Exclamations

Winter 2000

Tim and I have enjoyed our growing ability to hear the differences between the Cantonese and Mandarin languages. Mandarin, or Putonghua is the official language of China. It has six tones and quality of great solidity and elegance. It has these great 'R's' that you make from the back of your throat. It is my language of choice partly because I like it the best, but mostly because Cantonese has nine tones! I am sure that the term 'sing song' came from westerners listening to Cantonese because it has a wonderful musical quality to it. There some sounds that we find very entertaining. Sounds of exclamation such as 'wah-h-h-h' with the intonation going up at the end, or 'eye-yah-h-h'. These can bring a smile to Tim's or my face no matter what our moods. Of course just about the time you have an experience like this, you become aware of how humorous you sound to others.

Lee and another Chinese man from the factory were driving me to the factory around lunchtime one day. This is not the time to be on the streets at all. Everyone and his mother are going to lunch either wandering casually down the middle of the street, riding a bike with a passenger teetering on the back, or three or four sandwiched on a motorbike. There we were crawling along, Lee laying on the horn and everyone ignoring him. Just after he was able to pick up a bit of speed, a bike that was piled six feet high and five feet wide with chicken crates suddenly swerved in front of us. Lee braked and moved around him in a totally masterful way. Most often when this happens, there are no noises of surprise or frustration of any sort from the Chinese. They are so accepting and loose. Everyone just swerves around the obstacle and continues. Staying flexible while maintaining a quick reaction time is of utmost importance in Chinese driving. This incident went a bit too far even for these fellows who exclaimed loudly. I missed their comments because I was commenting even louder. For the most part I have stopped gasping at incidents such as these, but am still working at adopting a sort of Chinese approach of 'if you don't see it, it doesn't exist'. I regressed and yelled a loud and sustained 'whoa!'. I thought Lee was going to run off the road laughing. They tried to repeat what I had said several times, which made all of us laugh. I repeated it for them and they kept trying it out and laughed for the rest of the trip. And just like Tim and I use an occasional 'eye-yahhh' or 'wah-h-h' for entertainment, I'm sure they are enjoying an occasional 'whoa'!