A Long Stay in a Distant Land by Chieh Chieng

Author:Chieh Chieng
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2009-08-01T16:00:00+00:00

Speaking Cantonese So-So Dkay

(1990)

Louis believed he spoke Cantonese much better than so-so okay, which was how Grandma, who taught him the dialect, described his proficiency in it.

There were seven tones, three more than in Mandarin. Speaking correctly was not only a matter of pronouncing the correct word. It involved pronouncing the correct word with the correct intonation. High. High rising. High falling. Middle. Low. Low rising. Low falling.

Every Saturday between the ages of eight and fourteen, Louis learned Cantonese from Grandma, which was to say every Saturday she popped into her cassette player one of a series of Cantonese instructional tapes, pressed play, and went to the patio to read while he listened.

The series was entitled How Are You, Willy Lau? and featured the travels of Willy Lau and his son Joseph. They launched off Cape Canaveral in a space shuttle with the mission of foresting the moon. They buckled on steel armor, polished their scabbards, and sailed westward for the Americas on Spanish galleons. They joined Roman legions in repelling hordes of fur-covered Vandals in the woods of what is now Germany. They went to the San Diego Zoo {"Ah-Bah, paau! Father, leopard!").

Louis considered himself a capable speaker of Cantonese, and dismissed Grandma's winces at his tones because he believed he spoke the Queen's English of Cantonese and she spoke Cockney.

His mother often took him to Chinatown for Saturday grocery trips when he was in grade school. They'd walk past fruit markets and herbal shops and she'd point at random people and say, "They're speaking Cantonese. Listen. You'll never learn if all you listen to are tapes."

On the corner of Alpine and Broadway was the tea seller's shop, and there the shop owner's conversations with the retired old locals often became heated. Louis's mother would stop by the small, two-story building to listen. Stacked on the main counter near the entrance were rows of large clear jars that contained everything from tea leaves to dried seahorses and abalone. The scent of ginseng and mushrooms filled the room.

"Two hundred dollars a pound?" one of the old locals would ask.

"Monkey-picked leaves, ignoramus."

"Monkey leaves?"

"Nobody asked you to like the price."

"These leaves aren't worth two hundred pounds of monkey turd."

"Your mother's a monkey."

"Suck on my asshole."

"Fuck you and your monkey mother!"

Cantonese was a tricky language. It was a hard dialect with sharp, bitting sounds. Mandarin was gentle in comparison, too soft. Cantonese was a commanding dialect, fit for someone who gave orders.

At age eight, Louis wrapped a white T-shirt around the top of his head and fashioned himself captain of a galleon. He gave orders to the stuffed animals in his room. To the pig he commanded, "Swing the tiller six degrees west and watch that mainsail!" He used words he remembered from Chinatown and the tapes. "Bring me a goblet of your finest wine, ignoramus!" he shouted at the dalmatian, its eyes frozen wide in surprised joy. To his disbelieving parents he said, "Don't stand there like blocks of wood. Mop the deck!"

Different tones produced different meanings.

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