#asciilifeform | 2019-09-26

15:34

its the result of a thousand years of sporadic emigration waves from guangdong and the port in guangzhou

15:36

tens of millions of overseas chinese were glued to tv screens during in june 1989, and not just hong kongers and taiwanese

15:36

mats

during june*

15:38

mats

the party has been busy consolidating official usage of mandarin, and today in hk you are way more likely to communicate or get service if you use it first instead of mandarin, at least that was my experience there earlier this year

15:38

mats

although the locals love it when you do use canto

15:43

mats

somewhat unrelatedly, my grandmother still occasionally takes the bus in santa clara and she tells me that usually nobody speaks english, and touted this as 'well trump sucks but hes not totally wrong ...'

15:50

mats

i'm not an authority on the subject either, just another overseas chinese american , but i did happen to grow up speaking a bit of canto and mandarin at home

15:51

mats

some of my people were in hk and others left nanjing with the kmt, in 1949

15:57

mats

nobody learns to r/w in traditional chinese anymore, except some rare holdouts in tw i heard about but didn't meet, i expect cantonese is on its way out and will be irrelevant in 100 years

16:00

mats

but in the present day its still common, i have bumped into random vietnamese, mexican, thai people that know canto for whatever reason

16:09

mats

sorry, use it first instead of canto*

16:13

asciilifeform

mats: interesting

16:13

asciilifeform

mats: congrats of getting outta usa, btw.

16:23

mats

history is bittersweet for people my grandparents age, first having the japs force them from their lands, then communists forcing them from their country after having starved and fought to push out the japs, then settling in a white man's country

16:25

mats

jp as little brother in the 21st century relationship with cn hardly salves the wound, my grandmother still adamantly refuses to go to jp restaurants or own anything made there

16:29

mats

i admit tokyo is really nice, very clean and hygienic, i don't know what it is about the humidity and construction materials used in taipei and hk but it makes all the buildings look fucking run down

16:31

mats

i'm back in usa, haven't settled outside yet. need a job in tw/hk to do that

16:35

mats

when i have something concrete to report it'll go into #t

~ 1 hours 14 minutes ~

17:50

asciilifeform

neato mats .

~ 55 minutes ~

18:45