Behold one of my students, 五天 (- M Tin, Five Heavens)! He is doing everything right; practising every day, doing language exchange with locals and learning characters. Here he is in the middle of showing me some electronic stuff, I think it’s called a APE. No! APP.
Yes my phone is a Nokia from 2006 and perhaps I’m missing out on something by not having apps and stuff. But you know what? I can already write Chinese characters and look them up manually in the dictionary. I think iPhones and online everything is killing people’s ability to write, especially Chinese characters.
But anyway! Here’s another reason to learn Cantonese, of which my student 亞力 (ah-Lek, Power, Force) reminded me.
He is a manager in a company that makes useful stuff, and they hire a lot of local office staff. He said that after he started experimenting with Cantonese in the office, the pathologically shy underlings who used to run away when his towering frame hove into view, now actually dare to approach him with their halting English.
Quite right. It creates a good, less scary atmosphere at work when those who are supposed to be one’s superiors try to learn something new, something that’s considered “too difficult for them”, something that those who are supposed to be their inferiors know better than them. Everybody loves to help, and giving shy and insecure people a chance to do something for you makes them feel good about themselves.
Helping your staff feel better during working hours – yet another reason to learn Cantonese! Cantonese wins again.
伙記 (fo gei – staff)
寫字樓 (seh ji lau – office)
Have just come back from yet another extremely fulfilling and surreal trip to the hinterland – this time Shaoguan in the north-west of Guangdong province to which only the coincidence of October 1st, China’s national →
I have to say this sign gave me a start when I first read it. What, I could no longer add money to my Octopus card at Mui Wo ferry pier? That would be quite →
Wei wei, Friday night it’s full forge ahead again with Happy Jellyfish People’s Democratic Language Bureau’s Cantonese FUNdaMENTAList Crash Course!!!! You’ll learn everything you need to know about drinking in bars, paying for drinks and →
Yep, here it is. The entire protest against Mandarin taking over and squeezing out the regional languages. Well, actually, there were more people. Two more. One was me and the other one an organiser. So, →
My friend told me she had seen a large banner in Guangzhou saying “Be civilised, speak the civilised language.” (What? You don’t know what the civilised language is? It’s not Cantonese, that’s for sure.) I’m →
As imperial-Mando encroaches on our linguistic liberties, it goes without saying that more and more people who don’t like to be dictated to, want to learn Cantonese. But many are concerned about time, commitment, pain, →
Some people say – well, so what if Mandarin became the official language (or as the South China Morning Post in its endless contortions to please everybody twists it into, the “official dialect”) of Hong →
Tibetan Prayer Flags Chinese Prayer Flags
Here is Peter (ah-Dak) who’s been taking Canto lessons with me for some months now. When we went on our first trip to Guangdong province together at the end of last year, he immediately went →
If I told you I’d been to a demonstration in the mainland with thousands of people but all the police did was put up some barriers and stand around holding hands, would you believe me? →
Here is an interview I did for Radio Lantau a couple of weeks ago, with Edward Bunker from Mui Wo.
Every single person I told this to said the same: “Oh, he’s lovely!” Not a bad reputation.
Yes he has a little disability-thing but I didn’t want to make it about that. I wanted to talk about how he decided to leave a job he disliked and do something it seems he was born to do: Healing.
I was just a little concerned when he said that during the healing, it’s as if he can ‘see’ the client’s insides. I drew my shawl – nay, cape – closer around me. Was he looking at my pancreas right this minute?
梅窩 – Mui Wo (Plum Valley)
佢0係梅窩住 – Keui hai Mui Wo jyu (He lives in Mui Wo)
客人 – Hak yan (Guest, client, customer)
Chat chat chat – now you can learn Cantonese without going through the nasty and potentially violent experience of being in the same room as me! Namely through the wonderful medium of SKYPE. Hook up with Hong Kong any time, anywhere and I’ll Canto you down!
I’ll send you the course material by email and then – take-off! The other girl I got a new student, a girl in Britain who works in her boyfriend’s Chinese restaurant. After one hour of skyping with me she suddenly understood all the ins and outs of serving customers in Cantonese.
Start now, become fluent by Christmas!
