I love my Cantonese class - 我鍾意廣東話班

An apple for the teacher?

As I mentioned, I have been studying a proper Cantonese class through Chinese University, and I am amazed at how much I have learnt in just a few weeks. It has helped tie together all the little bits and pieces of 廣東話 that I had taught myself over the last six to eight months, and has given me a grammatical context within which to frame it all.

I feel much braver about asking for things out and about, having spent some hours now practicing boring conversations with my classmates. Today I felt able to go and ask the person staffing the desk in my building whether they had a photocopier and whether I could make some copies. Though I didn't do so perfectly fluently, of course, I could conceive of doing so, and it worked out okay, even if I couldn't totally understand the directions to the nearest copy shop!

Along the way I pick up curious bit of information about Cantonese of the sort that I enjoy. I like the way all languages, except perhaps Esperanto, have their little quirks. So at class yesterday I asked why the character for 'noon' that we'd been taught (晝 or dzau - mid flat tone) was different from the one I'd been noticing on parking signs when they say things like 'no parking 7-10 pm', which was clearly different (午). I was told by Crystal, the teacher, that the one I have seen around is the written form, whereas the one that we'd been taught is the spoken form. Okay, I can understand that, but then, if it's a spoken form, then why does it have a character to represent it? How does that work? According to Crystal, perhaps if they were writing the word 'noon' in a very informal context, such as a game show on TV, they might use the spoken form. Fair enough, but then why is it a more complicated character to write, if it's more colloquial? A little mystery that I may just let go for now, as I try and learn a more basic understanding of the language!