Apr. 3rd, 2008 09:38 pm
on language
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
toastykittenYesterday we ordered pizza from a local eatery. The deliveryman turned out to be Arab, and he and Mark had a short conversation about our loquat tree. He corrected Mark's pronunciation - "It's eckadinya." We found out that he was from Lebanon, and Mark just made a little note about maybe it being an accent or regional thing, since his family pronounces it "eschadinya" and they are mostly in Jordan. (By the way, I have no idea if my transliteration of the Arabic is accurate or not. It's just what it sounds like to me.)
Today I got my nails down at a place near our house. I don't know why I was surprised that Asian women were in the store - it's not like I've ever seen a nail salon where there's white people doing customers' nails. Anyway, I overheard some of them talking in Cantonese and I made conversation with the girl who was doing my nails. She seems to have been here for a while, and she asked me, if I was born here, why my Cantonese was so good. I almost fell off my chair, since my family makes fun of my accent all the time. She told me most of the ABCs she knew didn't know their language, and whenever they went back to China to visit, their parents would get yelled at by the neighbors for not teaching them the language.
I also told her that I could speak our village dialect, which she thought was pretty cool. She talked about how she never understood her friends' moms who were from Taishan. It's the same with my mom; my Cantonese friends just smile and nod whenever she talks to them. I just realized the other day that there are some words in my dialect that there aren't really equivalents for in Cantonese. Like the word "ngai" which means "crazy" or "insane". You could use "chi seen" in Cantonese, but it already has a Taishan equivalent - "chay slaan". I could be wrong, though - it's not like I'm an expert in either dialect. I only speak them improperly most of the time. My mom uses it often to refer to Americans whenever they do things she doesn't understand. Those "ngai lauw fahn!" You've got to do it in that village voice, too to be really effective.
Today I got my nails down at a place near our house. I don't know why I was surprised that Asian women were in the store - it's not like I've ever seen a nail salon where there's white people doing customers' nails. Anyway, I overheard some of them talking in Cantonese and I made conversation with the girl who was doing my nails. She seems to have been here for a while, and she asked me, if I was born here, why my Cantonese was so good. I almost fell off my chair, since my family makes fun of my accent all the time. She told me most of the ABCs she knew didn't know their language, and whenever they went back to China to visit, their parents would get yelled at by the neighbors for not teaching them the language.
I also told her that I could speak our village dialect, which she thought was pretty cool. She talked about how she never understood her friends' moms who were from Taishan. It's the same with my mom; my Cantonese friends just smile and nod whenever she talks to them. I just realized the other day that there are some words in my dialect that there aren't really equivalents for in Cantonese. Like the word "ngai" which means "crazy" or "insane". You could use "chi seen" in Cantonese, but it already has a Taishan equivalent - "chay slaan". I could be wrong, though - it's not like I'm an expert in either dialect. I only speak them improperly most of the time. My mom uses it often to refer to Americans whenever they do things she doesn't understand. Those "ngai lauw fahn!" You've got to do it in that village voice, too to be really effective.
Tags: