Yes, although this isn’t strictly about language and certainly not Cantonese as I’m Mando-jabbering all day long, I want to put these postings from my blog www.chinadroll.com here as well. Travel broadens the mind, narrows →
Yes, soon you’ll be able to download more than three hours of Canto magic from this very site!I met my computer expert friend yesterday behind the third toilet from the left, and handed over the →
Oh, whoops, how did a burqa sneak in there? Must have been the word ‘black’. Anyway, so most of my students have the same complaint: No matter how good their Cantonese is, Hong Kong people →
I’ve just come back from another Russian lesson with the excellent Dimitri. People: You think Cantonese is difficult – try Russian. Every word, I mean noun, adjective, verb and adverb, has hundreds of different forms. →
So, last Friday, July 1st, I went to Victoria Park to check out the action and also make a podcast: Happy Jellyfish’s Outcast at 1st of July Extravaganza 2011 Oh, it was great. The carnival-like →
Friday I went to Victoria Park to see what the people are against this year. Many of them were very against Stephen Lam (林瑞麟）Lam Seui Leun, who they called a (something) dog. Not running dog, →
SO! That was the end of Naked Cantonese. Four years of laughter and tears, trying not to say “crap” on live radio, trials and tribulations, toilets and twits. Although I’ve only ever listened to one →
It’s happening! I’m upgrading this website so you can download films and podcasts. There will be two long videos to begin with, and the above is the ‘for total beginners’ one. One hour and 14 →
There is something about the internet that brings out the worst in people, like road rage. But also, of course, the best. People become so kind on behalf of others, on the internet. Last week, →
Wei wei, everybody! Summer has descended with quite blue skies and the accompanying 34 degrees, and my students are leaving town in droves. This clears up space and time for you. But you don’t have →
Would you like to travel around China but are worried about your Mandarin being not up to scratch (or non-existent)?
Now you can get all the Mandarin words and expressions needed for getting around the Middle Kingdom in this handy video which covers train and bus travel, hotel stay, eating and drinking and other situations you might find yourself in when you, like us, are going to for example Hong Kong to Kazakhstan, by train…
Everyone who has working tastebuds will surely agree that Sichuan food is the best of all food, not only in China but in the world. Sadly, many restaurants call themselves Sichuan without being the real thing. So why not avoid disappointment by learning to cook it for yourself? It's easy!
You have watched Cantonese – The Movie and feel more confident about your Canto. Now it's time to crank up the action! Going Native takes you from beginner to intermediate level – again without really trying!
Warning: Contains full frontal nudity.
Cecilie eats her way across Americas Chinese restaurants speaking only Cantonese. If the staff don’t speak Cantonese then she leaves….unless she is really hungry.
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.. an old podcast: A Sojourn in Shenzhen.
Yes, one whole person has expressed interest in hearing it, so I must oblige. Also I happen to be going to Shenzhen again tomorrow as part of a longer trip, and during tomorrow’s hedonistic extravaganza I’m going to undertake the rigours of a foot massage, just to be able to put it on a poddie castie so you can learn everything about various degrees of pain – in Cantonese.
But soon all this digging around for old podcasts will be a thing of the past, because soon a brand new Happy Jellyfish People’s Democratic Language Bureau is going to rise from the ashes of …the old one, I suppose, like a flaming fundamentalist Canto-phoenix.
On it you’ll be able to click on podcasts, films and all the other stuff in one place. A click in time saves nine, as you know. So bye-byeeeeeee for now. It’s into the Mando I go!
Have you read ‘Outliers’ by Malcolm Gladwell? Splendid book, absolutely fascinating. Eye-opening, funny, full of a-ha moments, it spurs you on so you have to get up at 5am to finish it, having started at 8 the night before.
And, would you believe, so much of it is about learning Cantonese – or rather, can be used for learning Cantonese. I’ll mention one example today. Years ago, Korean Air had a terrible crash-record. It was ‘crash, crash’ all week long, and not much ‘land, land.’ (Here Gladwell discusses why planes crash; also riveting reading.) It turns out that because Korea is such an ultra-hierarchic society where, if you’re born even one minute before a person (and you’re a man, naturally) you pretty much own that person.
Therefore, if any of the cockpit staff ranking lower than the captain, for example the co-pilot, discovered trouble such as the plane running out of fuel, tornado ahead or airport disappeared, they couldn’t just scream to the captain: Brake! Brake! (or whatever needed at the time.) No, because he was a superior and direct language was impossible, it was ‘oh dear, there seem to be a couple of droplets in the vicinity’ or ‘If we had a bit more fuel it would probably be okay.’
If the captain was tired he wouldn’t listen to the subtle hints, and neither would ground control if they didn’t happen to be Korean too. Numerous crashes followed.
Then Korean Air decided that the language in the cockpit would be English and voila, cultural problem solved. When they no longer had to live within the prison of Korean hierarchy linguistically, the staff felt free to just say it straight out if the plane was about to slam into a mountain. Today Korean Air is known for its excellence, blah blah.
It made me think about what I often say to my students. If you’re shy and afraid of people, you can take on a new persona in Cantonese! Are you British and monolingual? Enjoy the exhilaration on hiding behind a language! Become the street thug you always wanted to be! Chat up girls with impunity! Just tell taxi drivers to slow down instead of sitting pale green in the backseat, wishing you had the guts to speak up.
Hiding behind the shield of Cantonese, you don’t have to be you anymore, you can become Canto-Man. (see photo above.) Yes! I used to be a shrinking violet – now I have my own Canto show on YouTube. Liberate yourself through the power of Cantonese!
How?
Well, you could always start by taking lessons from me. Did you know that in Happy Jellyfish People’s Democratic Language Bureau there is up to 63% less violence than in regular courses?
Hop into the Year of the Rabbit with Cantonese!
So! Yesterday was the last day in the studio followed by three pre-recorded programmes in the series Naked Cantonese on RTHK. And the last episode ever was, very appropriately, recorded in the same public toilet →
Behold my student Ah-Mei. Not only is she beautiful, she’s also learning Cantonese at a galloping speed. Why? Well, one reason is that all her notes and papers are in order. Look how she’s had →
My first experimentation with iMovie’s trailer software. Wow – not half fast and furious cutting! But the point is: Soon you’ll be able to download a new and comprehensive Cantonese information video from this very →
Recently I’ve … not exactly been inundated with invitations to be friends with people on Facebook, but had a few requests. The people who want to, oh how I hate this noun as a verb, →
It is with great sadness I must inform our irate but faithful listeners that Poddie Castie number 200 is soon coming up, and that it will herald →
This week was my third week of Russian lessons, and although the teacher insists stubbornly on talking about Anna who is a ballerina and Anna and Maria being ballerini, I’ve decided to practise what I →
I learnt a new verb today. A taxi driver asked me “有冇 搶香蕉呀？" Yau mou cheung heung chiu ah? (something like that) – Have you CHEUNG bananas? I thought it meant ‘hoard’ but arriving at →
You know, you don’t have to commit to a whole awful hour a week. No, you can take Happy Jellyfish People’s Democratic Language Bureau’s three hour crash course! Perhaps even a crash course sounds too →
套， mainly classifier for films, as in － 套戲，yat tou hei – a ‘wrapper'(?) of film. Possibly from when films came in big metal cases. By the way, the origin of 戲 hei is ‘Chinese →
That’s right; double whammy today! The classifiers for vehicles and trees!!! 樖 (po) is classifier for trees and plants (but a flower is 一枝花 （yat ji fa) a twig of flower. 呢樖樹好X靚呀。（Li po syu hou →
