The Only Cantonese Lesson You’ll Ever Need (Crash Course in Light Conversation)

This week my first specialised crash course kicked off, with two excellent and fast learners, working titles ah-Lei and ah-Ga.

In only two and a half hours, they learnt enough Cantonese to go into any shop, restaurant, market or bar and ask for anything, ask the price and understand the answer! That’s how easy Cantonese is to learn. They came into the house knowing only a couple of words, but left confidently talking about fruit and vegetables (and a little bit of wine and beer), discussing prices and dismissing most of my offerings as “too expensive”…

But even I must admit, Cantonese has a couple of other words in its vocabulary. When you step out of your house in the morning, for example, you normally don’t greet your neighbour by inquiring about the price of aubergines. So to enable you to get smoothly through your day in more or less flawless Cantonese, I have put together a Crash Course In Small Talk.

You’ll learn to comment on the weather and temperatures, ask people where they’re going and compliment them on new garments, on their children and dogs.

First crash course kicks off on Thursday March 10th, my gaff, 10:30am (open for discussion). Please send in suggestions of other things you want to learn, based on your everyday life!

去街市買嘢 -Heui gai si mai yeh (Go shopping in the market)
傾偈 – Keng gai (chat)
天氣 – Tin hei (weather)