Last HAVE! For now

I just thought I’d get in some product placement before lunchtime!
To which you’d probably respond: 你有冇攪錯呀！(Lei yau mou gaau cho ah – you must be joking!)

That’s right, there is no ‘have’ or ‘not have’ in the English translation. In the last two articles I have showed that English and Cantonese have nothing in common, so I advise you to put the two languages in two different folders in your brain, or brain buckets as I call them, and put a big lid on the buckets so the English doesn’t get into the Cantonese.

Or you can store the words and sentences in different brain barrels.
The point is, Cantonese is so far from English, I can’t think of any two things that are further apart. Oh, maybe Pluto and… a planet that’s several light years from Pluto.

But when it comes to 有冇, there is one way in which Cantonese is if not identical so at least similar to English. It’s when you want to ask questions about something that happened in the past. Not past tense, you understand! There are no tenses as such in Chinese. No, when I say ‘the past’ I mean, before this moment. For example, the scourge of some of my students, yet the joy of others: 你有冇去過南非呀？(lei yau mou heui go Lam Fei ah? – You have/haven’t go [in the] past [to] South Africa? Have you ever been to South Africa?)

You see? Just like English. But the rest of the time – no. And the real trouble starts when people (my students) discover that 有 (yau -have) means there is/are in English. Example: 南非有冇袋鼠呀？ (Lam Fei yau mou doi syu ah? – South Africa have/haven’t pocket mouse ah? Are there kangaroos in South Africa?) as I memorably asked one of my students the other day, knowing full well the answer would be no! I mean 冇！(mou – haven’t! There aren’t!)

If you want to know more about the wonderful worlds of geography and biology in Cantonese, sign up for a quick summer course.