Learning a dialect is never an easy feat. Luckily for me, I had some prior knowledge and experience when it comes to Cantonese, mainly because my entire extended family lives in Hong Kong. The decision to take on this module came from a deep desire to connect better with my family members in Hong Kong. As such, I was very excited to sign up for the module right when it was approved, and I was lucky enough to be one of the few students who had the opportunity to take on learning a dialect as a module during university.

I had always tried to pick up Cantonese by watching Hong Kong dramas since young, and I vividly remember the initial stages when I was a child where every word had felt like an insurmountable hurdle, with every sentence being a daunting puzzle. However, through the past few weeks of lessons, I felt that my Cantonese had started to improve! 

In our first lesson, we were taught on making self-introductions, numbers, apologies and many more. The second lesson was more on greeting and addressing others, as well as some common questions. I could go on about what each lesson has taught me, but I must mention that my favourite portion of these lessons is the part where Mr. J.W. Sew introduced us to the Cantonese songs! Not only did he teach us how to speak the lyrics, but he also went through the deep meanings and importance of the lyrics to the songs, as well as to the Singers.

Mr. J.W. Sew also taught us on some of the common idioms used in Cantonese, and my favourite one of the bunch was ‘扮鬼扮馬‘, which means behaving in a tricky or deceitful manner, pretending to be something that you are not. The video showed left a strong impression on me as it thoroughly explained the meaning of the idiom by showing how the two police officers pretended that there were much more manpower, making the phrase much easier to understand.

This is only the midway point of the module and I have just started on making the Cantonese remix for assignment 1. The song that I have used "半斤八两" is one of my father's favourite song. Moving forward, I hope to be able to improve my Cantonese vocabulary, and to deepen my understanding of the culture and dialect, so that I may connect well with my cousins and family that are abroad.

Link to remix (Assignment 1): https://youtu.be/CIaOpZnFCLg 

Update:

It is almost the end of this wonderful and enriching DYOC Cantonese module. Towards the second half of the module, we focusesd more on real-life communications scenarios whereby Mr. J.W. Sew showed and guided us throgh multiple Cantonese videos. The videos shown were not only based in Hong Kong, but also in Singapore where it is more of 'advertisement-like' videos whose purpose is to raise awareness with regard to prominent matters such as Covid-19 vaccination as well as the Pioneer Generation card, in order to appeal towards the target audience – Cantonese Dialect Speakers.

In the second assessment, I was given the oppurtunity to interview my mother in Cantonese. My mother, being borned in Hong Kong, had experienced both life here and in Hong Kong. As such, I was able make use of the interview to gain insight into the difference in the standard of living between Singapore of the past and present, as well as the difference between Singapore and Hong Kong, which was the focus of my interview. 

The course was very welcoming since day 1, and Mr. J.W. Sew never failed to keep us engaged during the sessions which was my favourite aspect of the module. He made sure that all of us had the oppurtunity to practice Cantonese in the class itself and was patient in guiding our pronunciation. 

All in all, this was a wonderful experience I had in university and I never regretted taking on this module. This module not only provided fun, laughter and joy, but also the basic skills required when interacting with the older generations in Singapore, or even when we travel overseas to Hong Kong, China and Malaysia where Cantonese are spoken often. This course also sparked further interest in me to further improve my Cantonese speaking, and also made me want to learn another dialect/language.

Link to interview (Assignment 2): https://youtu.be/s3IEOvRTjwE

My favourite past time when I travelled to in Hong Kong is to ‘扫街’ and eat all the street food that I can!