​Name: Carmen
(She does not have a Chinese name because she was told that Christian name is commonly use in workplaces, so she picked a Christian name instead of a Chinese one)
Migrated to Hong Kong at 1996 (17 years)​
Mother tongue: Thai
Languages spoken: Cantonese, Thai, English
(ranked by usage in everyday life, left as the most frequently use language)
Marital status: Married to a Thai
No. of child: 1

​Linguistic Profile​​
Carmen is a Thai. Since her husband wanted to do business in Hong Kong, she came to Hong Kong 17 years ago and started to learn Cantonese. She does not only acquired her Thai massage skill from the Thai Consulate General Hong Kong, but also her Cantonese skill. She mentioned that a lot of people in Thailand can speak Cantonese. 



She has a good grasp of English, but she seldom use it for communication in Hong Kong. The only chance for her to use English is to do English dictation with her son. 

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"My husband and I are both Thai, but we see opportunities in Hong Kong and we want to come. To grap this opportunity, we know we have to learn Cantonese."​
 

She is now a fluent speaker of Cantonese can can understand slangs and idioms; however, she cannot read Chinese. Sometimes, she also have difficulty in finding the exact Cantonese term to describe things. To tackle this situation, she will give lengthy description, hoping the other interlocutors can understand her better. 



Like many of our interviewees, she speak Thai to her Thai colleagues, but Cantonese to her Chinese colleagues. Although she and her husband are Thai, Cantonese is still a common language in their family because of their children. 
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Life as a Thai in Hong Kong​​

​Carmen said being able to speak Cantonese definitely make lives easier in Hong Kong, especially for hunting jobs. However, her Cantonese is still strongly accented, so people can always tell that she is actually a Thai. She does not feel discriminated. Instead, she said people are very friendly to her and are curious above her life. She feels great whenever people praise her fluent Cantonese. ​
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​Identity and Second-generation​

​Carmen regards herself as a person of dual identity. She is ethnically Thai, but she still identifies herself as a Hong Kong people. She feels that her family have fully immersed into the Hong Kong culture, especially when her son is born and raise in Hong Kong. 
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"My son is attending local school. He is just like other kids in Hong Kong. We didn't nurture him in Thai because we want him to feel he is as same as his classmates. But since he is a Thai ethnically, we started to teach him Thai recently. We constantly travel to Thailand and my son is fine to communicate in Thai. However, we haven't taught him how to write Thai because I don't want him to mix up with what the school teaches him (i.e. Cantonese and English)." 

"How do your son identify himself - Thai or Hong Kong people?"
"Hong Kong people, of course. He is born here. But we always want him to know he's also a Thai because his dad and I are Thai. I wish one day he can be a fluent Thai speaker since this is what a Thai should be. Even if he can't write Thai, he has to be able to speak it. We have family and friends in Thailand, so whenever we go back, he can practice."

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"So how do you teach your son Thai? Do you buy him textbooks from Thailand?"
"From food. he loves Thai food. Then we get into other topics gradually." 
 

 

 

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