The variety of English that the girls and their friends used is a mixed code of English and romanized
Cantonese that includes switching into more predominantly English forms at times and more romanized
Cantonese forms at other times. By romanized Cantonese, I refer to the way in which Cantonese is
transliterated into English sounds with the alphabet. Some examples of code-switching and romanization
are shown and analyzed in the next section. This variety of English that the girls acquired in the chat room
and used to construct their relationship with other Chinese young people around the world is defined
against both the colloquial English adopted by many ethnic Chinese growing up in Western countries and
the Cantonese language written in Chinese characters used by many HK locals.
The girls said they didn't bother to read the Chinese words in the early evening hours when they were
busy talking to their friends, and oftentimes they wouldn't even turn on the Chinese software that would
allow them to read Chinese characters on the computer screen.4
Regarding the Western-born Chinese who
wouldn't code-switch into Cantonese, the girls said these youngsters tended to get bored when they didn't
understand the romanized Cantonese that the girls and their friends used, so they wouldn't talk much to
each other.