This chapter begins by describing the pre-history of southern China and the origins of colonial Hong Kong. It then proceeds to a discussion of English in the late nineteenth century and the formation of an English-speaking Chinese elite in colonial Hong Kong. Since the resumption of Chinese sovereignty in 1997, the government has promoted a policy of “trilingualism” (Cantonese, English, and Putonghua) and “biliteracy” (written Chinese and English). Recently, the national government has moved to assert tighter control over the territory, and there has been increasing importance placed on the learning and use of the national language, Putonghua. At present, English continues to be widely used in key domains of Hong Kong society, including government, law and many areas of employment. This is likely to continue in the future, despite Hong Kong’s increasing integration economically, politically, socially, and linguistically into mainland China.

The importance of history in the emergence and evolution of varieties of English around the world cannot be overstated. From religious missionaries to colonial administrations, the particular mix of peoples, languages and cultures was central to the type of evolutionary trajectory English took. This chapter offers a historical account of the evolution of English in Cameroon under missionary, colonial (German, French and British) and postcolonial conditions. It identifies some of the crucial factors that enabled it to survive even when the territory was ruled by non-English colonisers like the Germans and the French. Using written documents produced during colonialism, the current chapter traces the impact of the colonial system on contemporary Cameroonian society and the variety of English spoken there with focus on processes of cultural conceptualisation and hybridised patterns of social interaction. This is done via the lenses of two recent theoretical frameworks, namely cognitive contact linguistics and postcolonial pragmatics. The chapter also identifies some distinctive structural features of contemporary Cameroon English, contrasting some of them to West African and East African Englishes.