Cantonese tongue twisters turn into plot-twisters

Standing on the peak of Taishan, holding a camera for a newlywed couple from Shenzhen, I heard the woman suddenly yell to me in Cantonese.

"Excuse me?" I shouted over the wind. We had been chatting for several minutes already, but only in Mandarin.

"So, you don't understand Cantonese, then?" The woman looked unimpressed as she took the camera and put it back in her purse. "I thought you said you lived in Guangzhou!"

I was unprepared for this response. Chinese people are usually flabbergasted that I can speak even a word of Mandarin. I managed a meager excuse about it being too difficult, but the couple had already turned to leave.

Cantonese is infamous among foreigners for its inscrutability. Judging from cadence alone, an overheard conversation in Cantonese could easily be construed as a heated and potentially violent argument.

Cantonese slang is also notoriously prolific and idiomatic. And the tones - are there six, eight, or nine? How am I supposed to learn a language whose native speakers can't even agree on the number of tones?

Still, the woman's remark was an unpleasant reminder of how little I had learned during my first year in Guangzhou, so I enlisted my roommate as a study buddy. We found a tutor, bought a textbook, and our journey began.

As it turns out, Cantonese is hard. Barrels of fun, but mentally exhausting. Despite the noble efforts of our teacher, we've only succeeded in internalizing a few fun-to-say but way-too-specific sentences and structures.

My roommate, for instance, is an expert at assuming an air of exasperation while asking: "How can you say such a thing here?!" (Lei hai dou gong maai di gam ge je?!)

I, meanwhile, have mastered the frivolous outburst of a restaurant patron when asked if he would mind sharing a table: "Sitting with others? No way!" (Tung jan dei maa toi aa? Ngo dei m dzai gaa!)

Problem is, the opportunities to use these phrases in the presence of native Cantonese speakers are relatively rare. It wasn't until my dad came to visit that I finally had a perfect opportunity to flex my skills.

After meeting my father at the Hong Kong airport, we decided to grab a quick dim sum before taking our train to Guangzhou. The restaurant was full, so we took a number, nervously checking our watches as we waited. The hostess called our number. I leapt toward the desk. She gestured toward a large table already occupied by several diners.

"Li dou dak m dak aa?" ("Is this table alright?")

I was torn. Of course we didn't mind sharing a table. Besides, we were in a rush and couldn't afford to be picky. But every fiber of my consciousness wanted to blurt out the phrase I had already honed to perfection. I couldn't help myself, so I sang out, practically exploding with false indignation:

"Tung jan dei maa toi aa?!" ("Sitting with other people?!")

The hostess blinked.

"Super!" I chirped merrily, sitting down in a huff, motioning frantically for my father to join me before the hostess had time to consider what a weird, bipolar customer I was. Like I said, barrels of fun.

In all seriousness, I don't regret spending hours filling my head with Cantonese. At the very least, it has taken this dialect that I hear on the streets and transformed it from mere static obstructing my Chinese education into music enhancing it. I highly recommend studying the local dialect, at least casually, especially for those looking to expose themselves to a whole new dimension of embarrassment.

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