Dear Harry,
Hey! It’s me again. How’s your dance club life been so far? Guess you must be busy practicing dancing every day after school. In the last letter you’ve sent me, you mentioned that you met a new friend at the club called David and he’s a pretty cool guy! Maybe the next time you’re back in Taipei, you can invite him to visit Taipei too, since I would like to meet him in person and make friends with him. Hope your dancing skill has been improving through these weeks of practicing, and wish you good luck at the upcoming dancing competition! I believe you would impress not only the judges but also the audience. Break a leg!
Besides learning Cantonese, I have been learning cooking recently. Since I realized that eating out every day is bad for health, most of them are intense and contains a great number of calories, which is, they may deteriorate your health gradually. In order to maintain good health, I tried to cook healthily and eat lots of vegetables. Although they aren’t tasty enough for me to genuinely enjoy them, I believe my cooking is going to be better! And maybe the next time you bring David to my place, I can cook for you guys! Before that, I would try my best so that I would be able to make mouthwatering delicacies for you.
As for my process of learning Cantonese, what I have been learning for this week is the part of their “interjection.” Before learning Cantonese, I found the tone of their talk interesting, but since I couldn’t understand the content, I didn’t know what makes it interesting. It dawns on me that it’s because there is a myriad of interjections in their language. For example, 嘩, 哎吔, 哦, 噫, “Er…,” to name but a few; it’s impossible to name all of them! Let me explain the difference between them to you. In situations which make you feel surprised, you might want to use “嘩.” This is quite similar to Taiwanese. As for “哎吔,” it is used usually in these three situations: when you’re suddenly injured, when you suddenly come up with something in your mind, and when something doesn’t match your expectations. As for “哦,” it is a little bit special; its meaning differs when the tone is high or low. With a higher tone, it expresses your sudden comprehension. With a lower tone, it expresses your consent when others ask you to help them out. “噫” is used when you see something that attracts you. “Er…” is used when you are still thinking about your response in a conversation but you don’t want to be in the dead air, which is quite similar to English.
Here’s the Cantonese class for today! Hope you’ve learned a lot and maybe you can try to talk to me in Cantonese the next time we meet each other. Take care!
Warmest regards,
Kaelyn