World Domination in Our Time
Why this photo? Found it and liked it again, innit.
Anyway, the other day one of my students suggested that I set up some kind of counting device; you know, something like the count-down to the sacred olympics or the one on the Religion of Peace website, counting how many deadly terror attacks this peaceful religion has carried out since 9/11 (I think it’s about 1,200), (whoops! Just went to the site. It’s 15 275) to count how many times a day I speak to a Hong Kong person in perfectly adequate Cantonese, only to be answered in execrable English.
That sounded like a good idea at the time. But then I realised I would probably wear out my fingertips within a week, so it kind of died a death.
So! Last Saturday we did the how to look up Chinese characters course again, with three new converts to our cause. I think world domination is well within reach.
After about 15 minutes of explanation and practice, my victim (student) ah-Lin said with a sigh: “If I’d known it would be this easy, I would have done it ages ago!”
That’s right. It is really easy. In fact the only people going on about how difficult it is are the Chinese, and how would they know?
Having said that; as if Canto wasn’t challenging enough, what with the people laughing at you, answering you in English or just “pretending” not to understand your Cantonese, reading the characters comes with its own problems: What it says in the dictionary isn’t what it actually means.
Take 想， seung, “want to.” In the dictionary it says “think about, miss.” NOT “want to.” But that’s the use of 想 in spoken Canto.
Last Saturday I wrote down a sentence in Cantonese for the novices to try to crack, and when they came to 而家 they got stuck. “But, and” and “home, family”? But of course, 而家 (yi ga) are just the two convenient characters used to write “now”!
So when you come across words that don’t make any sense put together, always say them ALOUD. Then everything will be made clear. That is to say: Another 1% of the puzzle.
Happy Jellyfish People’s Democratic Language Bureau: World Domination one word at a time.
I’m doing another course on Saturday! Beginners at 3, joined by people with a little background at 4. Roll up, roll up.