- Details
Living The Vida Canto
Every Wednesday I meet these two delightful women, Ah Bek and Ah Wai, plus three others, in a Jau Lau （酒樓，Chinese restaurant) for tea, dim sam and Canto. All the waiters and waitresses love us! They come up and, without warning, spring questions on my group such as “What kind of tea would you like?” “What’s your name?” “Are you drinking jasmine tea or Water Fairy today?”
Two months ago, the women in this group didn’t know a word of Cantonese, except their address, “Morning!” and “Here, please.” Now they’re ordering food with authority, having conversations with waitresses, taxi drivers and dustbin collectors, as well as people like … oh, high court judges.
That’s right, after two months you’ll be able to discuss criminal law in Cantonese, if you take my course.
The dear girls still don’t really trust themselves: “If I say this to a Chinese person, will he understand it?” but with a bit of encouragement, regular practice and a tiny bit of violence, I will soon make them believe in their own abilities. Oh yeah. It’s just a question of confidence. Pretend you understand everything and one day it will become true. After all, that’s how children learn languages.
Failing that, you could always buy my Cantonese “DWD” for beginners. Everything you need is there.
- Details
你有無睇醫生？ Have you seen a doctor?
There’s been a lot of flu and crap floating around in Hong Kong recently – even I got it! But this wasn’t your common or garden swine flu 豬流感 (zhyu lao gam) – this was at least shark flu! 鯊魚流感 (sa yü lao gam)
It was highly unpleasant, so unfair and deeply irritating. But it made me remember this film I made a few years ago. From it you can pick up a highly useful piece of conversation: Have you seen a doctor?
Cough once, have a broken nail or split ends – off to the emergency ward with you!
- Details
Today’s Classifier: 套
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 →
Today’s Classifier: 隻
Yes I know I’ve done 隻 （jek) before, but then I saw this 水牛，seoi ao, yesterday morning, and was lost in classifier-ation once again. It seems that classifiers are simplifying and that people often use →
Caring and Sharing
I’m currently in Hunan province and thought I would share this, one of many wonderful English signs we’ve seen during the last few days, with you. Throwing garbage into the dustbin is indeed lofty behaviour, →
Canto Persona
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 →
Canto Frustrato Grandissimo
To give or not to give up? Last week one of my students was almost … not close to tears exactly but … what’s the word? Oh yeah, ready to use a blunt weapon. She →
How (not) To Learn Cantonese 2
How to learn Cantonese: By doing the above. Carefully sliding down, into the water, then swimming. In my first post about this topic a couple of weeks ago I used the swimming analogy – how →
Are All Whitey Total Morons? (Or is it just me?)
I think one of my biggest weaknesses is my temper, or rather that I sometimes can’t control it. I specifically blow my top at government officials and other puffed-up people in uniform, telling me what →
New Podcast: TRAINCAST
Ah-Laan and I were on a train the other day, playing cards with dudes. Suddenly we were talking some seriously bad language … Outcast 2. Traincast
Cantonese Fundamentalism: The Book
People: Bugger me down if I haven’t written a new book! Mind you it’s five years since the last one so I can’t see why not …
At Last: My Own Podcasts. Called OUTCASTS.
It’s happened at last: After months of hard work and sacrifice, behold my own podcast. It puts the FUN back in Fundamentalist!
- Details
Don’t Let Them Build The Incinerator!
Contact us today
Email info@learncantonese.com.hk
to find out how you can start learning Cantonese.