While having lunch (or was it cocktails? Yes! Cocktails!) with my friend Jo in Tibet northern Yunnan the other day, I suddenly realised that few people in the world has less job satisfaction than me.
The masseur gets the customer to scream, then relax, the carpenter can look with satisfaction at a table or house fully usable and even the worst driving instructor has at least a 70% success rate.
Me? Ever since I decided that my mission in life was to make Cantonese a world language but, unlike Mandarin, allow all the other languages to live too, the following has happened:
1. I’ve come to realise that most (most! Okay? With some very honourable exceptions) of my students only ever speak Cantonese with me. Whenever they are faced with for example a waiter, they slip effortlessly into English. Right in front of me. Most of those who really try, give up around the 67th time the Hong Kong person answers their Cantonese with English. Who can blame them? I thought that Hong Kong people one day would get over that whitey tries to show the courtesy of learning the local language, but no. Every single time is the first time EVER for them.
2. Mandarin (“Confucius”) institutes (with simplified characters, natch) have sprung up everywhere, elbowing out Cantonese from Chinatowns and universities all over the world.
3. The massive untruth that hybrid, Esperanto-like Mandarin is the real Chinese and Cantonese is “just a dialect” is gaining ground. I have people who speak neither language lecturing me about this.
4. The only Chinese language learning in Hong Kong’s primary schools is Mandarin. AND with simplified characters, although they have nothing to do with Hong Kong’s written language.
5. Hong Kong people, whereas before they addressed me in English no matter how fluent my Cantonese, are now starting to talk to me in awful Mandarin. Anything but their own language.
So what’s the point? The more I do, the more the world slides into Mandohooliganism. I need some job satisfaction like normal people! I want progress and improvement, things getting better and what not. Is that too much to ask?
國語 (Gok yu – Mandarin)
簡體字 (Gan tai tsi – simplified characters)
滿意 (Mun yi – satisfied)
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