by Sean P. Smith

Tonal languages are intimidating. Infinitesimal variations in sound can encode entirely different meanings, posing to the Indo-European native a puzzle about as inviting as the Cretan labyrinth. The imperfectly inflected vowel is always lurking just around the corner, threatening to devour the novice speaker in a feast of incomprehension—or offence.

In January I started learning Burmese in preparation for my PhD case study, which will have me in Myanmar several times over the next few years. Burmese has four tones—that is, four ways to screw up what sounds to me like the same phonological set of consonants and vowels. To take one exciting pair: I can say eh-da lo-jin-dhala? Meaning, do you want that? But if I say eh-da lò-jin-dhala? I’m asking something like whether you intend to copulate with that.

So far I’m learning on my own, as there are no Burmese language courses at any of Hong Kong’s universities. After locating a free learn-by-ear course offered by SOAS, I have been making good use of my rather lengthy commute between my home in Shatin and HKU, unnerving my fellow passengers on the MTR who wonder what this tall, gangly gweilo furrowing his brow and repeatedly uttering incomprehensible syllables to himself is about. Learning the script is somewhat slower going; so far, the coolest word I can write is ‘martini’.

According to the United States Foreign Service Institute, Burmese is a Category IV language—one of the most difficult to learn for native English speakers. (Category I includes Spanish and French.) In addition to four tones, Burmese script utilizes thirty-three letters and twelve vowels, the sounds of which don’t always have a correspondence in English. But with all of that, Burmese is still easier than Cantonese, one of the few Category V languages.

For someone who has now lived in Hong Kong for nearly two years, my Cantonese remains abominable. I like to say I know enough to get by in the wet market, but even this pitiful triumph is shattered now and again.

More recently than I’d care to admit, I went to my local wet market to get a fish for a barbecue. After a quick reconnaissance, I found a lovely rose-pink specimen with an intriguing array of turquoise freckles sprinkling its back. How much is this one? I (proudly) asked the vendor. Forty dollars, she replied—at this point to quite an assemblage of onlookers, who had momentarily paused in their shopping to witness our exchange. I nodded sagely while she bagged up the fish, casually handing over my forty dollars—and was rebuffed. She repeated the price, and I realized she’d said sei-baak mun, not sei-sahp mun—four hundred dollars, not forty! Our small audience found it all very amusing as I apologized profusely, and the disgruntled vendor put the hapless fish back in its tank.

We native English speakers are peculiarly disposed to whining about the difficulties of learning a second, even Category I language. It takes so much time, it causes endless headache and embarrassment, and when everyone speaks English anyway what’s the point? Yet in Hong Kong, it only takes a trip to Tsim Sha Tsui or another similarly diverse district to see that, for foreigners of non-European descent, learning Cantonese isn’t so difficult. Indeed, there is no such luxury as too hard; speaking the local language is a necessity, one that Western, predominantly white-skinned and wealthy foreigners are privileged enough to escape.

It works this way around the world. There’s a reason that the language of global commerce is English, and it’s not because, after some healthy debate, the world’s peoples decided it was the most attractive and utilitarian. (Safe to say English wouldn’t get the popular vote for most beautiful language.) The specter of imperialism looms large in the politics of the lingua franca, and, as a native English speaker, the most comfortable thing is to sit back in your cocoon and ignore it.

Growing up monolingual in an extraordinarily homogenous environment, I did not have a conversation in a second language until I was 21. It didn’t go wonderfully or anything, I just managed to order a man2oushe, a scrumptious Lebanese breakfast sandwich, without the guy at the counter speaking back to me in English. I was unspeakably delighted. (That’s one of the most special things about learning a language: in almost nothing else can you so profoundly rejoice in the mundane.) After two years in Lebanon I did manage to attain a decent proficiency in Arabic, although it wasn’t like I could have mature, philosophical conversations. And that was important: being rendered, effectively, an eight-year old. The humility of being unable to formulate the complexity of an adult thought into speech engenders a respect for others that cuts across class and cultural boundaries.

More than its difficulty, maybe that’s why I was so reluctant to embark on Cantonese—out of fear of being placed in the child’s shoes again. I came to Hong Kong having forgotten that essential humility.

Fortunately (if rather tragically for my ego), I’m about to catch the proverbial humble pie full in the face. The waifish Burmese vocabulary I’ve amassed in the spotless bowels of Hong Kong’s subway is sure to crumble in front of the first unlucky Burmese person from whom I try and order a cup of tea. As it will in front of the next person, and the next. But on my research trip this May, there must be one day where I manage to eke out a coherent sentence without too much stumbling. Maybe then I’ll have the courage to come back to Hong Kong and face the fish.

Published on: June 6, 2018 < Back >