A Way To Benefit From Not Joking On Stairs:

Yesterday I had a lesson at home with one of my Lantau contingent, a shy girl called ah-Kei. A big part of my language teaching is trying to get people to understand that no matter how much they study and how many theoretical exercises they do, nothing beats the real thing: Talking Cantonese with Chinese people.

Ah-Kei was reluctant to try this approach as she had tried once or twice but as usual, been answered in (rebuffed by) the inevitable English.

Then she read my book which spells out in black and of course white how to deal with this problem in four easy steps. She got into a taxi and when the driver answered her perfectly spoken Cantonese with his take on English, she first said that she couldn’t speak English, and then answered all his subsequent attempts with “Ha? Ha? Ha?” Lo and behold, he broke down and answered her in his own language, which she had been speaking the whole time!

A big break-through for ah-Kei and a huge step forward for Cantonese Fundamentalism!

When I tell my students how to do stuff, they normally don’t listen. But when they read it in a book – well, it must be true. You can also learn to converse easily and effortlessly in the local language of Hong Kong. Learn Cantonese the natural way – from a Norwegian.