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David Crystal has seen it all before. Nigeria, Ghana and now Hong Kong - the increased emphasis on Cantonese in post-handover Hong Kong is simply a repeat of what happens when colonial powers MCQ #1 pack together pack up pack off and go home, he says. Not only is it not new, it is unlikely to last, he predicts, comparing what has happened in Hong Kong to a pendulum, swinging to and fro.

"It will swing back again," says Crystal, an English-language expert and author of such weighty, but surprisingly accessible, volumes as The Cambridge Encyclopedia Of The English Language, English As A Global Language (Cambridge University Press) and The Cambridge Encyclopedia Of Language.

"The same thing has happened in other parts of the world. The devaluing of the colonial language in the longer term is not what happens. In Ghana and Nigeria, for instance, they realised they had no alternative - Nigeria had 450 languages competing for attention."

Crystal says language serves two purposes, intelligence and identity. So it is not only a method of communication, it is closely MCQ #2 linked with link with link up who we are. For Hong Kong people, speaking their own language is about being Chinese, rather than being in a British outpost. But gradually, as the novelty of the British departure recedes, the global importance of English will push the pendulum back.

"In the longer term I would expect to see a balance between the two," says Crystal, in Australia this week for the Melbourne Writers' Festival. He was due to speak in Hong Kong next week as a guest of the British Council, but was forced to cancel the visit for pressing personal reasons.

The noted British linguist concedes that in the SAR there is a complication: China.

Hong Kong people need both English as the language of global business and communication, and Putonghua, the language of Beijing and the language increasingly necessary in the job market. "These two competing pressures make the situation unique," Crystal says. "If China had not been there I would have expected exactly the same thing to happen as has happened in other places. But the political situation makes it difficult to predict the future sensibly.

"It takes a generation for a language situation to stabilise and that stability has to be people driven - it is hardly ever from the top down.

"Hong Kong needs to be outward looking. That Hong Kong people may need to become trilingual to become full Hong Kong residents is great. Each language you learn increases your understanding of the world."

For children, becoming bilingual or even trilingual and fluent in each language is no problem, Crystal says. But although adults may find learning new languages more difficult, different languages can serve different purposes and fluency in each need not be exactly the same.

"Bilingual does not mean that everything you say in one language is equivalent to everything you say in another language," he says.

But motivation will often determine fluency - can you MCQ #3 get off get up get by with a limited vocabulary in a language or are you employed in a job, the law for instance, where fluency is crucial? Experience in other parts of the world suggests that if China suddenly required everyone in Hong Kong to learn Putonghua to qualify for a job, people would learn surprisingly fast.

"Somehow everyone gets very good at it because your circumstances depend on it," Crystal says.

For migrants, problems with a new language can take three generations to MCQ #4 sort sort out sort off .

The first generation may move to a new country with little of its language and spend the rest of their lives acquiring a limited fluency. For their children, taught in one language at school and speaking another at home, conflicting pressures may create problems in becoming fluent.

"But by the third generation things usually get sorted out and almost always it is that generation where you lose contact with the original language," he says. The question then becomes whether they are happy to do so and often the answer is yes, but it is an answer their parents may be unwilling to accept.

"But it MCQ #5 depends in depends depends on the extent to which the migrant group has protected its cultural identity; if so then there is a real chance that the ancestral language will survive," Crystal says. "This is what one hopes will happen."

And it is, in many parts of the world, with those proud of their ethnic identity developing mixed languages which MCQ #6 draw on draw out draw off both English and their family's language. He cites Singapore's Singlish as an example - Tex Mex and Franglais are others - and says they are altering our understanding of what "fluent" means.

"They are as fluent [as in English], but it is a different kind of fluency," he says.

Crystal says that in a recent Singapore National Day speech Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong missed the point when he criticised Singlish, even to the extent of MCQ #7 calling on calling off calling out a local television station to send a soap opera character, who speaks Singlish, for English lessons as a good example to viewers.

"He is missing the point that standard English and Singlish have two different functions - intelligence and identity," Crystal says. "People with Singlish are just as fluent as people speaking standard English in Singapore, but they are different.

"The prime minister should be saying that people need to develop their standard English as well, but what he said was a waste of breath because Singlish is already there," Crystal says.

"In Hong Kong, for example, valuing all the forms of language that exist is the ideal scenario. You can bring people together through their use of language - it's part of our identity, and as soon as you start putting conditions on its use you alienate sections of the population from each other."

The need to save the world's threatened languages - at least half of the existing 6,000 are under threat - is Crystal's new passion and the subject of his soon-to-be-published book: "We need to alert people that when a language dies that vision of the world is gone," he says.

"Imagine if French MCQ #8 died back died for died out and all the literature of France was gone. Every language has its literature and way of understanding the world." Crystal contrasts the world's lack of concern over this with its outrage at the extinction of animal and plant species.

Fortunately, that is changing, with some parts of the world beginning to embrace language rights and the recognition of minority languages increasing.

"There is no United Nations charter for human language rights but one is being drafted," he says. "It will cover basic things like the right to use your own name in your own language."

And what about the claim that we would have world peace if we all spoke the same language? That's unrealistic, says Crystal, speaking someone's language is no guarantee of liking them any better.