bao
canto quips
Dear friends,
Each time I see fam & friends for my semi-annual stateside visit, I’m reminded how much I love being immersed in chinglish. Even with my shamefully limited vocabulary, I really like how poetic (and ruthless) Cantonese is.
For example, at lunch yesterday with our neighbors, I nonsensically began nibbling on some sourdough after declaring to the whole table that I was full, to which auntie Ivy cheekily replied: 你講飽, 仲食包.
Which phonetically sounds like:
lei gong bao, zung sik bao.
[you said you’re full, yet you’re still eating bread]
It’s precise. It’s clever. There is rhythm and rhyme to it. It’s the perfect quip that would not work half as well in English. I love it.
It’s also something that my brain completely understands when I hear it, but my tongue would struggle to say out loud unless pressed. We as the next generation affectionately embrace this as:
識聽唔識講
sik teng, mm sik gong
[can listen, cannot speak]
(my cousin got me this spot-on shirt that i’ve been wearing non-stop. thanks, grace <3)
We’ve been workshopping some other ideas too that represent our family. Stay tuned. They’re all 黐線 chee seen [crazy] hehe. Good thing God specializes in crazy families 🫰
be well, friends!
reb
