pop star Rowena Cortes with Canto pop singers, at North Point's Sunbeam Theatre to benefit underprivileged and elderly people.

"Except the phone number, the website and the English songs I'll be performing with Rowena, the entire publicity material is in Chinese, including my name," Nelsson, 68, said of the shows, which began last night.

Nelsson, who is fluent in Cantonese, saw a change in the run-up to the 1997 handover.

"I experienced going into a very local restaurant and having the locals look at me as if saying in their minds 'what is this gweilo doing here?'" he recalled.

It was a huge departure from Hong Kong's 1980s peak, when it boasted truly world-class cultural contributions such as John Woo's films. Even the Cathay Pacific commercials were classy.

"Those Cathay ads were beautifully shot, showing different destinations like mini-movies with Barry White's in various styles. They were really the classics of Hong Kong. Is that just Hong Kong, or is it a worldwide thing? Sometimes it's difficult to say," he said.

He drew a contrast to the government's recent "Jet-So", or bargain, campaign to promote shopping in the city.

"The term is so local that how the hell is that going to attract people from anywhere else to the so-called worldwide campaign? Even people across the border don't know what you are talking about. Isn't that insanity when there's a huge chunk of money put into this campaign?" he asked.

The veteran recalled that English pop songs were a great learning tool in the 1970s.

"There was a very popular RTHK programme called , and youngsters read the with a dictionary. When people say the standard of English in Hong Kong has gone down, well, that seems to be one of the reasons that that culture doesn't seem to exist any more," he sighed.

"It is a shame that we [Chinese and English] are growing apart instead of growing together being Asia's world city."

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Poor English a sore note for singer
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