Learning Chinese, another post
Scene: The office
Will and Glenn are fixing a spreadsheet. June is looking on.
June: "rock weight" yinggoi hai y'ah yi ah~ (translation: Rock weight should be 22)
Will: (Types 22 in the rock density box).
June: Wah! Lei teng dak ming?! (translation: you got it?!)
Will: Of course, you know I understand some, and anyway you said rock weight in English!
June: Yes, I know. But you should have learnt yi sap yi, not y'ah yi.
Will: But you said y'ah yi. You always say y'ah yi. Everyone does.
June: Yes, but it's slang. You should learn the proper Chinese.
Sigh. I think this is one of the reasons it is so often said that Cantonese is so tough to learn, even when you're in Hong Kong. It really isn't tough - the grammar is a piece of piss, the sounds aren't too hard and the only real problem is the tones. But when you learn one thing from a textbook which has a set idea of what Cantonese/Chinese 'should' be with a blind indifference to what is really spoken, and when that view is also drummed into Chinese people at school, the textbooks become useless and the students become disillusioned.
This example is especially ridiculous, because can you imagine learning English without learning contractions? Imagine first that the textbook teaches that the only way to express the negative is to say is not (in case the class smartass pipes up that his cousin who lived overseas taught him to say isn't, the teacher points out that this is slang nobody learns). Then the kids go to the UK and find out that contractions are the order of the day and everyone uses them. This is not 'slang', it is usage.
Since I've started ranting, I will get something else that's been bugging me off my chest. If you subscribe to the PRC view, Cantonese is a dialect of the Chinese language. If you are a linguist, Cantonese is a dialect of the Yue Language. I am not going to debate whether the PRC or the linguists are right, it's a dangerous politically and emotionally charged discussion, but I want to talk about 'Written Cantonese', which supposedly doesn't exist.
There is a myth that Chinese dialects (PRC definition) all have a common written language. Consider the sentence "I am not a Chinese":
我不是中國人 Wo bu shi Zhongguoren
我不是中國人 Ngo bat see Junggwokyan
我唔係中國人 Ngo m hai Junggwokyan
The first two are written in Standard Chinese and the third is written in Cantonese. The first one is romanised using Hanyu Pinyin for Mandarin; the second and third are romanised in Cantonese.
If I were to say the second one with Cantonese pronunciation I would still be understood, but I would sound really strange to the listener. The most common response I get when I speak standard Chinese with a Cantonese pronunciation (usually because I can't remember or don't know the Cantonese word) I am told "that's the written version". Is it wrong? I don't know, because the teaching of Standard Chinese and also Standard Mandarin has complicated the issue, but I think not. However, if I were to say the third one in a Mandarin pronunciation (assuming that one exists, which is not always the case for these localised characters) it would definitely be wrong and unintelligible to a Mandarin listener.
WHICH DOES NOT MEAN THAT NO.3 IS WRONG, even in writing!
I noticed three different ads today that were written in what was unmistakably Cantonese, not Standard Chinese. This is not uncommon in Hong Kong and makes me very happy. But June's attitude persists among locals and it frustrates me that Cantonese is relegated to this second place status. And unfortunately, this comes back to the unavoidable question; is Cantonese a dialect or a language?
Will and Glenn are fixing a spreadsheet. June is looking on.
June: "rock weight" yinggoi hai y'ah yi ah~ (translation: Rock weight should be 22)
Will: (Types 22 in the rock density box).
June: Wah! Lei teng dak ming?! (translation: you got it?!)
Will: Of course, you know I understand some, and anyway you said rock weight in English!
June: Yes, I know. But you should have learnt yi sap yi, not y'ah yi.
Will: But you said y'ah yi. You always say y'ah yi. Everyone does.
June: Yes, but it's slang. You should learn the proper Chinese.
Sigh. I think this is one of the reasons it is so often said that Cantonese is so tough to learn, even when you're in Hong Kong. It really isn't tough - the grammar is a piece of piss, the sounds aren't too hard and the only real problem is the tones. But when you learn one thing from a textbook which has a set idea of what Cantonese/Chinese 'should' be with a blind indifference to what is really spoken, and when that view is also drummed into Chinese people at school, the textbooks become useless and the students become disillusioned.
This example is especially ridiculous, because can you imagine learning English without learning contractions? Imagine first that the textbook teaches that the only way to express the negative is to say is not (in case the class smartass pipes up that his cousin who lived overseas taught him to say isn't, the teacher points out that this is slang nobody learns). Then the kids go to the UK and find out that contractions are the order of the day and everyone uses them. This is not 'slang', it is usage.
Since I've started ranting, I will get something else that's been bugging me off my chest. If you subscribe to the PRC view, Cantonese is a dialect of the Chinese language. If you are a linguist, Cantonese is a dialect of the Yue Language. I am not going to debate whether the PRC or the linguists are right, it's a dangerous politically and emotionally charged discussion, but I want to talk about 'Written Cantonese', which supposedly doesn't exist.
There is a myth that Chinese dialects (PRC definition) all have a common written language. Consider the sentence "I am not a Chinese":
我不是中國人 Wo bu shi Zhongguoren
我不是中國人 Ngo bat see Junggwokyan
我唔係中國人 Ngo m hai Junggwokyan
The first two are written in Standard Chinese and the third is written in Cantonese. The first one is romanised using Hanyu Pinyin for Mandarin; the second and third are romanised in Cantonese.
If I were to say the second one with Cantonese pronunciation I would still be understood, but I would sound really strange to the listener. The most common response I get when I speak standard Chinese with a Cantonese pronunciation (usually because I can't remember or don't know the Cantonese word) I am told "that's the written version". Is it wrong? I don't know, because the teaching of Standard Chinese and also Standard Mandarin has complicated the issue, but I think not. However, if I were to say the third one in a Mandarin pronunciation (assuming that one exists, which is not always the case for these localised characters) it would definitely be wrong and unintelligible to a Mandarin listener.
WHICH DOES NOT MEAN THAT NO.3 IS WRONG, even in writing!
I noticed three different ads today that were written in what was unmistakably Cantonese, not Standard Chinese. This is not uncommon in Hong Kong and makes me very happy. But June's attitude persists among locals and it frustrates me that Cantonese is relegated to this second place status. And unfortunately, this comes back to the unavoidable question; is Cantonese a dialect or a language?