Yesterday someone told me that I was obsessed with Cantonese, and consequently I took this comment as being quite negative and discouraging. The person thought that I would only be living in Hong Kong for a short period of time. He told me Cantonese shouldn’t be as important in comparison to English in Hong Kong. He simply couldn’t understand why I’m serious about this language. You should not take it seriously, have fun learning Cantonese. Just like the day I was told by one of my students - Hong Kong people take English seriously, Cantonese is just for fun.

Why can’t anyone understand me?

I spent 5 years at the Australian National University. I have a Bachelor of Information Technology, Bachelor of Commerce, and Master of Commerce. I’ve worked in the IT industry for 6 years being a Test Analyst and Business Analyst for which I studied and worked both full-time.

Lets talk about my situation today in Hong Kong. I have zero experience in commercial banking, financial consulting or the derivatives market, but locals keep telling me to apply because I can speak fluent English. My wife and I would like to start a family soon and purchase a shoe-box. God will not provide and I must financially support them. Going back to a graduate or junior position in a totally new industry isn’t viable. There is no way I can support a family on the income a graduate earns. I didn’t study 5 years in University to be an English teacher either. Some give their words of wisdom and suggest to go back to Australia. This kind of makes me upset, as people fail to realise that my wife is a local Hong Kong person and university graduate. She is currently working and I think its ridiculous to ask her to quit her job so that I can find a job in Australia. Especially when we’ve decided to settle down in Hong Kong for a very long time.

Every position in Hong Kong that is suitable for my experience and knowledge requires either Cantonese only, English/Cantonese or English/Cantonese/Mandarin. So many people tell me, there are so many white guys 鬼佬 gwai2 lou2 in Hong Kong, how come they get jobs and I can’t? One of the main reasons I can think of is because they are expatriates who directly get employed by their home country’s office. In addition, I don’t feel its appropriate to group a whole group as “foreigners”, and ignoring factors like individual experience, aptitude or education.

So why do I study Cantonese for endless hours per day?

No pain, no gain. Right? I applied for a position that made no mention of language requirements. I was asked at the interview if I could speak Cantonese. The interviewer told me that this is Hong Kong, the local market is Cantonese, and not all the employees can communicate strongly in English. Especially when multi-millions of dollars are spent on projects, accuracy is quite important and one can not rely on dictionaries and guesses.

I have met people who have lived in Hong Kong much longer than me but still can’t have a 30 second conversation with me. They speak English at home, speak English on the streets, watch Pearl and surround themselves with English speaking friends. Then they wonder why I can manage to communicate with people in Cantonese.

I have a basic rule: It’s Cantonese or nothing. I don’t care if its convenient to use English because you studied for 20+ years. I’m not going to end up like those lazy expats who speak English everyday for 5-6 years in Hong Kong and suddenly wake up by learning some Chinese. They then choose Mandarin because its China’s official language.

I might appear to be rude, selfish or inconsiderate. However, I am doing whatever it takes to achieve advanced Cantonese fluency.

My wife does not speak English to me, even though she speaks English extremely fluently. If I’m going to wear the pants in the family, I’m going to have to master Cantonese.

Through daily contact with the HK Chinese I have built up a list of things that have irritated me.

Firstly, if you are a foreigner, most HK people that I have met believe that you must speak English to some degree of fluency being superior to their own. It doesn’t matter if you are from France, Spain, Italy, or the Philippines; all foreigners especially Caucasians have the ability to speak English. Now my face isn’t a Caucasian face being mixed blooded, but I recall telling several Chinese that I’m not an English speaker and to look carefully at my face, does it look like I come from England? (in Cantonese) They reply, “you are a foreigner, all foreigners speak English.” (in English) I simply give no reaction and continue in Cantonese. Remember I have not told them where I come from, nor have I spoken any English.

Today I was teaching the word “to co-operate” in my English class. I made a mistake and said 作合 zok3 hap6 instead of 合作 hap6 zok3, in which I immediately self-corrected my mistake and apologised. My students couldn’t stop laughing. I seriously didn’t think it was funny and I had to force the adult students to stop their childishness. I said, why is it funny that I accidentally make 1 measly mistake, but you are all able to make 200-300 mistakes when you speak to me in English? One response instantly made my blood boil and I had to try very hard to control myself, “We take English seriously, and as you are a foreigner, Cantonese is just for fun.”

Another time I told my students that I had spent 2000+ hours learning Cantonese, when one lady told me she could teach me Cantonese. So I asked her if she knew the tones and a Cantonese romanisation system. She told me she knew the tones and pinyin system from China. Turns out she is talking about Mandarin pinyin and couldn’t understand that Cantonese (a dialect) could be written differently to Mandarin (a language). Clearly wasting my time in this discussion, I wrote on the board “wo bu shi xiang gang ren” and asked her how that looked like “ngo5 m4 hai6 hoeng1 gong2 jan4″. Then I wrote sam1 gap1 (心急) and asked her how to pronounce it in Cantonese. Immediately she said sam (as in Samual) and gap (as in the English word gap). Then I got a complaint from her, “ah Cantonese pinyin is too hard and impossible”. She already decided that it was too hard after 20 seconds.

Many Hong Kong people think that Cantonese has no grammar. This statement has caused me to waste many hours re-educating people that every language has a set of grammar rules, and it is simply that you haven’t learnt it.

Lastly, I was in Yuen Long , and I went to a small shop to buy a drink. I asked the old man in Cantonese, “gei2 do1 cin2 aa3? (幾多錢呀?).” He says in English, “7 dollars”. I told him, “deoi3 m4 zyu6, ngo5 m4 sik1 gong2 jing1 man4 (對唔住, 我唔識講英文)”. On each attempt (4-5), I got “hah?”, he finally said in Cantonese “$7.50″. Then I exchanged a few unfriendly words and left.

Last year I asked Steve Kaufmann of The Linguist how he learnt Cantonese. He incredibly speaks 9 languages quite fluently. I’m so impressed with his Mandarin that I had to find out what was his secret to success.

Here is the link to my email [Steve Kaufmann’s Blog (Learning Cantonese)]

It only took him 6 months to be able to functionally use Cantonese and have the ability to phone Cantonese radio talk shows!

Steve answering my email in English, Cantonese, and Mandarin:

I’ll be back after the new year with more in January.

Thank you for visiting.

I found on Youtube a member who uploaded a bunch of Videos explaining various English vocabulary in Cantonese. Her intention was to teach Cantonese people some English vocabulary, however, I think an Intermediate Cantonese learner would be able to understand her explanations and make good use of these videos to learn how to say these English words in Cantonese with pretty good explanations.

Pimple: 01:21min	Dozen: 01:16min	Toilet: 01:09min	Water: 01:13min

Cantonese: 01:21min	Crime: 01:22min	Dog: 01:10min	Cantonese 2: 01:12min

Fruit: 01:16min	Toilet 2: 01:33min	Chinese Food: 02:14min	Soccer: 01:33min

Stationary: 01:33min	Tourist Spots: 01:45min	Thumb: 01:29min	Cantonese 3: 01:35min

Love: 01:40min	Natural Disaster: 01:28min	Soccer 2: 01:34min

Finally my dream to meet Ho Kwok Wing came true. Ho Kwok Wing mentioned on his blog that he would be at Whampoa Gardens in Hong Kong today (9/Dec/2006 at 3pm), so I immediately rushed to meet him. I am extremely happy that both Ho Kwok Wing and his wife took the time to chat to me for a while. I bought 2 boxes of cookies that Ho Kwok Wing was selling for the Yan Chai Hospital’s 「愛心曲奇暖萬家」 - 「oi3 sam1 kuk1 kei4 nyun5 maan6 gaa1」 charity.

Here is a video of my idol Gregory Rivers speaking Cantonese before the Teresa Tang memorial concert:
Length 1:45min

Gregory singing a Cantonese song at the Teresa Tang memorial concert:
Length 3:20min

How can a school be teaching dodgy romanisations of Cantonese characters? I often see junk like “Ngorr maai boujee” and “lay haai joong gock yaan” all over chat sites or forums. Its actually amazing that people are able to read this rubbish, but the worst is a school that teaches made-up romanised words. A school teaching “Ngorr maai boujee” demonstrates to me they are not capable of teaching correct Cantonese.

In Australia, I spent 20 hours of study at a Cantonese school. I remember the teacher told students to make up their own romanisation because “Cantonese is an oral dialect, so its better to write each word down the way you hear it. There is no proper romanisation system” blah blah rubbish talk. I remember trying to read my notes weeks after and was not able to pronounce what I wrote. In addition, my teacher was not able to specify the correct tone for any words. There are so many native Hongkies (Hong Kong People) around who believe they can teach Cantonese. Some of these “wannabe” teachers demand handsome payment for zero experience, no tone or romanisation knowledge and not capable of constructing a lesson plan. I remember teaching one of my previous tutors the 6 tones and how to romanise Chinese characters. What a teacher, I had to pay and teach him!

Those who think they can learn Cantonese with not knowing any romanisation system is fooling themselves. I believe this potentially can harm your progress by not being able to review previously learnt words, and it slows down the acquisition of vocabulary as learners tend not to hear words clearly. With many words sounding nearly the same such as 怪 gwaai3 = strange and 貴 gwai3 = expensive, I think it is valuable to learn how to write and read a standardised romansiation system. I tend to mispronounce words if I don’t see the exact spelling because certain words have short or long sounds, and end with different characters -p -t -k that sounds the same in rapid speech. I feel that it is hard to learn and distinguish if listening is your only mode of input.

I think the best Cantonese Romanisation developed is JYUTPING 粵拼 jyut6 ping3. The Cantonese Dictionary uses Jyutping and most learners of Jyutping tend to have better pronunciation than those who make up their own romanisation. Some people insist it’s not necessary to learn Jyutping or any other form of romanisation, though I strongly disagree. Learners and teachers who are deadly serious in improving or providing effective delivery of Cantonese must take the 30 minutes to learn the Jyutping pronunciation rules.

Regarding Jyutping, many learners and/or teachers complain about the use of “J” to represent the English sound “Y”. I really don’t like whingers that can’t accept that “J” is pronounced as English “Y”. You only need a short period to get used to it, and besides I’ve never met a German learner who complains that Germans use “J” when pronouncing the sound English sound “Y”. Learning Jyutping has been one of the best investments I’ve made in improving my Cantonese so rapidly.