This week my first specialised crash course kicked off, with two excellent and fast learners, working titles ah-Lei and ah-Ga.
In only two and a half hours, they learnt enough Cantonese to go into any shop, restaurant, market or bar and ask for anything, ask the price and understand the answer! That’s how easy Cantonese is to learn. They came into the house knowing only a couple of words, but left confidently talking about fruit and vegetables (and a little bit of wine and beer), discussing prices and dismissing most of my offerings as “too expensive”…
But even I must admit, Cantonese has a couple of other words in its vocabulary. When you step out of your house in the morning, for example, you normally don’t greet your neighbour by inquiring about the price of aubergines. So to enable you to get smoothly through your day in more or less flawless Cantonese, I have put together a Crash Course In Small Talk.
You’ll learn to comment on the weather and temperatures, ask people where they’re going and compliment them on new garments, on their children and dogs.
First crash course kicks off on Thursday March 10th, my gaff, 10:30am (open for discussion). Please send in suggestions of other things you want to learn, based on your everyday life!
去街市買嘢 -Heui gai si mai yeh (Go shopping in the market)
傾偈 – Keng gai (chat)
天氣 – Tin hei (weather)
That and the fact that I’m going to Kazakhstan in the summer.
I’ve only had one lesson so far, but it seems pretty straight forward – everything is different from English and with lots more consonants. And I have to say, to bang my own drum a little here, comparing my Cantonese course with other courses, the one I’m taking live and the CD Berlitz one I bought at Dymocks, I have to say my Cantonese course is holding up quite well.
Like, when you arrive in Kazakhstan for example – is the most important thing to be able to say “I’m a doctor, are you an actor?” Of course, if you accidentally had your arm cut off or something, you’d want to be able to ask bystanders if they were a doctor, but apart from that …
In the Berlitz course, after hello and thank you, comes “I don’t speak Russian.” So … if you can say that in fluent Russian, wouldn’t that just confuse people? Hello, I’m not Russian, I’m a tourist (you don’t say!) … then straight to transport and of course professions.
I’m sure Berlitz methods are tried and tested and with millions of fans, but personally I’ve never arrived in a new country and felt an urgent need to ask people if they are an actress, or tell them that I’m a tourist. They kind of get that.
Now my Cantonese course, on the other hand, starts with being able to order beer. And other drinks! And then onto food. I like my course. It also contains 63% less violence than other courses.
I think you should take it – today!!!
Hello everybody, welcome to my roof!
I normally arrange Sichuan dinners and lunches there, but this time it doubled as a recording studio for the best Cantonese news currently available on cassette! (And telex.)
Talking of cassette: Meet Cassette!
Here is the sacred programme, CantoNews 5 live from my roof.
Cassette opens up old wounds by mentioning ah-Sa, my old co-host from RTHK and we talk about taking photos (like the one above – pure art). The words below are from the actual programme – please give it a listen!
自己 – Ji gei (self, own)
上個禮拜六 – Seung go lai bai luk (Last Saturday)
座飛機 – Cho feigei (Take a plane)
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This morning I had some people from my village coming over for a dose of Cantonese, and since it was raining dog shit (落狗屎 – lok gau si [raining heavily]) we discussed the weather, well, rain, at length. I think ‘raining dog shit’ is so much more descriptive than ‘raining cats and dogs’, don’t you? In fact the only people I’ve heard actually say ‘it’s raining cats and dogs’ the last 20 years or so, have been Hong Kong and mainland Chinese trying to learn English.
Anyway, the talk eventually turned to DON’T (唔好 – m hou) as in 唔好意思 (m hou yisi – ‘sorry’) and I remembered the film above that I shot in the USA two years ago. Towards the end it’s full of, as in absolutely packed with, 唔好(m hou – not good/don’t)！ And there’s some Grand Canyon and stuff.
Don’t go! 唔好走呀！(m hou jau ah!)
Don’t leave me! 唔好離開我！（m hou lei hoi o!)
