Today I wanted to write a well-researched rant about Cantonese NOT being a dialect, a kind of sub-division, an inferior sub-division, of Mandarin. But I have to cook for 13 in a couple of hours, →
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 →
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!
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.
Yam Chaaaaaa! I go to Shenzhen with two victims, one of whom is a real Glaswegian! I’ve always said that Cantonese is the Glaswegian of Asia. A good fighting language, etc. But far from fighting, →
Here is the first podcast I ever made without the soothing, nay, dulcet tones of Ah-Sa hovering in the back-and-foreground. Podcasts will be a regular occurrence from now on; I welcome ideas, locations and of →
My first podcast without ah-Sa!
Woo-hoo everybody everywhere! I have finally, after mourning fickle Englishwoman ‘Ah-Sa’s absence for almost three years, started making podcasts again!!! I thought it fitting to stage the first one in hallowed headquarters Honolulu in Stanley →
Woo-hoo everybody everywhere! I have finally, after mourning fickle Englishwoman ‘Ah-Sa’s absence for almost three years, started making podcasts again!!! I thought it fitting to stage the first one in hallowed headquarters Honolulu in Stanley →
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, →
It’s not a rare occasion for Happy Jellyfish People’s Democratic Language Bureau to go to Shenzhen and have clothes made, as well as buying fake Ray-Ban’s. But no trip to Lo Wu Shopping Center has →
Straight forward, right? You know woman 女人 (leui yan), outside 出邊 (cheut bin) and house 屋企 （uk kei).
But as usual, Cantonese is different from English. Why? Because it’s not English, innit! As I said in the last post, Cantonese follows relentlessly the story, the little film clip. Everything happens in a linear, chronological order.
It’s about the woman, so you start with her. The next thing is house, because you get to the house first, it’s the navigational point, and then you get outside the house. As far as I can see, there are only two prepositions in Cantonese that are actually PREpositions, i.e. come before the thing you navigate from, namely 0係 （hai) “at, in, by” and 好近 （hou kan) – “near.”
Therefore “the woman is outside her/the house, becomes: 女人係屋企出邊。（leui yan hai uk kei chut bin) “woman at house outside.”
And if she was to be doing something outside the house, for example drinking and smoking, it would be:
女人0係屋企出邊飲酒食煙。(leui yan hai uk kei cheut bin yam jau sek yin.) “woman at house outside drink alcohol eat smoke.” You still need the PREposition “hai” before the position, because that’s where she’s AT. And “is” in English doesn’t come into it at all because it’s not about what the woman IS, but where she’s AT.
Remember: The action (not verb; the whole action) is always last in the sentence because that’s what happens last in the film.
So, “I’m sleeping and farting under the table” will then be: 我0係檯下邊瞓覺放屁 . (O hai toi ha bin fen gau fong pei) “I at table underside sleep, fart.”
If you put “table” after “fart”, it would mean you were farting tables, and that doesn’t make sense, now does it? That’s the beauty of Cantonese word order. It always makes sense.
Hoi hoi, students new and old
Did you know that I have just published my second book, Don’t Joke on the Stairs, on Blacksmith Book publishing house.
It is about how much fun and laughter, surrealism and weirdness you can find in China and Hong Kong, but also to a large degree about how to learn Cantonese and why the locals put up such a fight against foreigners trying to learn it. The latest reviewer said “Move over Paul Theroux” so I must have done something right.
You can get it directly from me (only HK$ 130) or from my website www.http://localhost:8888/Fish (Buy Stuff).
Check out the trailer on my YouTube channel Cantocourse:
Last month I went to Hunan province and after a few minutes there was overcome with shark flu (or some other fierce animal) – awful. Just awful. Anyway, so today, instead of advising you on →
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 →
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 →
Here is an article I wrote about one of my favourite books: Gone With the Wind. What does it have to do with Cantonese? Hmmm… not much. Nothing really. Except we’re the Southerners being overrun →
Chinese characters (normal, not simplified) are beautiful, aren’t they? Even ordinary words like ‘toilet’ look somehow elevated to a higher sphere when they’re written with a brush, or printed for that matter. Not that the →
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 →
Everyone who travels in China for more than, say, five minutes, has something to say about her toilets. But I stand by my column (above) – they are nothing! Nothing, compared to only a few →
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 →
