Comments on: Hong Kong - Day 1 http://unknowngenius.com/blog/archives/2005/12/10/hong-kong-day-1/ Chemically-enhanced neural rewiring, on a semi-regular basis... Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:59:47 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: Jonathan Stanley http://unknowngenius.com/blog/archives/2005/12/10/hong-kong-day-1/#comment-18703 Jonathan Stanley Fri, 30 Nov 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://unknowngenius.com/blog/?p=1320#comment-18703 Ah, the case of 雞同鴨講 (lit. chicken with duck speak)... Mandarin itself varies across China and you were probably far enough south with what you did pick up being quite different to "Standard" (Northern) Mandarin. There's also the possibility what you learnt wasn't Mandarin at all, but rather the local dialects Wu, Hui or perhaps Min? As for Hong Kong, the locals more or less "expect" Westerners to speak English (even if they aren't fluent themselves), so when Westerners do manage fairly fluent Cantonese or Mandarin, it causes the linguistic areas of the brain to jam... you may as well have been speaking Russian ;) Much kudos in being able to use your Japanese keitai in being able to write your point across however, and I'm sure it must have been a weird experience for the locals. I do wonder if any of them picked up it was actually kanji, and not hanzi that you were writing? Hong Kong does benefit from the strange quirk of geography (and history), ending up as an extremely dense, yet green place. Travelling the distance of Yokohama to Shinjuku in Hong Kong would actually take you out of the territory, into either China (Shenzhen) or half-way across to Macau, that other oddball ex-colony of Portuguese flavour. Regarding the smog... you have neighbouring Shenzhen and Guangdong to blame for that. Just seems to hang over Hong Kong once it has travelled a little way south. In any case, definately a lot cleaner than say back in the 60's to 80's when Hong Kong was choking in air pollution of its own making! ;) Ah, the case of 雞同鴨講 (lit. chicken with duck speak)… Mandarin itself varies across China and you were probably far enough south with what you did pick up being quite different to “Standard” (Northern) Mandarin. There’s also the possibility what you learnt wasn’t Mandarin at all, but rather the local dialects Wu, Hui or perhaps Min?

As for Hong Kong, the locals more or less “expect” Westerners to speak English (even if they aren’t fluent themselves), so when Westerners do manage fairly fluent Cantonese or Mandarin, it causes the linguistic areas of the brain to jam… you may as well have been speaking Russian ;)

Much kudos in being able to use your Japanese keitai in being able to write your point across however, and I’m sure it must have been a weird experience for the locals. I do wonder if any of them picked up it was actually kanji, and not hanzi that you were writing?

Hong Kong does benefit from the strange quirk of geography (and history), ending up as an extremely dense, yet green place. Travelling the distance of Yokohama to Shinjuku in Hong Kong would actually take you out of the territory, into either China (Shenzhen) or half-way across to Macau, that other oddball ex-colony of Portuguese flavour.

Regarding the smog… you have neighbouring Shenzhen and Guangdong to blame for that. Just seems to hang over Hong Kong once it has travelled a little way south. In any case, definately a lot cleaner than say back in the 60’s to 80’s when Hong Kong was choking in air pollution of its own making! ;)

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