Sunday, January 15, 2023

GREAT MOMENTS IN DUTCH DIPLOMACY

My apartment mate is much more of a Cantonese chauvenist vis-à-vis the recently immigrated Mandarin-speaking crowd than I could ever be. Reason being that she is Cantonese, whereas I am merely a Dutch-ethnic person who happens to speak Canto.
We Dutch are rather clever when it comes to languages. She grew up in San Francisco Chinatown and fondly remembers the neighborhood before all those Northerners started showing up all over the place, and just cannot develop any affection for the snootiness.
Or mushmouthed pukey sound of Mandarin.
Or their rude pushiness.

So, being an equitable man I never shared with her the snarky poster that kept showing up at Hong Kong protests, which basically takes issue with the Northern inability to adhere to the norms of civilized behaviour. OR speak like proper human beings.
I love everybody, including the Hunanese.
Bless them all.

Some of my best friends speak Mandarin.
Or Shanghainese. Almost the same.
A little more hissy-spitty.

Plus we Dutch can be rather blunt too, so I'm sort of okay with them not washing themselves very much and always swilling boba beverages, it "humanizes" them.
香港人講廣東話,聽唔識就翻鄉下。

Heung gong yan gong gwon tung waa, teng m sik jau faan heung haa. Hong Kong people speak Cantonese, if you don't understand it, return to the countryside.

The problem with the text is two-fold: firstly it depends on non-simplified characters, and secondly you'd probably have to speak Cantonese to actually understand it.

Thirdly, most Cantonese are too polite and not given to assertive in your face manifestations of an undiplomatic character to utilize it, unless like the Hong Kongers they were totally fed up with the Hunanese or other yokels. Just not done, don't ya know.

So yes, I've never shared this with her.
I don't think I should.



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