An Ode to Cantonese

UngooChan

Of Rocking-Horses and Iron-Jockeys:An Ode to Cantonese
　　
　　What's so fascinating about Cantonese? I don't know. Ask the lover why he loves. I can't even answer the much simpler question 'Why do you like kippers so much?' And to explain why to those who have never learned Cantonese or eaten kippers or loved is as hard as trying to explain colour to someone with only black and white vision.
　　
　　I started by learning Mandarin, as it was known before Political Correctness insisted on calling it Putonghua. That was fun, and it opened up a new world to me, but I cannot say that I was more than just interested. And then out of the blue came an offer of a grant to do anthropological fieldwork in Hong Kong and it became necessary to learn Cantonese, since in the 1960s almost no-one spoke Mandarin,certainly not in the New Territories village where I was going to live for eighteen months.
　　
　　At once it became clear that this was a very different language. Mandarin textbooks were full of pokerfaced translation exercises about how many pens were on the desk and how one could enter a room by grasping the door handle in the right hand, turning it to the left and gently pushing the door open, stepping over the threshold, and carefully closing the door behind one. Honest. I can still remember the Mandarin word for 'threshold' and more than forty years on am still waiting for a chance to use it! So boring! So colourless!
　　
　　But Cantonese… ah! I confess that even now I don't know the Cantonese for 'threshold' (and further confess that I don't care). But very early on I learned how to shout through the bathroom door to someone that they couldn't come in to clean their teeth because I was on the loo! No-one even went to the loo in Mandarin, or not in my textbooks anyway. Poor northerners, they must be so uncomfortable.
　　
　　Cantonese textbooks can't keep away from daily life because that is what Cantonese is about - living life with zest and excitement, getting fun out of what we all have to do anyway. You've got to eat, so why8not enjoy it to the full, and your language must be stuffed (as it were!) with all the necessary vocabulary to express the joy you get from buying, cooking and above all eating food (NB not 'consuming' it - leave such pompous expressions to the dreary non-Cantonese world). If life is eating and gossiping and making love and playing tricks and arguing and, yes, going to the loo, then that is what a proper colloquial language talks about, and if it's earthy, well at least earth comes in different colours and with smells and fertility and liveliness and a basic importance to us as human beings. When Cantonese says something at you, you know you've been said at.
　　
　　And if the language ever seems to be in danger of getting boring, someone is sure to come up with anew expression to liven it up again. Again and again as I learned I found new hand-grenades of verbal pleasure exploding in my ears. I thought it was quite cute when I found out that the word for a bicycle(daan-che 单车 'singleton vehicle') had fathered the word for a motor-bike (din-daan-che 电单车 'electric singleton vehicle'), but that just showed how easily tickled I was - it was even more exciting to find that Cantonese had moved on to call a motor-bike an 'iron steed' (tit-ma 铁马) and its rider an 'iron-jockey' (titke-si 铁骑士).
　　
　　What fun that teachers are referred to as 'man's downfall' (yan-ji-waan 人之患), borrowing the first part of a quotation from the philosopher Mencius 「Man's downfall lies in loving to teach others」 (Yan jiwaan joi hou wai yan si 人之患在好为人师).
　　
　　If something makes you feel anxious or scared it's called 'teeth-smoking' (nga-yin 牙烟), as good a description of clenched jaws as you could come up with. Those cement lorries with the revolving drum are known as 'snail trucks' (tin-lo-che 田螺车), not because they drive slowly but because of their shape.
　　
　　To go on a river cruise is 'to ramble the river in a boat' (yau-syun-ho 游船河), so when motor-cars came along and people went out for a drive in the countryside, nothing seemed more natural than that they should call it 'rambling the river in a car' (yau-che-ho 游车河). The next step was easy for a language with creativity - standing in a lift going up instead of down, someone shrugged off the annoyance by saying that they were 'rambling the river in a lift' (yau-lip-ho 游猎河). It's a standard term now.
　　
　　Quirky, inventive, colourful, unexpected, self-aware, self-deprecating, self-gratifying, fearless of hyperbole, obliquely penetrating, full-frontally bludgeoning, persuasive, shrill, subtle, subversive,Cantonese contributes to life as much as it reflects it. It is a proud parent and loves to play with its offspring words, punning and twisting meanings to get greater joy out of life.
　　
　　「Eating dog is illegal? Oh, but I never eat it, though I do sometimes enjoy a meal of 'three-and-six'.
　　
　　」Well, that's alright then. Or is it? What is 'three-and-six'?
　　
　　「Three and six is nine, even a kindergarten child knows that.
　　
　　」And all Cantonese speakers know that 'nine九' is pronounced gáu, but of course it can only be a coincidence that 'dog狗' is also pronounced gáu …. can't it?
　　
　　「What do you think of Ah-Wong's new girl-friend?」
　　
　　「There's an aircraft on fire! (fei-gei fo-juk 飞机火烛).」
　　
　　「Pardon…?」
　　
　　「There's an aircraft on fire: it's burning the clouds (siu-wan 烧云).」「Wow, lucky Ah-Wong!」 (siu-wan 烧云 puns into siu-wan 销魂 'bewitching, charming').And, watching a speed-mad iron-jockey tearing along a New Territories highway, the traffic policeman snorts:
　　
　　「He's a Japanese ship! He'll be dead before long.」
　　
　　Bit tricky this one. You will have noticed no doubt that all Japanese ships have names that end in Maru 丸. So however long the name of the ship, sooner or later comes Maru. The character Maru丸 ispronounced yuen in Cantonese and so is the word for 'the end' (yuen 完). So 'Japanese ship' means'Sooner or later will come his end.'
　　
　　There's loads more of this kind of thing, but I'm afraid that if I go on about it you the reader will be'Foreigner's moon cake' (Faan-gwai-lou yut-beng 番鬼佬月饼). You know what foreigners call moon cake - they call it 'moon cake' - and 'moon cake' sounds like the Cantonese mun-gik 闷极 which means 'extremely bored'.
　　
　　As a student, for two summer vacations I worked in an amusement arcade in an English sea-side resort, and it was my privilege that the next stall was a Bingo game run by the best 'barker' in town.'Ginger' he was called and he could charm the passers-by out of the street and then magic the six pences out of their pockets - all done with brilliant patter. I admired him enormously, and it was from him that I learned that language mattered. But it wasn't the Queen's English that he used, it was a language of his9own fertile inventiveness. His favourite expression, reserved for moments when the crowds were slow in reaching for their purses, was 「It's like trying to get manure out of a rocking-horse today!」 Ginger would surely have taken to Cantonese like a duck to water.
　　
　　Dr. Hugh Baker
[ 本帖最後由 UngooChan 於 2009-8-26 09:48 編輯 ]