Syllabification Paradox - Hong Kong Transliteration of English Words

In saying that consonant clusters are broken up, one should not be led to think that this is a description of the phonology of what may be a variety of English (in this case Hong Kong) in terms of deviation from a perceived standard. (See Mohanan 1992 for extensive discussion on the fallacies of such an approach.) Instead, the question should be: When Cantonese speakers hear English words, what made them borrow those words into forms deviant from what was articulated by English speakers? For example, since an English speaker clearly says “stick”, it is puzzling that the Cantonese speaker should borrow the same word in a deviant form [si.tik]