Dialogue
Want to Understand & Master the Cantonese Dialogue 100%?
Get a breakdown of the dialogue and translations instantly with the Premium line-by-line Audio. Sign up for your Free Lifetime Account Now and get 7 Days of Premium Access including this feature.
10 Comments
Hide在你的國家,有很多愚人節的惡作劇嗎?
Is there a lot of mischief on April Fools' Day in your country?
Hi Ian,
Sorry. A quick correction: romanisation for 開玩笑 should be [hoi1 waan4 siu3 or hoi1 wun6 siu3].
Arnold
Team CantoneseClass101.com
Hi Ian,
Sharp eyes! Olivia says, 講笑啫 as opposed to 開玩笑 as shown.
講笑啫 [gong2 siu3 ze1] (literally: tell jokes + [interjection used to suggest "only"])
Meaning: Just kidding.
開玩笑 [hoi1 waan2 siu3] has the same meaning.
Both are common phrases under the context that the speaker is asking the listener to not be so serious about what the speaker has said or done.
Arnold
Team CantoneseClass101.com
Hi Ian,
Good ears! Olivia says, "上高". It is a preposition.
上高 [soeng6 gou1] (literally: above + high)
Meaning: above / on
The reason subtitles include only 上 is, as you can see from the literal meaning above, 上 is itself "above". In written Cantonese (known as written Chinese), people cannot write 上高 as it sounds vernacular and specific to Cantonese. While the point of using written form is to communicate between different speakers.
There is still a takeaway here though. In Cantonese, when we designate the position of a tangible thing (e.g. a basketball on a rack) we only say 上高. If else, when we designate the position of something intangible (e.g. on this matter / on the image above / on my mind) we do use 上 or 上高 freely.
Arnold
Team CantoneseClass101.com
Hi,
At 00:50 in the video, Olivia doesn't actually say 開玩笑. What does she say?
Thanks!
Hi,
At 0:36 in the video, Olivia seems to say "gou" after the character 上 and before 發放, though the text doesn't show any character like that. I think I've heard her do that in previous videos too. What is that?
Thanks!
Hello robert groulx,
You are very welcome. 😇
Feel free to contact us if you have any questions.
Good luck with your language studies.
Kind regards,
利凡特
Team CantoneseClass101.com
thanks for the lesson
my favorite phrase is 決定要把阻擋通道的兩座高山剷平。
april1st
robert
Hi Chan Yong Keong,
This is a pretty common way to scare people by telling them about a ghost story. I think it is not bad to give people one day to misbehave and then they have to return to normal behavior after the April Fool`s Day. The humor helps break the ice sometimes. :smile:
Thank you for sharing your April Fool`s Day story with us.:thumbsup:
Siuling
Team CantoneseClass101.com
Yes. My classmate lie to me and any subject teacher about a ghost behind them when it was primary school during April Fool's Day.