h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

An FYI for anyone drifting in who doesn't know much about various Chinese dialects:

I'm a native speaker (or listener, anyway) of Chinese, but not of Mandarin; the dialect I know is Cantonese. Cantonese is almost, but not quite, completely unlike Mandarin. I've listened to Mandarin speakers and once in a while I might catch a phrase or two, but mostly things are pronounced differently and said differently.

What makes Cantonese difficult is that some phrases aren't spoken the way they are written. Mandarin and Cantonese share a written language; it's just the speaking that's different. In Mandarin, each written word has a corresponding spoken syllable. This is mostly true in Cantonese, but there are some phrases which written one way and spoken a completely different way. Even if you were to translate each Mandarin syllable to its corresponding Cantonese syllable, the result would look nothing like the "correct" Cantonese speaking of that particular phrase. You just have to know the phrase.

A loose analogy would be trying to decode the various rhymes and dislogic in Cockney English. But it's not a very good analogy, so don't criticize me for putting up misleading literary devices.

By the way, Cantonese-speaking people mostly come from the southern portion of China, near Hong Kong and the province of Canton (duh). If I were ot make a silly joke I could say that Cantonese speakers all have Southern accents. But it's a very silly joke, so I won't make it.

That is all very well, but what about researchers like Jan & me who find themselves surrounded by Cantonese speakers here in Macau and not able to understand a word that is said to us?
Even after 6 months, we still cannot understand what we're told. Any suggestions, please?

Perhaps should you try to learn Cantonese? That must be a way to understanding it I guess.

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