Have! More!

In yesterday’s article I talked about how expressions containing the word ‘have’ in English hardly ever contain 有 (yau – have) in Cantonese, such as have some Mons (飲雪花 yam Suet Fa – Drink Snow Flower), or

have a certain electrifying air about him 好特別 (hou dak bit – well special), or

have a bite to eat 食嘢 (sek yeh – eat stuff).

For fun I had a look in my dictionary. Its author has taken this ‘everything in English is about have‘ to heart to such an extent that she has listed what seems like most verbs under have.
(The first entry in that dictionary is dizzy, listed as under A as ‘A little dizzy’.)
Here is a collection:

Have a cold 傷風 (seung fong – suffer wind[the wind that blows through your hair, hello])
Have a dream 發夢 (fat mong)
Have a lawsuit 打官司 (da guhn si – hit hall take-care-of)
Have a shock 受激刺 (sau gek ji – receive irritate thorn)
Have a sad look 愁容滿面 (chau yong muhn min – sad expression full face)
Have the tooth filled 補牙 (bou ah – replenish tooth)

As well as of course ‘Have a stool’ (bowel movement), ‘have indigestion’, ‘have a fire’ and many other haves. The point is that none of them includes 有 (yau – have)!
Tomorrow I’ll try to find some that do.

Meanwhile, why don’t you take an intensive Cantonese course this August? One hour three times a week; you’ll be fluent before Christmas.

New Recruit Looking for Fellow Revolutionaries!

Cantonese is a war and we’re going to win it. We’ll put the fun AND the mental back into “fundamentalists”!

Anyway I have a new and eager recruit here by the name of Ah- … well, I haven’t given her a Chinese name yet. But she sounded young and beautiful on the phone. Young, beautiful and ready to take up arms for the cause!

The cause, the cause, the glorious cause: To make Cantonese a world language. This year.

So if there’s anyone out there who would like to take Cantonese lessons in the afternoon, say 2 to 3 pm, please sign up! We can start next week if you like. If you start next week and follow my instructions, you’ll be able to talk to anyone about almost anything by Christmas!

SUNDAY: Liberty Airport, Newark

People! I can’t recommend Newark Airport enough! A mere 20 minute drive from downtown Manhattan, (or 12 hours’ drive from Shaker Village Kentucky as the case may be) is this place where, unlike JFK and San Francisco airports, both of which I’ve tried in the last two years, you can get through check-in AND security in 10 to 12 minutes.

It would have taken only 10 minutes for me if it hadn’t been for the automatic scanning check-in had a problem with my non-existant Hong Kong “visa”.
Ha ha HAAAA! I assured the official bustling up: I am, my good man, a permanent resident of the fine communist colony of Hong Kong and have the card to prove it! I don’t need any plebs-y visa.
And with that, I zoomed through security, stopping briefly to demonstrate that my necklace (Shenzhen special) wasn’t an intricate bomb although it showed up on the scanner like a huge menacing yellow death-threat around my neck.

But the toilets were grim and under-doored. Yes, of course Liberty Airport isn’t as good or half as good as Hong Kong’s 赤鱲角 (Chek Lap “Kok” [as usual it should be GOK!!!!!]) airport. BUT I think its name is better. I think ‘liberty’ has a better ring to it than ‘red fish with bristly dorsal fins point (or Red Perch Point). But that’s just me. Right?

自由 (Ji yau – freedom, liberty)
機場 (Gei cheung – machine park/airport)
簽證 (Chim cheng – signature proof/visa)

Please buy my new book about Sichuan cooking from this site!

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