| weather | : |  | cloudy |
| outside | : |  | 8°C |
| mood | : |  | feh |
I'm taking a Classical Chinese Medicine Studies course that's taught in Cantonese. I'm incredibly interested in the material, but I have a really hard time taking notes. I understand the lectures, but having to write things down in English is slow at best and sometimes impossible. It's not for credit, there are no exams, it's just for personal interest. But still.
And copying stuff from the whiteboard in Chinese... half the time I can, half the time I can't. I don't always know what the character is with whiteboard penmanship (read: little balls of scribbles). So, I hope that my little scribble balls are enough to jog my memory later.
I'm finding that I'm grasping for vocabulary and grammar in Cantonese lately. I'm resorting to thinking in Mandarin, then literally translating instead. I actually forgot that "pineapple" was 菠蘿 in Cantonese and said 鳳梨. That's not a good sign.
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The Arabic letter "Feh".
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I realized last year that I still have a lot of latent abilities to understand Cantonese (the first language that I learned, which was completely replaced by English by the time I was 7 or 8). I always knew I could understand conversational Cantonese, but it wasn't until last year that I realized I don't translate it into English in my head; I just understand it. Sometimes, it can be hard for me to translate stuff into English for Robin.
When my grandparents visited our family from Hong Kong while I was in high school, I had a very hard time being understood. While I can understand it when spoken to me, I have a very hard time pulling vocabulary out of my head in Cantonese. So I kept speaking in a garbled combination of Chinese and French (which I was taking in school). Really unfortunate, as NO ONE understood me; I am the only member of my family who knows any French!
So yeah. That was my long and rambly way of saying I understand.
Especially the language puns =\ It's like, "Oyeuh? Why is that funny?"
I hope the instructor goes sloooowly!
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What I'm hoping to do, when I eventually work up the courage, is to ask if I can help make presentation slides for future lectures and/or help with the course material for the translated English classes that they're planning for the future.
I have a feeling I'd learn it much better that way.
And yes; whiteboard Chinese sucks. I had to deal with that shit when I was at Beida; if the teacher was writing with chalk on a blackboard, I could usually understand their personal interpretation of 草书, but when there was a whiteboard up front, I was totally screwed.
Oh, it must be then.
I do know that in Taiwanese (ie. the Minnan dialect), 鳳梨 sounds like 往來 which is why they give pineapples as gifts for business associates.