She is good at everything, except finding the cheese...

I went to Emilie's concert at City Hall on Wednesday.

She is not only a great singer, but also a talented writer.

Read her blog here.

Here is a poem Emilie recently wrote:

(This poem is in Cantonese, and is rhyme with "-au" and "-aau")

有時候

人叫劉

放學後

去長洲

有時候

人叫劉

在酒樓

見朋友

有時候

人叫劉

吃鳳爪

說可口

有時候

人叫劉

喝紅酒

快睡覺

有時候

人叫劉

然之後

痛苦頭

How do you say this in Cantonese?

After a few attempts to say this sentence during their lesson, Brian and Richard almost thought that it was a mistake to start learning Cantonese!

"The ghost of my expensive turtle is sometimes strange, and sometimes well-behaved."




Hints:

Ghost: gwái

Expensive: gwai

Turtle: gwāi

Strange: gwaai

Well-behaved: gwāai


Have fun :-)

Under The Hawthorn Tree

“我不能等你一年零一个月了，我也不能等你到二十五岁了，但是我会等你一辈子。”

“我不能等你一年零一個月了，我也不能等你到二十五歲了，但是我會等你一輩子。”

This was the line that first moved Zhang Yimou. You need to watch the film before you can understand it.

"Under The Hawthorn Tree" is the latest film directed by Zhang. The film was based on a true love story during the Cultural Revolution in China.

I was moved by the film,

more than once.

An Empty Glass with Happiness

An Empty Glass with Happiness

空杯子的幸福

我常常去我房子对面的餐馆，

是一种习惯。

工作后我很累，

想喝酒一杯。

那个时候，

没有做菜的理由。

我穿舒服的衣服，

慢慢走路。

买半只鸡，一碗玉米，

一杯啤酒，我想这就是

世界上最足够的幸福。

都在转眼间，

但是我看见

微光里一种热情的招待。

一个人和自己温暖的宴会，

一瞬间结束，

剩余空杯子和幸福。

Ji Hoon was asked by me to write a poem with rhyme, I fell in love with it when he read it to me...

We are supposed to talk about this in class tomorrow, but I don't think he will mind if I share it with you now!

This is his poem with a few lines changed by me. I hope he likes my title.

禾口

In the book Eat, Pray, Love, Gilbert's friend mentioned that every city has a word. Rome's is "sex," the Vatican's is "power", and New York's is "achieve".

How about countries? A recent article in Wall Street Journal discussed what Chinese character reflected China the most.

It's 和.

If 和 is separated into two parts, they are 禾and口. 禾and 口 mean crop and mouth respectively. Every "mouth" is fed by "crop"-no one is starving. It seems match with the communist ideas quite well. (but is China still a communist country?)

和hé means "peace" , "harmony" and many others. 家和万事兴,和气生财and以和为贵are both Chinese sayings emphasising how important 和is. It brings you good luck and wealth. It is a virtue. Interestingly enough, these sayings tell us the promises of 和, but not many sayings out there show us how we can maintain it.

Maybe it's not about HOW, maybe it's all about the MUST to maintain it. One of the ways to maintain 和 is to punish any "act disturbing the peace of the society".

In some contexts, 和 is also pronounced as huò, it means "mix" and "blend". There are 56 ethnic groups and more than 6 religions in China, the meanings "mix" and "blend", to some extent, seems to reflect the reality quite well.

Though, I think it would be nice to have some "mixed VOICES" in China.

A poem that makes no sense, but...

makes you laugh! (hopefully)

One Saturday in September, Jun Wen got fed up with his school work, so we decided to do something more interesting:

(The poem is in Mandarin, and is rhyme with '-a')




我家有一个爸爸，
我家有一个妈妈。
我爸喜欢喝茶，
我妈喜欢吹喇叭。
妈吹喇叭，
爸就在地上乱爬，
爸吹喇叭，
感到尴尬。
因为他一吹，
妈就大骂，
妈大骂，
连鸟儿也乱爬。
对他们俩，
我简直没办法，
使弟弟想自杀，
妹妹很怕。
凡是我们在吵架，
奶奶就会说停一下。
妈妈感到尴尬，
低头坐下，
爸爸脸火辣辣，
开门离家。
弟弟感到内疚，
便去吃麻辣。
好好的一家，
到底在干吗？

Hope to read your (silly) poems in the future.
Think you are not creative enough?
Maybe all you need is an opportunity!

Language Style

In the summer of 2008, my friends and I went to Los Angeles to attend a friend's graduation ceremony. After staying in the same house for more than ten days, we acted, and talked each other. I remembered one of my favourite questions at that time was "really?", soon it became everyone's favourite question too.

It was a happy summer.

According to new research from psychologists at The University of Texas at Austin, mimicking other's language style shows a happy relationship. A psychology professor and a psychology graduate student teamed up to find out how people's language styles could affect each other, and how the language styles tell us about the relationship between two people. The happier the two people are in their relationship, the closer their language styles are. The researchers are now trying to analyse whether language style matching can be used to predict the beginning and end of romantic relationships.

Do you think a relationship stage can be truly revealed through analysing the language styles of the two people?

十卜十卜 Sahpbūk Sahpbūk Support Support

"十卜十卜 ^_^ "

I was lost for a bit before I got the meaning.

I got this message from Alan, one of my students in Three Dogs, after I sent him the link of this blog.

Cantonese is indeed a very interesting dialect, let me know if you can get the following right!

Mītsìh, ngóhdeih hóu ngāamkī, ngóh yātdihng sahpbūk néih!

Bilingual Babies

What do you do before your baby is born?

Apart from attending childbirth classes, shopping for baby-care basics, getting plenty of rest and eating right, have you thought about letting your unborn child listen to a second language? According to Science Daily, infants hear two languages in mothers' stomachs show interest in both languages after they are born. If you are thinking of raising a bilingual child, it's never too early to start doing it once you find out you are pregnant!

孩子出生以前，你会做什么?
想要培养一个双语孩子，怀孕时可开始对未出生的宝宝说第二语言。

孩子出生以前，你會做什麼?
想要培養一個雙語孩子，懷孕時可開始對未出生的寶寶說第二語言。

This post is dedicated to Eric and Christy. :-)

Dictionary Dictionary

nciku

My favourite online Mandarin dictionary. They now have bilingual ebooks for iPad users. The books come with text and audio version, you could also see pinyin for Chinese text.

MDGB

Another good online dictionary/ learning site. If you are learning Chinese characters, you might want to play this game: click Practice, go to Character Quiz, enjoy!

Pinyin/ Yale Input

An online Mandarin/ Cantonese input tool, converts romanization systems into characters.

Google Translate

There are many unreliable online translation tools out there, but the Google tool is truly not bad!

Noah and T-Rex

Noah was holding this T-Rex Paper Animation Kit, came to me and said, “nǐ kěyǐ gēn wǒ zuò zhè gè ma ? bàba bù gēn wǒ zuò 。māma bù gēn wǒ zuò 。pópo bù gēn wǒ zuò.”

你可以跟我做这个吗? 爸爸不跟我做。妈妈不跟我做。婆婆不跟我做。

你可以跟我做這個嗎? 爸爸不跟我做。媽媽不跟我做。婆婆不跟我做。

Eng: Could you do this with me? Daddy didn’t want to do it with me. Mummy didn’t want to do it with me. Granny didn’t want to do it with me.

I was touched. How could I turn this little boy down? I was the one he tuned to when his family had “turned their backs on” him.

It was great fun making the craft. I was hooked after 10 minutes.