I’ve decided to learn Cantonese properly, because old Chinese people in San Francisco just insist on talking to me in it anyway. Sometimes when I’m volunteering at food banks and such I’m also the only person they feel they can ask questions to, so I guess it’s important if I’m going to live here. (I understand 99% of it but don’t speak enough, as I speak Chiu Chow instead)
Also just totally messed up my languages: the word for ‘cheap’ in Thai is the word for ‘expensive’ in Cantonese.
@skinnylatte I hope your Cantonese learning goes well. I'm at the other end of the scale...a beginner attempting to tackle Cantonese with no prior experience of tonal languages at all. It's a massive challenge, trying to remember the characters, the tones and the meaning of every word, but I am making slow progress. So I can appreciate what you're doing, even if just from the eyes of a beginner...
So I kept saying to someone that something was cheap when I meant expensive. On the bright side, the tones and words are super easy for me since I already speak several tonal languages. It’s the vocabulary I don’t have.
Borrowed a Pimsleur course and will work on it. It helps I grew up hearing it (my parents spoke Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, Teochew, Malay, and English)
@skinnylatte Back I recall a time in the 90s in college, I would go out to lunch with my lab partners, a white man and a Chinese-American woman. At a Chinese restaurant, the waitstaff would try to speak Chinese to the woman, who spoke none. The white man spoke fluent Mandarin, however, which caused them such consternation. They had a lot trouble addressing him in Mandarin, and it frustrated him because he was proud of his fluency, as he should be! He wanted to speak Mandarin, not English.
@vincent Also possibly the restaurant didn’t speak mandarin, but rather Cantonese. Though there is definitely an annoying thing where if you look Chinese you must speak whatever language that person speaks.
@skinnylatte It was a long time ago. My lab partner eventually won them over and got them to talk with him, even being nice to us. The food wasn't good, but it was cheap and we were in college and we were regulars.
Add comment