--- title: "Should Hong Kong Teach Primary School Students a Rarely Used Chinese Pinyin Input Method?" url: https://sammy.hk/en/should-hong-kong-teach-primary-school-students-a-rarely-used-chinese-pinyin-input-method/ author: Sammy Fung published: 2026-11-10T13:15:03+08:00 modified: 2026-11-10T14:30:34+08:00 description: "Recently, Hong Kong society has been engaged in heated debate over primary school students learning the Hanyu Pinyin input method. The controversy stems from th…" categories: [Open Source] tags: [cangjie input, chinese input, pinyin input] source: https://sammy.hk --- [![](https://sammy.hk/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/openrouter_google_gemini-3_1-flash-lite-image_20261110_131628_d1beb4e8-1024x572.jpg)](https://sammy.hk/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/openrouter_google_gemini-3_1-flash-lite-image_20261110_131628_d1beb4e8.jpg)Recently, Hong Kong society has been engaged in heated debate over primary school students learning the Hanyu Pinyin input method. The controversy stems from the Education Bureau’s release at the end of October 2026 of the Primary School Information and Innovation Technology Curriculum Framework (Draft), which explicitly requires Primary 2 students to “be able to initially use a keyboard to input Chinese characters using the Hanyu Pinyin (Pinyin) input method,” with plans to implement it in phases starting from the 2028/29 school year. Because the draft does not mention the character-decomposition input methods commonly used by Hong Kong people, such as Cangjie or Quick (Sucheng), it immediately sparked widespread discussion and questioning among parents, the education sector, and netizens. ### Written Language and the Development of Hong Kong Society I will first discuss Hong Kong’s language and the development of Chinese from the perspective of writing and language. Since the British opened Hong Kong as a port in 1841, Hong Kong people have generally used Traditional Chinese characters and Cantonese. From my birth in Hong Kong until now, the written language and spoken language I have commonly used over these decades have also been Traditional Chinese and Hong Kong Cantonese / Hong Kong Yue, just like most native Hong Kong Chinese people. From the 1970s onward, Hong Kong transformed from a fishing port into an international financial and commercial city, deriving its main income from international trade. With the convergence of Chinese and Western cultures, in addition to Hong Kong people of a certain educational level who understand everyday business English, ordinary Hong Kong Chinese also mix some English vocabulary into their daily Cantonese speech. In 1921 the Chinese Communist Party was founded. Through the Chinese Civil War, it drove the Chinese Nationalist Party (founded in 1894) to Taiwan. The Chinese Communist Party changed the dynasty in China and established the People’s Republic of China in 1949—the present-day China—replacing the Republic of China founded in 1912 (i.e., China from 1912–1949, which was also a founding member of the United Nations). In the 1950s, in order to raise the literacy level of mainland China and enable hundreds of millions of mainland Chinese to receive more education, learn to read and write, and thereby improve people’s lives, the Chinese Communist Party promoted the simplification of Chinese characters. Before the simplification of Chinese characters, the Chinese writing system had already been transmitted in China for nearly two thousand years—the Traditional Chinese characters still commonly used in Hong Kong and Taiwan today. The commonly used Traditional Chinese character forms originated in the 2nd century AD and became widely used after taking shape during the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD). Coincidentally, like Traditional Chinese, Cantonese also has a history of two thousand years, having developed from Old Chinese as early as the Qin Dynasty (221–207 BC). Cantonese retains most of the Middle Chinese phonological system of the Tang and Song dynasties. Reading classical Chinese literary works and poetry from the Tang (618–907) and Song (960–1279) periods in Cantonese is more beautiful and melodious than reading them in Mandarin/Putonghua, and better conveys the feelings and thoughts of the literati and poets of that time. ### Development of Chinese Computer Systems and Usage by Hong Kong People In 1998, a group of volunteers in Taiwan developed the Chinese Linux Extension (CLE) project, enabling open-source Linux desktops to display Chinese fonts and input Chinese. For Hong Kong people, CLE brought the ability to use the Cangjie input method (and the simplified/Quick input method) as well as the Hong Kong Cantonese input method. The Cangjie input method was invented in 1976 by Taiwanese computer scientist Chu Bong-Foo, who early on abandoned the copyright and vigorously promoted the computerization of Chinese. Hong Kong people who use Chinese computers and Traditional Chinese characters have been using the Cangjie input method for decades. When Linux desktops switched to the unified input method platform ibus, Hong Kong people suddenly lost the means to input Chinese on Linux desktops. At the 2012 GNOME Asia Summit held in Hong Kong, several Hong Kong volunteers discussed the matter and jointly developed libcangjie. Social worker Mr. Leung also volunteered to develop the open-source Stroke Order Five Codes after working with elderly stroke patients, and other volunteers helped create a Hong Kong Cantonese input method. This shows that the Chinese input methods commonly used by Hong Kong people have always been Cangjie and Hong Kong Cantonese, while Pinyin and Jyutping are not commonly used. I once volunteered on the Mozilla Foundation’s Common Voice project and invited social worker Mr. Leung to jointly develop and promote the collection of public speech data for zh\_HK Hong Kong Chinese (Hong Kong Cantonese / Guangdonghua). Later, a person who claimed to be a Hong Kong linguist said that what our zh\_HK team recorded was not “Cantonese” or “Guangdonghua.” He first tried to replace us; when that failed, he opened another Cantonese language team. To avoid confusion in Cantonese speech collection, I, on behalf of the zh\_HK team, opposed this and tried to find more support on GitHub and social networks. Although the majority on GitHub and social networks supported our zh\_HK team, considering that the zh\_HK team consisted entirely of volunteers and it would be difficult to continue arguing long-term with that full-time linguist and his few supporters, I eventually gave up continuing to advocate that zh\_HK was the only language team. Looking at the Common Voice controversy, and examining the list of linguists in various Hong Kong universities who specialize in researching Cantonese, one finds from their surnames and given names that most use Mandarin Pinyin, and most are not native Hong Kong scholars. Their stance on the development of Cantonese mostly starts from the development of Cantonese in mainland China and then incorporates Hong Kong Cantonese development when researching and publishing academic opinions on the language. They do not regard modern Cantonese development as being primarily driven by Hong Kong and Hong Kong people. They have little deep interest in the development of Hong Kong Cantonese / Guangdonghua, are not very accepting of the Chinese-English mixing in Hong Kong language, and cannot properly propose effective Hong Kong Cantonese speech applications for Hong Kong people; they simply dismiss it as “this is English” and ignore the daily practical needs of Hong Kong people. They are also not very accepting of, interested in, or supportive of the Hong Kong vocabulary that Hong Kong netizens and young people frequently create and widely spread on the internet today. This has resulted in a large gap between academic circles and the general public regarding Hong Kong Cantonese—mutual non-acceptance or disregard—as if linguists and ordinary Hong Kong people live in two different worlds. I believe these circumstances are one of the main reasons why so few people in Hong Kong use Jyutping and Pinyin. ### Pinyin Input Method Is Not Something That Should Not Be Learned, but Rather When It Should Be Learned Although I believe that the Cangjie input method and Hong Kong Cantonese remain the most mainstream and indispensable Chinese input methods in Hong Kong, Mandarin / Guoyu (both called Mandarin in English) is increasingly used internationally. I therefore think that Hong Kong people who know Mandarin / Guoyu can learn the Pinyin input method. I believe the Hong Kong Education Bureau should first teach the Cangjie input method in primary school, because the Chinese characters primary students learn are Traditional Chinese characters. Learning the Cangjie method of decomposing Traditional Chinese character forms is the most effective and helpful for them in learning Chinese characters. Then in junior secondary school they can learn the Pinyin input method and the Jyutping input method, which will help their development in both Cantonese and Mandarin. ### Education and Contribution to Society In this controversy, I believe the Education Bureau’s greatest contribution is that it has once again prompted the public and the international community to review and discuss the development of Hong Kong and Chinese language. To the several million ordinary native Hong Kong people, it is clear that “teaching Pinyin input first in the early primary years” is not beneficial to Hong Kong’s future development. For Chinese people who are not native to Hong Kong and who do not use Cantonese or Traditional Chinese, they see no problem and promote the series of Chinese writing and language applications centered on Mandarin / Guoyu, Simplified Chinese, and the Pinyin input method. If fathers and grandfathers use Cangjie while children use Pinyin, and the two generations learn and use different technologies, this reduces intergenerational communication, which is not good for the development of Hong Kong society. Therefore, education’s contribution to Hong Kong’s social development makes learning Traditional Chinese and Cangjie extremely important. In response to public concerns, the Education Bureau issued successive clarifications on 9 and 10 November, emphasizing that the arrangement is not intended to mandatorily replace other input methods. The document is still at the “draft” stage, and all sectors of society continue to pay close attention to how to balance the application of technology with local teaching practices. The purpose of developing digital technology should be to improve overall human life, not to let digital technology control overall human life. What I have promoted throughout my life in Hong Kong and around the world—open source, open data, and digital freedom—is precisely about increasing opportunities for humanity to control digital technology. I hope that through this article, everyone can better understand the development of digital technology for Hong Kong people, and also hope that Hong Kong can appropriately choose Chinese input methods suitable for Hong Kong’s development in digital technology education. Original Chinese Opinion: [香港要教無人用的中文拼音輸入法給初小學生？](https://sammy.hk/hk-primary-students-rare-chinese-pinyin/) ### 相關文章： 1. 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