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I blame my inability to speak Cantonese on waitresses in Chinese restaurants.
My wife would say it’s all on me. To be fair, I should have kept it up. I should have practised more. You are getting better every day, she would say. I actually was getting pretty good too. I should have stuck with it. It started innocently enough when we were first married. She taught me the basic words that one might teach a child. She taught me how to say please, thank you, hello, goodbye. She taught me how to say yes and no.
Yes. “Hai.”
No. “M-hai.”
“Not Em-hai,” she would say. “But, mmm-hai.”
She had me point to my eyes, my ears, my mouth, my nose, and say the words after her, like reciting a child’s poem. “Ahn. Eee. Oww, Bay.” She taught me how to say good morning. Good night. I am hungry. I am tired. I am happy. I love you. If you’re married to a girl who speaks Cantonese, that’s a good one to know.
“Oh oi lei.”
I picked up most of it pretty easily. We’d be watching TV after dinner and she would suddenly look at me and point to her eyes. “Ahn.” I would say. She would put her finger to the tip of my nose and I would say, “Bay,” She would encircle her face with her finger and I would say “mien”. She would point to her foot and I would say, “Gerk”.
“Almost,” she would say. “Remember, the K is silent. Land on the K, but do not pronounce it. Ger(k). Try it again.” It was difficult for me to end on the K without pronouncing it. Like I would, for instance, if I were to say book or nook or forsook. Touch the middle of your tongue to the roof of your mouth for the K sound but do not bring it down with that outward expelling of breath to finish it. Ger(k).
I kept trying and I finally got it.
She taught me a lot of words for common things around the house. Cup. Plate. Chair. Table. Living room. Bath room. Door. Window. Bed. She taught me the words for water, juice, coffee, tea, whiskey. We would be in the kitchen and my wife would hold up an apple and I would say “ping gaw”. She would say it properly and I would repeat it. She would hold up a banana and I would say “Heung Chiu”.
“M-hai.” She would gently correct. “It is Heung Tsiu.”
“Yeah. That’s what I said. Heung Chiu.”
Subtle difference, perhaps, but there is a difference. Try it. Pronounce a C-H and then pronounce a T-S. “CH” vs “TS”. The TS sounds a little more delicate, softer, finer. Like in the word, cats. The ts is there but not strong. At least to my ear. Also, the heung has a little dip at the end. And it almost sounds like there is an R in there somewhere. Not quite, but almost. Heu(r)ng. You almost have to swallow the sound of the R as you say it. Much of the Cantonese language is based on the rise and fall of the voice. Did the last syllable rise or drop? Sometimes that can change the meaning of a word altogether. To me, the word banana, in English, means banana no matter the lilt of my voice.
na↑
Bana
Bana
na.↓
See? Banana. Same thing.
We practiced together a lot. We would go on long drives. A long drive was a good time to practise a new language. We lived in San Francisco so we would drive south to Half Moon Bay, Monterey and Big Sur or north to Napa-Sonoma and Mendocino and try to carry on dialogues in Cantonese. As the weeks moved into months, I was learning and improving at a good rate. I could not necessarily carry on a full conversation but I could understand quite a lot. Bits and pieces, maybe. A little here, a little there. Sometimes I could understand the gist of a conversation. I might know that two people were discussing the weather, or their children or their food. I would eavesdrop in the grocery store, listen in on conversations at other tables in a restaurant. I would tell my wife, hey, they are talking about… and she would smile and say, “Yes, they are. Ho-ho.” Ho-ho means very good. Once in a while, I would try to say something in Cantonese and my wife would look at me and giggle. My inflection, the tone of my voice, obviously rose or fell incorrectly. Like in a movie when someone is trying to say something in a foreign language and the other person laughs and tells him that he just said something strange and nonsensical. Oops. There is the high-level tone, the high ascending and the low ascending tone and there is the high descending and the low descending.
She taught me to say, “Mut yeh?” So I wouldn’t always have to ask, “What?”
Articulation. Nuance. Modulation. Intonation.
One time, while walking along the street, I overheard two women talking and one of them said something in Cantonese and I mimicked some of the words.
“Don’t say that,” my wife whispered.
“Why not?”
“Those are bad words.”
“What do they mean?”
She wouldn’t tell me.
“Aw, come on.”
But no. She knew I would just repeat them over and over. Instead, she pointed to her nose and, like a good boy, I uttered the word “bay”. Later, during lunch, I repeated the words I had overheard the two women say. “Shhhh!” My wife hissed and gave me one of those looks. You may know the look I’m referring to. Like a mother would give a child if he suddenly said the word “shit” in a restaurant. I was properly hushed.
Then she pointed to her tea cup and I said “Yum cha”.
She smiled.
She taught me how to say thank you with my hands. For instance, at a restaurant, which can be loud with people talking and laughing, the clanks of cups and saucers and plates, if someone refills your teacup, you can gently tap the tip of your index finger onto the tablecloth. Thus, you are saying, thank you, without having to compete with the ambient din.
We decided that I should learn how to pronounce the Cantonese words for various types of food, so I could potentially order a meal in a Chinese restaurant. That seemed like a good idea. There are a lot of Chinese restaurants in San Francisco and we ate out often. I could use the words for please and thank you and I could try many new words and put them into sentences in a real setting. She kicked off this plan by teaching me how to say the words for white rice, the most common food in a Chinese meal.
“Baat faan.”
Didn’t sound too tough. I would say it over and over like when I repeated the words for I love you, over and over.
“Baat Faan. Baat Faan. Baat Faan.”
“Good,” she would encourage me with a smile and a nod. Actually, she would say, “Ho,” meaning good. “Say it again.”
“Baat faan.”
She taught me the words for chicken, prawns, beef, pork, oyster sauce. After a few weeks of daily practice, I began to get it down. Most of it was easy. Bok choy, for instance, when said in Cantonese, means bok choy. I learned to say, ha lo mein, meaning shrimp noodles. We liked to order that dish so that was a good one to know. If we were in a dim sum restaurant I could order ha-gow and siu mai and we would receive the correct items. I could order cha siu bao and we would get steamed pork buns. Or those wonderful little egg tarts called daan taat. Hey, I was doing pretty good. I could practically order a whole meal. At least, I thought so. I was ready to jump in with both ger(k). We went to a local Chinese restaurant for dinner. The waitress came up to our table and asked, in English, what we would like to order. I thought, okay, this is my moment. I got this. I flourished the menu. I was ready. I looked at her, cleared my throat and told her, in my best Cantonese, that we would like to start with some “baat faan, m-goi”. M-goi means both please and thank you.
I was just about to continue but I could tell something wasn’t quite right. She had a look of confusion on her face. She looked at me. She rubbed her pencil eraser against her temple. She looked at me again and then she flicked her eyes toward my wife. I flicked my eyes, my ahn, toward my wife, who gave me a nod of encouragement. So, I said it again.
“Baat faan.” And then I added, “M-goi.”
The waitress looked at me like I had three eyes. Uh-oh! Was I suddenly pronouncing it wrong? I had practiced it over and over. Baat faan. Easy. And she couldn’t even understand that? A momentary feeling of panic washed over me. Uh-oh! I decided that maybe I wasn’t quite ready to jump in with both ger(k), so I said, “White rice.”
The waitress smiled. “Oh, yes,” she said. “Of course.” She scribbled on her pad, immediately translating my English words into Chinese characters. Then she looked back at me. “And?” I ordered the rest of the meal in English.
I tried to order dinner in the Cantonese language many times after that first debacle and, every time, the waitress or waiter hardly ever understood what I was ordering. I always ended up frustrated, saying it in English. “Ginger Beef. Chicken with Snow Peas. Prawns in Lobster Sauce. And WHITE RICE!” Which they understood perfectly.
Frustration can be a bad thing when learning to speak another language. It can thwart your success, make you feel like all of your effort was for naught. No matter how many full sentences you can say, if no one understands you, then it can almost compel you to give up. Sometimes I would simply point to the menu or say the item number in an unenthusiastic voice. “Yeah. We’d like a number 3, a number 10 and a number 19. With white rice.” But that only frustrated me more. I was getting annoyed. I felt like I was being rude and I surely didn’t want that. I didn’t want to sound like the typical American in a Chinese restaurant. Whatever that was. My wife was Chinese. She spoke my language. I wanted to speak hers. During our long drives, she could understand me perfectly. At home I could hold a basic conversation with her. Basic, being the operative word. But still, I could do it. I wanted to order our meal in Cantonese. We frequently went out to eat at Chinese restaurants. I mean, come on, how hard can it be? I was already pretty far beyond just ordering dinner. What was the problem?
“It’s your American accent,” my wife said.
“What? Mut-yeh? American’s don’t have an accent,” I joked.
“Oh, yes they do.”
Years later now, once in a while, my wife will pick up a banana and show it to me and I will say the word. Heu(r)ng Tsiu. I will even swallow the R as I say it. She will point to her eyes, ears, mouth and nose and I will recite the words in Cantonese, like a child’s poem. “Ahn. Eee. Oww, Bay.” I might even put a little musical spin to it, just like a child might. I can no longer remember the bad words that the two women on the street said. Which, I guess, is a good thing. I still cannot speak Cantonese, although I can sometimes pick up various words or phrases. At times I can eavesdrop on some people in a store and pick up the gist of what they are saying. Now and then I will say a word or two, maybe even a partial sentence and, American accent or no American accent, my wife will tell me, yes, that’s right. Or she’ll gently correct me if I flubbed the words.
I’ll say, good morning Chinese girl, in her language—“Jo-sun, Chun-Guo loi jai”—and hand her a cup of tea. She always seems to like that. I will tell her that I love her, “Oh-oi-lei.”
Her eyes will sparkle and she will smile. “I understood you perfectly.” Then she will say it back to me.
She speaks impeccable English.
How to cite: Beyl, Jeff. “On Learning to Speak Cantonese.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 27 Jan. 2024, chajournal.blog/2024/01/27/speak-cantonese.
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Jeff Beyl writes about nature, fly-fishing, music, geology, surfing, and the ocean. He has been published in several magazines such as Big Sky Journal, Outside Bozeman, Montana Fly-fishing, Idaho Magazine, Northwest Sportsman, Ocean Magazine, Snowy Egret Literary Journal. His book, A Conversation With the Earth, was published in 2020. He has travelled widely through Asia, Hong Kong, Japan, Europe, the Caribbean and the Mediterranean. He is a jazz guitarist and photographer, scuba diver and fly-fisherman. He lives in Seattle with his wife.