Sun 20 May 2007
Cantonese in Singapore
Posted by 馬先生 under Cantonese
I recently spent 1 week in Singapore for work. However, to my surprise the taxi drivers were all excited to practice their Cantonese with me. For the first time since studying, I was much more fluent in Cantonese than my Chinese counterpart. Respecting the local people I began my conversations in English, but found the drivers wanted to speak only Cantonese to me.
Overall, Singapore isn’t even a good environment to speak Mandarin as nearly every Chinese family spoke English to each other. I met up with Bernard from the Cantonese forums and engaged in some Cantonese dialogues with him on Saturday.
Though the week in Singapore made me feel like my Cantonese was regressing and it felt quite strange having so much English and Mandarin spoken in Chinatown in comparison to Sydney.
Hong Kong
May 21st, 2007 at 9:40 am
pretty cool
May 21st, 2007 at 7:48 pm
so i believe you would appreciate better, that the environment plays a rather big part in the learning of a language. count yourself lucky to be in hong kong.
another thing, the 1 week won’t cause much damage to your cantonese :-p.
May 21st, 2007 at 8:16 pm
Bernard, can you comment on my Cantonese?
Good to know my flaws and good points.
Thanks.
May 21st, 2007 at 10:15 pm
Milan, using cantonese, we spoke and we understood most of the time. Only times when we could not understand each other was when unfamiliar words were used by either of us. That I think is not a big problem, since there are always many ways of expressing, and not all of us are so au fait with the language that we can proclaim we know all the ways there are. So it is a learning process.
Your Cantonese vernacular vocab is way sufficient for you to conduct a decent, daily conversations in Cantonese. Personally, I feel to use some of the vocabulary (the more difficult words) in conversation and be understood, it helps if there is more context to “lead in” or “introduce” the word. But because I do not know ALL the Cantonese words there are, there are words I would not understand even if they were placed in the right context:-p.
The only other thing that you might want to focus on is the tone. That’s all for now:-)
May 22nd, 2007 at 2:03 pm
hai6 aa3 hai6 aa3
lai6 jyu4 “書到用時方恨少”, kei4 sat6 jung6 di1 cin2 di1 ge3 man4 zi6 biu2 daat6 dou1 ho2 ji5 laa1!
soeng2 zi1 jau5 mou4 teoi3 bou6, tung4 ngo5 king1 gai3*2 mai6 zi1 lo1
ngo5 go3 gei2 jyut6 mou4 gin3 nei5 laa1…..
May 23rd, 2007 at 12:31 am
>> ngo5 go3 gei2 jyut6 mou4 gin3 nei5 laa1…..
Y, faan1 gung1 seoi1 jiu3 hou2 do1 si4 gaan3. jat6 jat6 dou1 m4 dak1 haan4, ngo5 lou5 po4 dou1 hou2 siu2 gin3 min6 ngo5.
June 23rd, 2007 at 12:27 pm
You seems to be so busy that you haven’t updated your blog for a long time.
Wish you well!
December 21st, 2007 at 5:50 pm
Sort of beg to differ about Mandarin in S’pore. It’s one of the more Mandarin-centric societies, increasingly becoming a close second to English as a formally taught language. Of course if you’d like better Cantonese practice nearby do drop by Malaysia especially Kuala Lumpur. There you should find many who are fluent in both Mandarin and Cantonese.