Facebook article thoughts

[elusivek]

Just a couple of articles I read on Facebook but decided to comment here instead of there, because, Facebook.

An Open Letter to White Expat Men that I have met while living in China

Nothing much. Just more showing off on my part. Yes, in general, people keep saying Chinese is so difficult to learn, and this, and that. They all keep talking about the four intonations in mandarin, and how each intonation makes the word different. And then people question me, saying that "if you speak Cantonese then you should be able to speak Mandarin!"

Well. No. NO. Mandarin, as mentioned, has 4 intonations. Cantonese, has 9. Also, Cantonese has some consonants and nasal tones. So. No. If you speak Cantonese it doesn't mean you speak Mandarin. Also, while it happens in any language that "there's a written form, and there's a spoken form," while in Mandarin the written and the spoken are different, the base structure and word usage is basically the same. In Cantonese, not really. You speak very colloquially in Cantonese, heck, some things said in Cantonese can't really be written because there is no such character for that.

And if one more person tells me that, "If Mandarin has 4 intonations and Cantonese has 9, it means Mandarin is easier! Shame on you that you are not learning it!"

WELL!

Let me try to provide an example. Super-simplifying things.

Assuming there are the same number of words (characters) in Mandarin and Cantonese. For the sake of simplifying the calculation, let's say there are 1000 words with the base pronunciation Ma. Since in Mandarin there are 4 intonations for words... so it makes it that there are 250 Ma's that have the exact same intonation. Meaning, the word Ma(1) can have 250 meanings. Meanwhile, in Cantonese, there are 9 intonations for Ma. So, there is a significantly lower rate of exact same intonation words. 111.11 different meanings to the word Ma(1). Now if you are not reading, but speaking, and you have to guess what people are saying by context, I think it's a lot easier to understand someone speaking Cantonese. Of course, the caveat is, you need to know Cantonese very well to be able to speak it too.

I personally am of the opinion that Cantonese is waaaayyyy harder to learn than Mandarin. And I grew up speaking it, so it wasn't really a feat of excellence or what. I am doubly impressed by those who actually really learnt it later in life.

The other day I had to arrange something for my Boss in China. China side called me and well, I really wasn't able to communicate with them in Mandarin. I managed to stutter out if we can communicate in WeChat, and there you go, I was able to communicate with them by writing. (And I stubbornly kept using traditional Chinese characters to show my self-assessed superiority LOL) (honestly all I had to do is to press a button on my phone and it would convert all traditional characters to simplified Chinese characters)

I hope people will quit bugging me about Mandarin.


Macau Greyhond "shot, barbecued" in the US

What the actual F*CK??????? That poor dog! Finally escaping the racetrack, going to the US, everyone thinking how lucky the dog was, and now THIS!???? WTF? WT actual F? Who's that guy even? Was he some sort of Expat in Macau and returned to the US? WTF? WTF??????

Really upset by this new.

Comments

[deepseasiren.livejournal.com]

I cannot read that, K. I would start crying and getting enraged ...

[amw.livejournal.com]

LOL that letter is beautiful, so many truths. Personally i think that hunt for sex is one of the creepiest things about expat men in China, and in fact in all of Asia. I have read threads on expat message boards asking stuff like which city should you live in to get the most sex, or talking about how doesn't matter if you never get laid at home, if you come to Asia you should be aiming for 2-3 new girls each week, etc. It's repulsive to me that people think this way, as if the main consideration in life is how much sex you can get. Although i suppose the other side is the women who are also looking for an exotic lay, or (in the Chinese case) hoping that the man will marry them and provide a way out of the PRC. I met several Chinese women who only dated foreigners because they wanted to escape the traditional relationship requirements (dowry, buying house, having children etc) pushed by their conservative families. It's sad all round.

Personally, i find Mandarin harder to listen to than Cantonese. I don't speak a single word of Cantonese, but to me the language just sounds more relaxed and free to me. Especially Hong Kong Cantonese, where they were more happy to adopt words from English and other European languages. I think Korean and Japanese have also been more open to adopting foreign words. "Correct" spoken Mandarin sounds much more officious and uptight to me, especially with that Beijing erhua.

When i was in China i noticed a big difference between Mandarin taught in school, which is the same Mandarin spoken by northern guys and big business highly educated "friend of Beijing" southerners, and Mandarin as second language spoken as the lingua franca by regular southern guys. To me the "poorly accented" Mandarin was easier to understand because people would slide into things like pronouncing "san" (3) as "sam", or saying "gai dan" for egg instead of "ji dan", or pronouncing "sh" sound as "s", or putting hard "t" on the end of a tone when it comes out more comfortable that way. It felt more like a mish-mosh, which to me is more natural than formalized language.

But also, i noticed with the various local "poorly accented" Mandarins, it make a difference if the local guys were Cantonese native speaker or Teochow native speaker or Hakka native speaker or whatever, because it all make their Mandarins sound different. It takes some time to get used to it. I remember people telling me their teachers would get so mad with them in school if they speak "local" Mandarin instead of Beijing style. Chinese education really wants to drum out any kind of deviation from official standard way. Although we know from the census, still the majority of Chinese never graduate high school so perhaps those angry teachers have less impact than the government wish they would.

It is very interesting to me to hear people in Macau cannot speak perfect Mandarin. The mythology in mainland China is that all Macanese and Hongkongers can speak perfect Mandarin but they pretend not to understand because they are snobs. But my experience is not that way when i visited Hong Kong. From my perspective it was only "friend of Beijing" locals that speak perfect Mandarin... so, exactly the same as in mainland China. Another one of those great myths the government and the media try to convince everyone is one way, but in reality the truth is much different than the official source.

Do you read the language log? https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/ It is a fun blog, they often do articles about different types of Chinese language, or discuss problems of written Cantonese.

[notte0.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don’t think I’m a good baseline to say whether the people of Macau speak Mandarin or not. I don’t because back then in the 80s and 90s, our schooling system was “since you are not ethnically or nationally Chinese, you can skip all Chinese-related classes” and thus, I never studied Chinese. It was only very much later, late 90s, that they started to enforce people to learn Mandarin. I was in Form 5, last year of high school, when they introduced the mandatory Mandarin class. You can imagine the ones who were non-Chinese had the hardest time because the Chinese students mostly could have spoken some mandarin (be it movies, music, or hobbies).

There are also Chinese schools (or we say red flag schools) that really drill in the Mandarin, so there are people who can speak perfect Mandarin in Macau.

[notte0.livejournal.com]

I am still digesting your comment, but regarding the relaxed Cantonese, a very fun example is 今晚打老虎 LOL you may think why are they beating up a tiger… but it’s actually a… for a lack of a better word, verbal approximation of Comment allez-vous

Another funny(ish) one is 搵到肥婆快食屎 (eat shit soon when you find a fat woman) (okay, demeaning I know) but it’s actually “one two three four five six)

[mymimikyu.livejournal.com]

Oh my gosh I clicked on that link and wasn't expecting the poor bbq'd dog to be the strangest part... he made the bonfire with $100 bills?!? That sounds like a wild mental break down...

[notte0.livejournal.com]

I guess I was so enraged about the dog that the barbecue was fueled with cash didn’t catch my attention at all.....

[cerezamarrero.livejournal.com]

I LOVE languages, and my son-in-law's family is Japanese. I learned a few Japanese phrases and found them difficult and I'm a language geek! I think it is all very individual--the ease of learning another language. For me, German was easier than Spanish because I find it to be so much more like English, my first language. This coming from someone who has been listening to Spanish since the day she was born!! Now that I've said that, I use Spanish so much more that I'm actually pretty fluent in it as an adult, but I still find the process of learning German to be easier.

[notte0.livejournal.com]

Gaaaahhh... German.... I’ve been trying so hard but I just can’t master it LOL. I can still wing it with Portuguese but once you put me next to a native Portuguese speaker I can’t really communicate LOL. As for me, I found Japanese pretty easy to learn, at least the textbook style of writing/speaking. I remember back when I was learning it in University it was such an easy A for me, and was able to write hilarious conversations as assignments.There’s another “politeness level” in Japanese that I have totally no idea what is going on though, so...

[hermitsmurf.livejournal.com]

Now I understand why those languages always sound like the person is yelling or mad - the intonations! I can't even imagine learning a new language at my age (though I would like to).

[notte0.livejournal.com]

I joke around that I have used up my language fuel by speaking Portuguese and Chinese while growing up, learning English at school, then Japanese in University, and then Chinese writing in my adult life... that I have no more language fuel for me to progress in my attempts in learning German!