​​Through interview and field observation, we felt that Nepalese in Hong Kong is a strong community. The close relationship between family members and even different groups is upheld by various social activities which facilitates the maintenance of their national language and Nepalese dialects such as Limbu. The tragedy happened a few years ago has also strengthened the sense of belonging of the people to the Nepalese community.

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As we learned from the studies for this project as well as the media, local Nepalese suffered from huge difficulties living in Hong Kong, which leads to a number of teenagers going astray and being recruited as gang members. Language barrier is one major problem. With little competence in Cantonese, teenagers often endure poor grades at school and drop out at young age. Even there are around 20 local schools offering extra support to non-Chinese ethnic minority’s students, it is still extremely difficult to further studies with poor results in Chinese and only around 1 to 2 students can enter the university every year. Another example is Gurung who is a grocery store owner who spent one year in handling the procedures because she does not know Chinese. Although charities in the neighbourhood provide Cantonese classes as a support, resources invested are insufficient to make the classes useful and widely known. Joint effort of the government and schools (such as allocating resources to improve the quality and quantity of Cantonese classes) is essential.

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Celebrating International Mother Language Day, UNESCO aims at raising awareness for “preservation and protection of all languages used by peoples of the world”. Are we aware of the speech minorities in Hong Kong? They are Hong Kong citizens even not speaking the dominant language. UNESCO’s resolution serves as one reminder to us: to appreciate the linguistic diversity in our society. If we pay more attention, we will discover diversity is all around. Let’s start appreciating differences and varieties in Hong Kong, linguistically and culturally!