The 4 siblings of the Wu family: Emily, Tony, Yvonne and John are all born and raised in Hong Kong, therefore their native and first language is Cantonese. Receiving their education in Hong Kong in local schools, it has also equipped them with language competence in English and Mandarin as second and third language respectively. Despite growing up in a Chiu Chow family, with their grandparents only able to converse in Chiu Chownese, they reflect that their Chiu Chownese is limited, in a sense that they can understand basic conversations and vocabularies but has difficulty constructing or conversing in Chiu Chownese.
Competence of Chiu Chownese varies in degree for the 4 siblings; Emily, the eldest sister, is most competent in Chiu Chownese, where as John, the youngest of the four is the least competent, barely able to understand and construct his own Chiu Chownese sentence. Yvonne, the second sibling, has limited and decreasing ability to understand and converse in Chiu Chownese. She has moved to Australia for three years, where she usually uses English and Mandarin to communicate. Further, she only comes back once or twice every year, hence the occurrences for her to speak Chiu Chownese causes her deteriorating Chiu Chownese level. Tony, the third sibling, faces a similar situation as he is studying in Australia. Similar to his sister, his Chiu Chownese level is decreasing as he does not travel back often and does not get to use Chiu Chownese in his daily life. For the youngest brother John, he reflects that despite having to communicate with his grandparents, he does not need to be fluent in Chiu Chownese, as his parents and elder siblings are always able to serve as translators in the conversations. For all the 4 siblings, Chiu Chownese is not required in other aspects of their lives, such as friends, work or school; hence learning the language does not become imperative to them. Instances of approaching Chiu Chownese, such as accompanying their grandparents to watch Chiu Chownese opera during the Yu Lan festival, are limited in occurrences.
It is also worthy to note that the Wu siblings do not consider themselves as Chiu Chownese, but Hong Kongers. Chiu Chownese is not considered as their indigenous hometown, but more as a distant hometown of their grandparents or somewhere their parents grew up in. Their inability to identify with being Chiu Chownese may contribute to the lack of motivation to learn and maintain Chiu Chownese within their daily lives.
