Happy and Confused

April 13: I never thought Cantonese would be so welcome to my ears. Often, I doubt I will ever speak the language, but I've picked up a few words during my time with Joyce. Very few words.

When I do try speaking, it often results in much laughter from Joyce and her mother. For example, before I went fishing, I tried to learn, “I want to catch fish.”

They said, “Ngo sheung DIU yue.”

I repeated after them, “Ngo sheung DIU YOU.”

Because Cantonese often substitutes English words, and I used the wrong intonation on “DIU,” I say something very offensive. To my ears, the sentence sounds the same, but it means, “I want to fuck you.”

To explain my error, Joyce consults “A Dictionary of Cantonese Slang,” which she bought from Amazon.com.



However bad my Cantonese, I understand much less in Mandarin.

Today, we attend a 1937 Chinese film at the Hong Kong Film Archive - "New Times, Old Times" written and directed by Zhu Shilin (朱 石 麟).

During the beginning of the film (without subtitles), I understand "how are you," in Mandarin (nee hau ma? or 你 好 嗎), and that's it. Joyce taught me the phrase to compare it to Cantonese (lay ho ma? or 你 好 嗎).

After the movie, I’m back to struggling through misunderstanding Cantonese. I feel better, pretending that I recognize parts of sentences. But maybe I’m in a much worse situation. Still, I’ll take embarrassing confusion over total ignorance.