We’ve got another player in the English-language media scene in Hong Kong – but don’t expect to be able to understand a single sentence published by Kongish Daily, a brand-new Facebook page, unless you’re a young, hip Cantonese-speaker.
Kongish Daily features local news and silly memes in well, “Kongish”, which is meant to be a hybrid of English, Cantonese and Chinglish.
Founded a week ago, Kongish already has 26,000 likes on Facebook, having accumluated more than 10,000 fans in its first 24 hours of existence.
The page’s motto is “Hong Kong people speak Hong Kong English”, and it covers sensational news from a variety of topics, in a hilarious and casual style of reporting. (We think we’ve found our Kongish soulmates!)
Using literal English translations of Cantonese slang terms like “have rice people” (meaning “rich people”) and “real hon zi” (meaning a “real man”), the Facebook page easily won the hearts of nostalgic Hong Kong netizens.
“I feel like I am back in secondary school and texting with my friends!” said one fan.
Many have fully embraced this newfound culture and have started commenting on the posts in the page’s official language
“Kongish really mou tak ding,” wrote one commenter: “Kongish really is the best”.
Cantonese, spoken mostly in Hong Kong and Guangdong, has about 70 million speakers in total. As for Kongish, we are pretty sure it came from Hong Kong and Hong Kong only.
Want to check just how “local” you are?
Try reading their first post, which has over 12,000 likes:
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