Cantonese in the bar

Decided to start blogging again after discovering RTHK Naked Cantonese.  Cecilie and Sarah Passmore make picking up Cantonese rather interesting.  I’ve previously heard of Cecilie through seeing her odd advertisement about learning Cantonese the “natural way – from a Norwegian”

I hope to pick up as much as I can from the Naked Cantonese lessons by writing down the phrases discussed in each of the lessons. I’ll just write them down phonetically at first and clean up the actual tones and spellings in subsequent posts.

Cantonese phrases discussed in Lesson 1:

Ngo msik gong ying man – I don’t know how to speak English

This is Cecilie’s technique for forcing Cantonese speakers to speak to you in Cantonese and not English.

be tsao – beer

yat pui be tsao ah mgoy – one pint of beer please

me ah be tsao? – what kind of beer?

sang lik – San Miguel

sang lik ah m’goy – San Miguel please

ga si ba – Carlsberg

chung man dim gong ah – how do you say that it Chinese?

hei lik – Heineken

gei do chin ah – how much? (lit. how many money)

gei chin ah – how much (more colloquial)

ee sap man – 20 dollars

ho peng ah – so cheap