Excerpt from "My Fair Lady"
All right, Eliza, say it again. "The rine in Spine......stais minely in the pline."
"The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain."
Didn't I saiy that?
No, Eliza, you didn't "saiy" that. You didn't even "say" that.
Every night before you go to bed, where you used to say your prayers...
...l want you to say: "The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain." Fifty times.
You'll get much further with the Lord if you learn not to offend His ears.
"The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain."
Didn't I saiy that?
No, Eliza, you didn't "saiy" that. You didn't even "say" that.
Every night before you go to bed, where you used to say your prayers...
...l want you to say: "The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain." Fifty times.
You'll get much further with the Lord if you learn not to offend His ears.
I've been learning Mandarin now for 3 weeks and I really feel that I'm improving a lot, but for some reason I just can't shake my Cantonese accent. I continue to have problems with this. I guess because there are still many words that I don't know in Mandarin so everytime I guess at the word I just change it a little from what it is in Cantonese. Sometimes though I end up having some pretty embarrassing situations in class where everybody is laughing because I misunderstood something the teacher said.
My most recent fiasco has been with the word "Sung". My whole life I've known a cooked dish of food to be called "Sung". When we order at restaurants we might order 5 "Sung's" and 1 "Tong" (i.e. 5 food dishes and 1 soup). These "Sung's" are supposed to be eaten with rice. Well I've always assumed that this was a Chinese word that could be written and understood by ALL Chinese people. So on this particular day of class, we were talking about vocabulary words that uses the word "Cai" (Vegetable) 菜. Naturally I reverted back to my Cantonese knowledge and thought of "Sung Cai" but didn't know how to write the word "Sung".
NOBODY in my class had any idea of what I was talking about. As usual they started guessing at what I was trying to say coming up with verbs and adjectives and measure words like "Do you mean Yi Dao Cai （一道菜）, a plate?" Or "Do you mean vegetarian food (素菜)?" or "Do you mean eating (吃飯)?" I was so frustrated because I kept saying "No! No! No! It's a noun! Don't you guys use that word?" I thought I was going insane because it had been a word that was so commonly used my whole life!
Well, it turns out according to some Cantonese websites that "There are two standard ways of written Cantonese: a formal version and a colloquial version. The formal version is quite different from spoken Cantonese but very similiar to Standard Chinese and can be understood by Mandarin speakers without too much difficulty. The colloquial version is much closer to spoken Cantonese and largely unintelligible to Mandarin speakers."
It so happened that the word "Sung" was one of these words and I hadn't known it. I knew some other words that were like this like "Ting Yaht 聼日" meaning "Tomorrow" in Cantonese, but for some reason I thought "Sung" would work in both Cantonese and Mandarin. Sigh...well after about 15 minutes of research I finally found my word ....so here it is!
餸 = A side dish of food to be eaten with rice or noodles
My most recent fiasco has been with the word "Sung". My whole life I've known a cooked dish of food to be called "Sung". When we order at restaurants we might order 5 "Sung's" and 1 "Tong" (i.e. 5 food dishes and 1 soup). These "Sung's" are supposed to be eaten with rice. Well I've always assumed that this was a Chinese word that could be written and understood by ALL Chinese people. So on this particular day of class, we were talking about vocabulary words that uses the word "Cai" (Vegetable) 菜. Naturally I reverted back to my Cantonese knowledge and thought of "Sung Cai" but didn't know how to write the word "Sung".
NOBODY in my class had any idea of what I was talking about. As usual they started guessing at what I was trying to say coming up with verbs and adjectives and measure words like "Do you mean Yi Dao Cai （一道菜）, a plate?" Or "Do you mean vegetarian food (素菜)?" or "Do you mean eating (吃飯)?" I was so frustrated because I kept saying "No! No! No! It's a noun! Don't you guys use that word?" I thought I was going insane because it had been a word that was so commonly used my whole life!
Well, it turns out according to some Cantonese websites that "There are two standard ways of written Cantonese: a formal version and a colloquial version. The formal version is quite different from spoken Cantonese but very similiar to Standard Chinese and can be understood by Mandarin speakers without too much difficulty. The colloquial version is much closer to spoken Cantonese and largely unintelligible to Mandarin speakers."
It so happened that the word "Sung" was one of these words and I hadn't known it. I knew some other words that were like this like "Ting Yaht 聼日" meaning "Tomorrow" in Cantonese, but for some reason I thought "Sung" would work in both Cantonese and Mandarin. Sigh...well after about 15 minutes of research I finally found my word ....so here it is!
餸 = A side dish of food to be eaten with rice or noodles
1 comment:
haha, that was a great post! i love hearing about people stories with different languages and cultures. don't be discouraged, these moments only help you remember better for next time :).
Post a Comment