As the majority of the population in Hong Kong are descendants of migrants from China's Canton Province, the vast majority speak standard Cantonese or other Yue Chinese varieties as a first language, with smaller numbers of speakers of Hakka Language or the Teochew dialect of Southern Min.

In addition, immigrants and expatriates from the West and other Asian countries have contributed much to Hong Kong's linguistic and demographic diversity.

Annex I of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration provided that English may be used in addition to Chinese for official purposes in the future Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

In March 1987, the Official Languages Ordinance was amended to require all new legislation to be enacted bilingually in both English and Chinese.

[8] As a result of immigration into Hong Kong from Canton Province, Cantonese is the dominant Chinese variant spoken in the territory with smaller numbers of speakers of other dialects.

Written Cantonese is unintelligible to non-Cantonese speakers and is considered nonstandard by some educators despite its widespread usage in Hong Kong.

Yet, due to the British colonial government favouring English over Chinese for most of its rule, there was not much official effort to further regulate the language.

The principal vernacular language of Hong Kong is standard Cantonese (Chinese: 粵語, 廣州話, 廣東話, 廣府話, 白話, 本地話),[10] spoken by 88.9% of the population.

Most notable is the Weitou dialect (圍頭話), which is mostly spoken by the older generation living in walled villages in New Territories.

Additionally, the Tanka people (Chinese: 蜑家人, 疍家人, 水上人) from the fishing villages on outlying islands speak their own variant of Cantonese.

However, their usage is largely limited to the migrant families from the around the 20th century or so, especially the cold war era after the communist takeover of China in 1949, to the 21st century, such as middle aged descendants of immigrants from native Chinese regions of these variants, specifically for Hai Lok Hong speakers from Swabue, Teochew speakers from the Teoswa region (such as Chaozhou, Chaoyang, etc.)

Shanghainese, or Wu Chinese in general, was commonly spoken by migrants who escaped Shanghai after the communist takeover of China in 1949.

However there is still a sizeable immigrant community after China's economic reform in 1978, and about 1.1% of the population speaks Shanghainese according to a 2016 census.

[citation needed] English is a major working language in Hong Kong, and is widely used in commercial activities and legal matters.

The language was included as a subject in the HKCEE, but not in HKALE, the two former public exams that Hong Kong high school students take, with accordance to British International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) standards.

[17] Real estate developers in Hong Kong sometimes name their buildings in French, such as Bel-Air, Les Saisons and Belle Mer.

Sometimes only French elements such as articles and prepositions are added to the name, as in the case of the restaurant chain Café de Coral.

[19] Hong Kong-based R by R Production produces a television travel show set in Japan, which, as of April 2016, is broadcast on ViuTV.

In addition, the Companies Registry also permits the hiragana の ‘no’ in Chinese business names that are registered in Hong Kong.

[21] The hiragana の is usually used in place of the Chinese character 之 (Jyutping: zi1; Sidney Lau: ji1) and is read as such in Hong Kong.

[22] There are roughly 1,000 students that took Korean courses at the Chinese University of Hong Kong each year, including undergraduates as well as professionals who enrolled in continuing education programs.

[23] Surveys and statistics from course enrolments have shown that nine-tenths of the students studying Korean in Hong Kong are female.

Most are domestic workers; On their days off, they often gather at Victoria Park in Causeway Bay where Indonesian languages can be heard.

In 2004, the Home Affairs Bureau and Metro Plus AM 1044 jointly launched radio shows Hong Kong-Pak Tonight in Urdu and Hamro Sagarmatha in Nepalese.

When the Union flag of the United Kingdom was hoisted on 26 January 1841, there were around 2,700 Indian troops that participated, and they played an important role in the development of Hong Kong in the early days.