Cantonese-language skills put to the test through official romanisation system
Secondary students battled it out to find out who had the best Cantonese-language skills in a city-wide competition last week.
Organised by City University's Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics, the Inter-secondary-school Cantonese Transcription Competition 2005 was part of a campaign to promote the use of the dialect's official romanisation system.
Around 20 students from about a dozen secondary schools took part in a workshop at CityU to learn how to use 'Jyutping' in mid-July. They were then given a written test, and three finalists were selected each in junior (Form One to Three) and senior (Form Four to Seven) categories. The finalists then met again to decide the trophy in a computerised test.
Junior section winner Man Po-ling, 16, said she had entered after a challenge from her classmates. The Precious Blood Secondary School pupil said she had never used Jyutping before, although it was similar to a different romanisation system she had learnt at school.
'I think proper romanisation is good because it can help us know the correct pronunciation of a character,' she said. 'If we were taught it in primary school, it could help learning Chinese characters.'
Runner-up Lai Hoi-ling, 14, from Buddhist Kok Kwong Secondary School in Sha Tin, said the final had taken about 45 minutes to complete. 'Actually, I thought it was quite easy,' she said.