The debate about Canto rages on. Now mainland officials are weighing in, in an about-turn saying the government would “release a policy outline and new regulations to boost Cantonese cultural heritage.”
So it’s all over then. When the mainland government start boosting heritage, it means lots and lots of concrete, razing to the ground and building fake old, and lots of four-lane motorways leading to it.
Just stay away from Cantonese, okay? It’s a big boy and can look after itself. Just let it be. And whatever you officials are itching to do to further aggrandise yourselves and line your pockets with stolen cash, don’t do it.
But funnily enough, this whole debacle has been beneficial for me, because after some interviews in Chinese language papers, my YouTube channel has been swamped with views. The latest one, The Dudes, The Sad and The Envy, has had 5000 more views now than it did yesterday morning. So, excellent! All the viewers are young Chinese people who picked up the link in a popular internet forum, and they leave comments like: “A foreigner cares more about our language than local people do! Embarrassing!”
It was yesterday’s interviewer from Apple Daily who told me about next Sunday’s demonstration in Guangzhou
July 25th, 5pm, Jiang Nan Xi metro station exit A, wear something white. I think we should go! I think we should all go! Well, I’m definitely going.
Down with linguistic imperialism!
What do we want? CANTO! When do we want it? NOW!
CCP, CCP, how many languages did you kill this wee …k?
That’ll definitely be my first demonstration on mainland soil (although I have written self-criticism on two occasions) and I’m really looking forward to it. If you care about Canto, come along!
The shooting of new, from-scratch Cantonese course CantoNews continues. This time we went to a thrilling location, the luscious OYC Hotel in 肇慶 (Siu Heng) in Guangdong province, a mere four hours’ comfortable train journey →
Here is an excellent way to practise and learn more Cantonese: Going to the market with your very own Happy Jellyfish People’s Democratic Language Bureau. This is how it works: First we sit down with →
Am I the only one who thinks there are too many holidays in Hong Kong? I feel I’ve just come back from my Christmas trip – BOOM! Another big holiday immediately heaves into view. I →
If you’re unfortunate enough to live outside Hong Kong and can’t take Cantonese lessons from, er, moi, there’s no need to despair! Now you can have a mini-Cantonese fundamentalist right in your living room. Fun, →
So people are going in search of ice on which to seriously hurt themselves and icicles to photograph in astonishment. Yes it was 3C this morning. Not boiling, I’ll admit. But imagine going out this →
The Mandofication continues at breakneck speed. I’m sure the “great” idea of making Hong Kong simplified character-ised to “adapt” and accommodate the 700,000 mainlanders currently living here so they’ll feel more at home, has already →
I’ve finally got my new website up. According to my web guy, it will help sell my two Cantonese teaching videos Cantonese – The Movie and Going Native. I have just watched those two videos →
My life goal is full global supremacy for Cantonese and I stand by it. However, that doesn’t mean that other languages can’t frolic happily alongside this most fun and happening of all tongues. Also, it →
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 new year celebrations were hard for everyone this year, even man-sized teddies. This sad corpse was lying outside my hotel in Kunming, I’m guessing thrown angrily away by some girl who had expected diamonds →
I don’t have time to write anything today! I’ve been overcome by a strange Protestant work ethic and have spent the day tidying up 執嘢 (jap yeh – collect/tidy things) and throwing things away.
The list of phrasal verbs ending in 嘢 (yeh – thing/something/anything) is endless. At least five, off the top of my head. (Which of course can’t be directly translated into Cantonese although there is an execution method from not so ancient China called Opening The Red Flower [開紅花 – hoi hong fa] which meant to bury someone up to their shoulders and lob the top of their heads off. Although that was probably only in Mandarin-speaking places. Jolly Cantoists would never do something like that.)
Where was I? Oh yeah, the yeh. 嘢。
飲嘢 (yam yeh – drink stuff)
食嘢 (sek yeh – eat stuff)
買嘢 (mai yah – buy stuff; shopping)
講嘢 (gong yeh – say stuff, as in 你講嘢呀！ Lei gong yeh ah! You’re talking; you’re full of shit.)
攪嘢 (gau yeh – do stuff, do IT [the sex thing])
Which brings me to a film I haven’t seen in ages. I think it deserves seeing again. We haven’t had a good flu in ages! Touch wood! (The photos show my gaff in a rare state of tidiness. Yes, taken years ago.)
