Struggling On in Face of Adversity

Yesterday, Gweipo
agonised over her own and her son’s struggle with pesky Mandarin. She invited her readers to comment on who or what’s to blame for us foreigners not being able to learn Cantonese and/or Mandarin.

This coincided with a new student of mine, so proud after Monday’s session where she learnt to order stuff and ask about prices, coming to me yesterday, ears and tail hanging. “Nobody will speak to me in Cantonese!”

If I had a millionth of a cent for every time I’ve heard that?

I have of course also been through it myself. The secret is never backing down in the face of locals’ English, but unfortunately most of my students have been raised to be nice, never to talk back and certainly not waste people’s time by asking them to speak slowly and clearly.

Thus the locals always win and congratulate themselves on their excellent English, scoffing at all those whiteys who can never learn Cantonese because it’s “too difficult for them” (but not too difficult for Filipino or Indonesian helpers, as well as every non-Chinese speaking third generation overseas Chinese touching down at Chek Lap Kok.)

Yes, learning Canto is indeed a game for the hard, cruel and evil. And stubborn.

All you Canto learners out there: We’re not in this game to be nice. The people we come in contact with every day and who are our best and shortest route to linguistic proficiency, waiters, taxi drivers, shop assistants, guys who come to fix things, are in the service industry. You are their client, paying them to perform a service for you.

Therefore it’s not up to them to decide what language you two will communicate in. You’re not there to be nice to them. If it takes longer for you to say what you want to say in your becoming better-and-better-because-you-practice-every-day Cantonese, they’ll just have to wait. You have the money – if they insist on using English despite your efforts, you can just take your business elsewhere.

I have jumped out of many taxis in mid-drive when the driver wouldn’t stop squawking in his execrable English, insisting on carrying on with his belief-system hammered into him from birth: All Caucasians can only speak English. And if they speak Cantonese, that’s also English. Somehow.

All you need to learn Cantonese quickly and effortlessly is simply this: To address every Chinese person you come in contact with, in his own language. Always. Without exception. You’re not there to prop up their illusions about their English being great. You’re there to learn the local language in the city where you live.