More Proddie Placie. I’ve Earned It.

Finally it’s here (maybe you didn’t even know that it was going to be here???) – the second installment of Cantonese – The Movie. This DVD, all two hours of it, is for people who aren’t total beginners. If you feel comfortable with some basic grammar but still find yourself lost for words for example in a market or arguing with a taxi driver, this is the DVD for you. This DVD takes you on a journey around China, and, to a certain degree, the world! See the sights, learn the world, marvel at the nakedness and swearing.

Just send me a mail and I’ll send you a PayPal invoice. Price: HK$100. Cantonese The Movie (beginner’s Cantonese) HK$80. Buy both: HK$ 150.00. If you live outside Hong Kong, add HK$20 for posting.

Contents:

A few of the words and expressions from Cantonese – The Movie pop up here in Going Native too. Please forgive me if you think they are too easy. It’s just that I think a few things need to be said twice or even three times. 15 years of teaching Cantonese has taught me that.

1. Young, Nauseating Love Like/dislike, love/hate

• Adjectives: Beautiful, big, tall/high, young, annoying, funny, boring,
• Those, that over there, Some words about plural (there is no plural in Cantonese except …) Two of something (no, not the same as just 2) Comparing things How to ask for and look at a menu Asking if food/drinks taste good More about using the verb in question form in a world without yes and no
• The enormous importance of the word THING
• Verbs: work, look at, write, wash, tidy up, stare, have sex, win, must
• More about have/not have
• How to express there is/there are many things to do/look at/ eat and buy
• This episode, like many others, contains live cattle
• and is full of various Chinese and Western foods

2. Ah-Mok and Ah-Wai Try To Frequent Prostitutes

• How to take transport More about classifiers
• Warning! This episode contains full frontal female nudity! How to use numbers combined with classifiers What kind of …. Verbs: Give, go, cross, pass, dance, hurry
• Commenting on things you haven’t done in ages Asking questions about the past: Have you ever …? How long does it take to …? Talking about things happening here/there
• Double negative

3. Miss Lei Finds a Boyfriend on the Electric Internet

• Look like/seem/be like/similar to
• Verbs: Read, cook, arrange, live (reside), watch, go online, think (about), feel
• Adjectives: Dirty, happy/unhappy
• More about sentence structure
• Why/because
• Time words: Last week/month/up (Yes! ‘Last’ is the same word as ‘up’!) Next week/ month, down

4. Financial Crisis

• Verbs: Know, will, talk/speak, interview, go out, take care of, lose weight
• How to use all, also, all of, even – which, needless to say, in Cantonese is one word.
• Adjectives: Enough, rich
• The mystery of ‘geh’
• This evening/ more time words
• Negative comparison (not as … as …)
• And a huge grammar point: PARTICLES. (Don’t know? It will all be explained!)

Going Native Swearwords!!!!

A whole bunch of juicy and rather naughty common Cantonese swearwords PLUS how to write them! Don’t show your mother!

Going Native In Time

Absolutely all the words that can be connected with time and how to use them properly. The Bureau takes you on a dizzying trip around the entire world to show this. Oh yeah, and including how to tell the time and walk at the same time!

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All Aboard the Harmonious Forgiven Train

Ahh! Back from another trip to my ancestral home, Guangdong province, cradle of Cantonese language and civilisation. The government must have been working overtime the last month, or since I was there last, to drum into people that thing they do about Mandarin being the language of the gods and the only language on earth that has always been, is and will always be, etc.

For never have I met with such a resistance towards speaking Cantonese; when my opponent interlocutor was clearly a native Cantonese speaker. People would switch to Mandarin in the middle of a Canto sentence, they would answer me in Cantonese, then immediately translate what they had just said into Mandarin, they would answer in Mandarin to the first six or seven Canto-sentences I asked them, only to turn around and talk to their colleague or friend in Canto.

Actually, Guangzhou, traditionally a not very obedient city when it comes to edicts from on high, was fine. It was particularly in Yeng Dak （英德）I couldn’t get a word of sense out of people.
So I fear that even Guangdong is no longer a paradise of Cantonese, but that it’s going the way of

Hong Kong where all whitey can only ever communicate in English and where local people would think they themselves can suddenly understand Swahili rather than accept that a foreigner is actually talking to them in the local language. French, Swedish, Urundi Burundian – anything but Cantonese.

This combined with the really crappy service at the Ai Qun Hotel and the terrible new taxi stand 500 meters away from the Guangzhou East train station plus the fact that all tickets to Hong Kong that day were sold out, had put me in a bit of a bad mood. But all was forgiven, all, when I finally got into the packed waiting room for the Shenzhen train and found this:

I mean – right? Who says that it shouldn’t be called an “extrance” when “entrance” is so patently a word. I’m totally with the Chinese there. Stop making English so inconsistent, I say. On the other hand, Chinese, stop calling everything, including the train to Shenzhen, “Harmony.” （和諧）We all know what you mean by that, namely: Do as we tell you, or else.

A Movable Feast (But not very far)

Saturday night! What a brilliant night. Above is the table just before the hordes (12 people) started pouring in. I hosted, cooked Sichuan food for and expressed my life through the medium of dance (optional) →

Love Craft Beer? Love Buffaloes? Come to Pui O!

Interview with Chris Riley, owner of the excellent Water Buffalo restaurant in Pui O. Now you don’t have to travel to Inner Lancashire to experience real English food, and ale, and pale brewish ale and →

Bunk Demythed! I Mean Myth Debunked!

Last weekend a group of three ecstatic revellers hopped on the ferry to Jung Saan (Zhongshan) and got straight in a taxi at the ferry pier and darted into the hinterland. In the lovely, slightly →

Guangdong Province! The Best Province with the Best People. It’s Yuge!

Guangdong is the best province in China, and not because of Cantonese! It’s got the friendliest people and the best hovelage. And today I’m off to savour her charms again! I just thought I’d share →

Hainan Highlights and Playing on a Swing

Last night I had a wonderful time in Central with my friend formerly known as J. Yes, I said ‘formerly’! For that was her name in the many South China Morning Post columns she appeared →

CantoNews 8!!! Live from Garden Cafe (With Sandwiches)

What does this photo of an excellent and ridiculously inexpensive haircut have to do with CantoNews? Nothing! I just like it. In this segment, the venerable Cassette and I visit the Garden Cafe in Pui →

Wild Shenzhen Extravaganza

I always have a good time in Shenzhen’s famed Lo Wu Shopping Centre, even after several hours of “missy missy looking, you buy sunglass okay.” Still, I could really do with less nagging. My student →

CantoNews: Cecilie and Nick Venture Forth to Graze

… all the way to the throbbing metropolis of Mui Wo – La Pizzeria to be exact!

My heart didn’t stop exactly, but I had to swallow hard a couple of times last night when I read the Sunday Times from June 12 (carried around in my handbag unread for two weeks) →

As I was looking through my old columns from South China Morning Post trying to get some other newspaper gigs (do newspapers even exist anymore?) I found the above story from Norway. Allowed only 450 →