ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with high-status Cantonese, introduced by the Hong Kong Chinese, eventually replaced Kejia as the public medium, and now Mandarin in the form of Putonghua (PTH) is overtaking Cantonese in public discourse and replacing Kejia as the default intra-ethnic lingua franca. First, all migrants in Suriname who cannot isolate themselves as expats eventually recognise the need to learn Sranantongo, and Chinese migrants quickly acquire it, to the extent that all ethnic Chinese are assumed to be able to speak it. In short, there are three main factors that determine the fortunes of Kejia in Suriname: assimilation, language ideology imported from Hong Kong and the growing influence of the discourse of global Chinese identity. Assimilation has two meanings in Suriname with regard to the language situation of the Sanyi Hakka. The first is the loss of Kejia among younger generations; the second is the local divergence of the ancestral dialect.
