Canto Persona

Have you read ‘Outliers’ by Malcolm Gladwell? Splendid book, absolutely fascinating. Eye-opening, funny, full of a-ha moments, it spurs you on so you have to get up at 5am to finish it, having started at 8 the night before.

And, would you believe, so much of it is about learning Cantonese – or rather, can be used for learning Cantonese. I’ll mention one example today. Years ago, Korean Air had a terrible crash-record. It was ‘crash, crash’ all week long, and not much ‘land, land.’ (Here Gladwell discusses why planes crash; also riveting reading.) It turns out that because Korea is such an ultra-hierarchic society where, if you’re born even one minute before a person (and you’re a man, naturally) you pretty much own that person.

Therefore, if any of the cockpit staff ranking lower than the captain, for example the co-pilot, discovered trouble such as the plane running out of fuel, tornado ahead or airport disappeared, they couldn’t just scream to the captain: Brake! Brake! (or whatever needed at the time.) No, because he was a superior and direct language was impossible, it was ‘oh dear, there seem to be a couple of droplets in the vicinity’ or ‘If we had a bit more fuel it would probably be okay.’

If the captain was tired he wouldn’t listen to the subtle hints, and neither would ground control if they didn’t happen to be Korean too. Numerous crashes followed.

Then Korean Air decided that the language in the cockpit would be English and voila, cultural problem solved. When they no longer had to live within the prison of Korean hierarchy linguistically, the staff felt free to just say it straight out if the plane was about to slam into a mountain. Today Korean Air is known for its excellence, blah blah.

It made me think about what I often say to my students. If you’re shy and afraid of people, you can take on a new persona in Cantonese! Are you British and monolingual? Enjoy the exhilaration on hiding behind a language! Become the street thug you always wanted to be! Chat up girls with impunity! Just tell taxi drivers to slow down instead of sitting pale green in the backseat, wishing you had the guts to speak up.

Hiding behind the shield of Cantonese, you don’t have to be you anymore, you can become Canto-Man. (see photo above.) Yes! I used to be a shrinking violet – now I have my own Canto show on YouTube. Liberate yourself through the power of Cantonese!

How?
Well, you could always start by taking lessons from me. Did you know that in Happy Jellyfish People’s Democratic Language Bureau there is up to 63% less violence than in regular courses?

Hop into the Year of the Rabbit with Cantonese!