The Tongue of Another

I pick up here where I left off from “A Friend of Two,” posted in late August. I had just arrived here and found myself struggling with the lack of English. Honestly, I knew it was to be expected, and honestly, I know I should have tried to pick up some more basic Cantonese before I left.

But as it became readily apparent—I didn’t.

To this effect, I enrolled in Cantonese for Foreign Learners 1, which has, in the first five classes, served to localize my speech more than it had been before. Being an unstandardized, not completely written language, there is debate over how many tones Cantonese does (or should) have.

For those who don’t know much about the Chinese languages (called dialects), they are tonal, which in short means that same syllables pronounced with different pitches in tone (not all of which steady) have the potential to change their meaning.

Having gone to Chinese school (teaching Mandarin) when I was little, I was used to being told about the four tones in Mandarin, five including the neutral tone. With English being the language of my household, I learned the language an auxiliary language (contrary to popular opinion), and had not been able to pronounce understandably until just a few years ago. Now, in words that I know, I can pronounce the tones properly, albeit with an American accent.

In Cantonese, the debate over how many tones exist ranges from as low as six to as high as eleven or twelve, depending on your source. In the Hong Kong variety of Cantonese, there had historically been seven tones, but two consolidated with the recent “lazy generation.” So in my class, we are being taught with six tones, which usually appear as superscript numerals immediately following the syllable that they modify.

Explained in words, the first tone is high, the second is high rising, the third medium, the fourth medium falling, the fifth low falling then rising, and the sixth the lowest. For the vowels and consonant sounds, we use the Jyutping system, which the book claims was chosen for its resemblance to the International Phonetic Alphabet (though I know it could be closer).

So my goal in learning Cantonese, other than for the sake of learning Cantonese, is so that I can get around places earlier and apply such skills to a future professional career.

But like I mention time and time again, my classes here are in English (with varying levels of quality). This would imply that the local students and the Mainland Chinese students speak scholarly English to be able to read scholarly articles and to understand lectures in their entirety.

This leads me into the way that I’ve seen local students function as a reflection of their education. As my cousin told me, the education system, heavily influenced by the British, “teaches them to take orders, but doesn’t promote critical thought.” My mother, who spent part of her childhood in Hong Kong, told me how though they had English classes, they were not effective in method or end result. And according to my own research, Hong Kong schools only teach English to students based on vocational needs.

But this isn’t about English. Locals speak mostly Cantonese to each other here and most can work with Mandarin. However, with English as a co-official language, one would expect the system to make more of an effort to teach English. With Hong Kong seeing itself as “Asia’s world city,” English competence is one way that it keeps its competitiveness—a trait that it’s not maintaining, if it had it in the first place.

The University of Hong Kong purportedly uses English as the medium of communication for all classes (expect foreign language), so it would make sense that the students are competent in English in a scholarly capacity—which brings me back to what my Hong Kong University buddy, a local student, told me.

Apparently, when I called her the morning that she gave me the tour, she said that she was so nervous to be speaking English to me. Don’t get me wrong—I think that she’s a great person and I remain grateful she gave me that tour, but a student shouldn’t be frightened to speak in the language that they’re being instructed in.

Though she represents just one student out of the 20,000 here, thinking that a lot of local students doubt their own English competency helps explain a lot of things. For one thing, local students focus a lot on face, which is based on the Chinese emphasis on harmony in relationships over individuality and non-conformity. This means that if you say “Hi” to a local, you will get a “Hi” back, and little more. I have experienced this on multiple occasions when I attempted to break the ice with my floormates in my hall.

Needless to say all but like two practically gave the cold shoulder, as they did not know me yet, and did not feel comfortable enough with me to be open, which I feel is perfectly understandable. But a friend of mine, who speaks Cantonese (among other languages), finds that the local students warm up to him faster, which, needless to say, is in all likelihood because there is less of a perceivable language barrier.

So in their not responding to my friendly efforts in attempt to save face, they’ve actually lost face in my consciousness (and most exchange students’ sub-consciousness) as they isolate themselves from the exchange students (possibly as well as the Mainland Chinese).

And I’m not trying to be an English imperialist in the opinion. I believe everyone is entitled to the language of his or her choice, with the thought that one should be open when going abroad, especially to a non-English country. So I failed; I assumed that just because English is the language of instruction that English is something most everyone is competent in.

And to this effect, I am attempting the learn Cantonese. A month (one quarter) into my program, I find that by itself, my Cantonese has not improved, which to the contrary my Italian developed rapidly during my two weeks there last summer. This morning, as an example, I asked the minibus to stop in Cantonese, which, while understood, had a highly apparent accent, which even I myself could hear. So I’ve resigned myself to the primary goal of being understood in Cantonese.

But even if I’m understood and I can understand, I face a second dilemma—a dilemma that could be readily solved by speaking English. Since I look like a local despite being rooted 7,000 miles away, a lot of service workers think I’m stupid or slow when I speak to them in Cantonese. The little that I know is slow and heavily accented. When I speak English though, I get great service and people who think that I’m highly educated. In all likelihood, I probably get charged higher prices as well.

So I guess there’s just no winning. A friend of mine here, a Scottish exchange student who doesn’t look like a local, manages to ask the minibus to stop as well. She told me that when she does so, she get stares from both sides of the aisle. The locals look at her for having a funny accent with little appreciation for her efforts to learn the local tongue, and the tourists and ex-pats look at her, wondering what she just said.

So what can be done?

Well, for me, as I’ve said, I hang out mostly with exchange students. Scratch that—only with exchange students. It’s not my choice, as going abroad is, in my opinion, to branch out, especially into the host culture.

As for my Hong Kong University buddy, she informed me that she, as well as many other local students don’t attend lecture, opting just for tutorial (or section), which are often taught in Cantonese if everyone is competent. She told be that the professors speaking English are hard to understand.

So a few weeks ago, at my faculty’s orientation for registering for classes, I raised my hand with a question about tutorials: “My HKU buddy told me that some tutorials are conducted in Cantonese. So how easy would it be to switch tutorials if I need to get out of a Cantonese-language one?”

And the answer, “Well they aren’t supposed to be speaking Cantonese, so if it is in Cantonese and the tutor refuses to teach in English, tell us and we’ll get everything straightened out.”

Alrighty then.