Teaching Cantonese

Amber and Kevin are two new friends of mine from the US. They are going to stay with us for about 3 months.

Going about in HK without Cantonese the local language is absolutely possible. Some inconveniences for sure, but you can go on with your life just fine.

I am impressed by Amber and Kevin's eagerness to learn the language especially they are only here for 3 months.

They invited me to teach them some Cantonese, so we did it last night over dinner in a nice resturant.

"Thank you" proved once again difficult for non-native speakers of Cantonese. Not even Mandarin speakers can manage that well. There are two ways to say "thank you", namely 唔該 (ng goi) and 多謝 (dor tse). The former is used when, for example, someone helps you by keeping the door open for you, or passing you the salt and pepper; while the latter can be used to thank people for giving you a gift.

I also taught them the numbers. Once you master numbers one to ten in Cantonese, you can count from one to 99.

We had a good time. The restaurant was full of our laughter. The waiters smiled when they heard us saying "thank you". Maybe they had too much fun too. Getting my orders wrong, I began to suspect my Cantonese wasn't really that good after all.

Thanks friends for that wonderful evening of friendship and language.

(Other On, In and Around Monday posts here.)