Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Surviving In Chinese


I am obviously ignorant in Portuguese.

So that left Chinese and Cantonese. I can handle the spoken Cantonese, the reading takes a bit of getting used to. However it's a little painful to have to plough through all the documents in Chinese.

While I don't 'mentally translate all reading materials to English or think in English and mentally translate them to Cantonese before I open my mouth', my reading (i.e working) speed is twice as slow.

Bah.

5 comments:

littlecartnoodles said...

Hey, join the club. That's why I argue with my wife in English but woo her in Cantonese (sounds more sincere when spoken slowly and deliberately).

imp said...

lcn: wahahahha! evil man!!

Anonymous said...

I speak and listen well in both chinese and cantonese.. but if you ask me to read.. or write.. i would die.. ;)

Anonymous said...

don't you think putonghua sounds better, but then traditional chinese (is that what you mean by reading cantonese?) characters are more beautiful?
i can read simplified chinese, but i actually don't know how to write them, hehe!

imp said...

mamabok: speaking is great enough!

kikare: haha. i'm fine with both languages lah. not really. the so-called written cantonese is different...you know...the way the comics are written???