Today’s* Weather Condition: 太陽

(＊Not “the weather today” as it’s again: FOGGY AS HELL! 有好大霧呀！Yao hou dai mou ah!) In fact this morning it looked like this:

No, I was thinking of the weather, some weather, a weather （天氣）(Tin hei) last week, namely this:

有太陽 (yao tai yeung) Have sun. 楊 （yeung) is the yeung in 陰陽 (yan yeung) – yin and yang. 太 (tai) means supreme. So “the sun” means something like: Supreme masculine force! Cool? Or what?
There is another word for sun, namely 日（yat). That has come to mean “day”, as in 今日太陽好犀利呀 (gam yat tai yeung hou sai lei ah) Today the sun is formidable (strong).

I’m putting this here as a not so subtle message: Enough with the damned fog!

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, and one that should be enforced rigorously.

If you like English but are, for some reason, worried about travelling in China, I think you should take a trip as soon as possible anyway, just to enjoy the ‘signage.’ Every four or five meters you’ll find a gem, such as the hotel we found this morning called “Here is a Hotel.” And the sign we saw later on warning people against forest fires: “Do not fire within the area to prevene smoking.”

Mainland. Love it!

Last Product Placement – Today

So I’ve made this two-hour Cantonese learning DVD as I’ve mentioned once or twice. Here is a short excerpt giving you a little glimpse into Going Native. It’s only HK$100, including shipping inside Hong Kong, →

More Proddie Placie. I’ve Earned It.

Finally it’s here (maybe you didn’t even know that it was going to be here???) – the second installment of Cantonese – The Movie. This DVD, all two hours of it, is for people who →

A Little Proddie Placie

Wei wei, it’s finally happening: I’m launching my new book Don’t Joke On The Stairs on Blacksmith Books this week. I actually wrote most of it four years ago and had signed a contract with →

Joke-share

Here’s a joke that I’d like to share with all Cantonese speakers/learners – well, not all. It only works if you’re caucasian. In Norway we have a saying: Beloved child has many names. So it →

By Popular Demand (Journey Into the Hinterland)

.. an old podcast: A Sojourn in Shenzhen. Yes, one whole person has expressed interest in hearing it, so I must oblige. Also I happen to be going to Shenzhen again tomorrow as part of →

Non-white IS The New Black

Oh, whoops, how did a burqa sneak in there? Must have been the word ‘black’. Anyway, so most of my students have the same complaint: No matter how good their Cantonese is, Hong Kong people →

дима: Ты лучше всех!

I’ve just come back from another Russian lesson with the excellent Dimitri. People: You think Cantonese is difficult – try Russian. Every word, I mean noun, adjective, verb and adverb, has hundreds of different forms. →

Next Year’s July 1st

So, last Friday, July 1st, I went to Victoria Park to check out the action and also make a podcast: Happy Jellyfish’s Outcast at 1st of July Extravaganza 2011 Oh, it was great. The carnival-like →

PODCAST!!!! Warning: Contains Interview With Longhair!

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, →

Farewell Naked Cantonese, Well Hello There … Name?

SO! That was the end of Naked Cantonese. Four years of laughter and tears, trying not to say “crap” on live radio, trials and tribulations, toilets and twits. Although I’ve only ever listened to one →

Even More About That 嗰!

The New China Bookshop in Guangzhou, or actually, the New China Bookshop in general, is a real treasure trove. Look what I found there last weekend, a map of Mexico with all the towns and villages in Chinese characters! Simplified, but still Chinese.

There were many other maps there too, but the one of Mexico particularly caught my attention. Because I really want to go there. Is it because of Breaking Bad? Or all the western movies I watched as a child, with one hombre chasing another hombre across the endless plains of I knew not what? Or is it because of this photo I took on the edge of the Taklamakan Desert in Xinjiang province? I just feel it’s taken in … Mexico. 墨西哥 (Mak Sai Go – Ink West Older brother)

In the last couple of articles about that 嗰 (go) We discussed that one 嗰個 (go go) and those 嗰啲 (go di). But there’s more to the 嗰 – heaps more!

All my students learn 呢度 (li dou – This Location or Here) with ease. But when it comes to 嗰度 (go dou – That Location or There), up come the frontal cortex (or something) barriers. I don’t know why. 呢(li) is everything that’s close and here, this, and 嗰 (go) is everything that’s further away or something we’re talking about, that.

我想去墨西哥城！(o seung heui Mak Sai Go Seng! – I want to go to Mexico City!)
嗰度有好多博物館 (GO dou you hou do bok mat guhn – THAT location have well many erudite-matters-hall [there are many museums there]).