My Dodgy Canto

So often we have the privilege of laughing at chinglish. For me, I get my fair dose of beautifully expressed chinglish from the Asian adults at my church. Oh, and I might add that my parents, at times, are quite proficient at this too. :) Though all done in a friendly manner, I've never really understood how it must feel to have your chinglish get laughed at.

Today I had the rare yet unique opportunity of publicly providing some Canto-English humour. As we have an up-coming church youth group camp (for high-schooler's), some of us had the privilege of presenting a short promo for the adults - informing them of what's happening, etc. All in Canto. Wooo. :D

Ever since the last time I visited Hong Kong in 07, my Canto has declined - exponentially. I know that I can't pronounce most, and, alot of the words properly, yet I can't fix my pronounciation. Just like the proficient Chinglish speakers, but with their Chinglish. :)

So, as I was presenting, I know that I mis-pronounced heaps of words. How do I know? Just look at the reaction of the audience. Bursts of (friendly) laughter. Yes, even when we were informing them about more serious things. I had the aid of my own style of "pinyin" during the presentation. Eg., 'qing lin yun yi ga mien dui tsien bien man fa gor cong gik.' Pretty sure this is unrecognisable? I don't know, might be pleasantly surprised. :)

I smiled to myself as I was presenting, as I had a taste of what it felt like being laughed at (in a friendly way of course) for speaking dodgy Canto. Ahhh, the pleasant privilege of being on the receiving end of providing badly spoken Canto, as humour. :)

Pretty awesome experience!

Ohh, I also would like to add that I (and others) were quite nervous about this. Canto is really not my/our forte. So, we were fully relying on God and His amazing ability to provide, which He did, as we got the message across boldly. Fairly clearly as well I think/ hope (the content, not the pronounciation lol). I find it quite awesome and amazing that God will use little humans like us, and use our weaknesses (in my case, my dodgy Canto) to glorify Him.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ps. quite unrelated, but go Fed!