Yesterday was July 1st, what was meant to be a good opportunity for Hong Kong people to worship at the altar of the mainland, thanking its kind government for rescuing us from the slimy claws →
Our not always easy to understand government seems to be dead set on this incinerator thing. Needing to “spread the pollution around” they want to build a toxin-spewing monster right outside Pui O Beach, assuring →
Cantonese and bluegrass go together like beer and Sichuan food. It all started in Hainan last Christmas when I met some 86 year-old-geezers playing the saxophone near the beach. One of them had started only →
It seems that no one has thought about the deep and intimate connection between the Cantonese language and bluegrass. I wonder why. Well, from now on you’ll be able to groove along to bluegrassy Canto-tunes, →
Easter was wonderful this year. Good weather and a new restaurant opened on Pui O Beach, the beer was flowing and my recording device was working overtime!
石鼓洲焚化爐 (sek gu chau fan fa lou) – Sek Gu Chau Incinerator – is an expression that strikes terror into the heart of Lantau and Cheung Chau dwellers and should actually do the same to →
Finally! Here is the trailer of a film that premiered six months ago!
I think this poddie castie deserves another hear. Kendall is one of the early fans of Naked Cantonese and it’s always fun to visit fans on their stomping grounds.
I don’t know why I suddenly posted that photo. So, it’s almost Easter, and therefore I’d like you to cast your mind back to Christmas, three years ago. That’s when we shot the legendary Romeo, →
Just for the record, in the first sentence of this column I wrote “.. black family that has – gasp – managed to become middle class and live in a posh neighbourhood.” I think the →
Three months of work are finally over and the result is a 114 minute travel, language, transport and accommodation guide to the Silk Road including Kazakhstan, and, well, anything in China really. The premiere was →
The mainland is all well and good, in fact better than well and certainly better than good, but there other countries around here. Japan for example. Not that this tiny island that’s much closer to →
Do you live in Hong Kong? Have you lived here for a number of years? (Any number higher than, say, one?) Then you must already be starting to get sick of people leaving. Now it’s →
Woo-hooo! WE did that! the happy cooks A, K and D are beaming, so pleased with themselves after studying Sichuan cooking for only two hours. (Chuanxing village spicy potato cake) Now you can also learn →
People are busy and don’t always have time to commit to one or two hours of studying Cantonese every week. But does that mean you can’t learn Cantonese? NO! With Happy Jellyfish Language Bureau’s many →
When I started learning Cantonese there was no shortage of Chinese people warning me against it. At that time the most common refrain was: “It’s too difficult – for you“. OK, maybe they didn’t emphasise →
It’s no secret that I love the motherland, China, over all other lands, and not only because of Mons 雪花(Suet Fa – Snow Flower) beer and Sichuan food either. I’ve had more fun there than in all other motherlands put together, I reckon, but it wouldn’t have been half or even 10% so much fun if it hadn’t been for the languages I managed to claw away from her inhabitants; first Mandarin and then Cantonese.
First not understanding a single word and everything around me being more or less a mystery, going on to slowly building up a simple vocabulary and – woo-hoo! being understood when I talked to people, making jokes in their language and making people laugh because they were good jokes, not because I was ridiculous, well that must count for the single greatest experience of my adult life.
It’s that feeling and that experience I first and foremost want to share with people in this quest to make Cantonese a world language (while letting the other languages live too). Sadly, many of my clients unconsciously put up hindrances for themselves by for example repeating the tried and tested mantra “I’m crap at languages”.
The brain is basically a lump of rubber that does what it’s told. It’s set in neutral if you like, and then you programme it to go in certain directions. So if you keep saying, or even thinking, “I’m crap at languages”, guess what – that becomes your reality. As Henry Ford said: “Whether you think you can, or think you can’t, you’re right.”
Also, language is one of the few things no one is crap at. It’s hardwired into our DNA to pick up language from those around us, using the right method to learn a language instinctively. That’s why I advice my clients to become like a child again if they want to become fluent fast.
A child?!? But I’m 35! they think. I’m a grown man/woman with children and a mortgage! It’s embarrassing!!!
More about this tomorrow. Until then, ask three people how to say whatever word it is you don’t know, in Cantonese. Train your communication muscle with all the strangers you meet. Then make a joke 講笑(gong siu – speak laugh) and wait for the peals of laughter!
Here’s a joke that I’d like to share with all Cantonese speakers/learners – well, not all. It only works if you’re caucasian. In Norway we have a saying: Beloved child has many names. So it is with the Cantonese language. 廣東話，廣州話，粵語，中文， (Gong dung wah, Gong Jau wah, Yu yu, and Zhong man) just to name a few. In the mainland people often call it 白話，(bak wah, ‘white language’).
Last time I was in Shenzhen, it happened again: 嘩，你點解識講白話呀？Wah, lei dim gai sek gong bak wah ah? (Wow, how come you can speak white language?)
I naturally, as always, answered: 因為我有白皮膚吖嘛！Yanwai o yau bak peifu a ma! (Because I have white skin, innit.) Yes, that gets a big laugh every time. Every time. So now I’m giving my beloved joke to you.
