Let's go to the wet market ! :)

One Wednesday afternoon, we followed Sutiyem in her shopping trip to the wet market located at Fa Yuen Street, Mong Kok. It was interesting to see the interaction between Sutiyem (who possess limited knowledge of Cantonese) and the shopkeepers (who know very limited English vocabularies) during the transaction process. We discovered that a special language pattern is adopted in this special context.

At the fish booth, when Sutiyem asked them about the fish price in Cantonese, the male fishmonger would also use Cantonese in response. However, we had noticed the female fishmonger has once code-mixed speech to Sutiyem.

Female fishmonger : “ 洗唔洗cut呀?”
                                    (do you need me to cut the fish?)
Sutiyem : " 唔洗啦."
                   ( no need.)

Interestingly, Sutiyem as an Indonesian is determined to use Cantonese in the conversation between fishmongers, while the female fishmonger as a local Hong Kong people respond in code-mixing speech. It seems like an exchanging of the roles. Although the female fishmonger has limited knowledge in English, the code-mixing pattern would be surprising to us. We believe that globalization results in the increase of interaction between foreigners and the Hong Kong locals, thus exerts certain impact on their language use.

After buying all the food she needed for making dinner, Sutiyem would pay a visit to the Indo shops which operated by her fellows inside the wet market. There, she can relax herself by chatting with her friends and updating news from her hometown.

So, this is part of a routine day of Sutiyem, as well as most of the Indonesian domestic helpers in Hong Kong. Do you find it interesting? :) 

Photo Slideshow

Let's see how the Indonesian helpers spend their holiday! :D

Cantonese as a tool of employment -the happiness and pressure that associated with the learning process

Sitting together on the plastic tarpaulin with Yuni, Sutiyem and their friends, we found that they are friendly and eager to share their stories. They love playing jokes on each other, filling up the gathering with laughers and happy mood.

On the halfway of our visit, we asked them to express some phrases in Cantonese. As Yuni and Sutiyem have been working in Hong Kong for quite a while, they have no problem in developing simple conversation in Cantonese. They admitted that it is still hard for them to express themselves thoroughly in Cantonese sometimes. However, they don’t wish to advance their Cantonese standard because it is just used for daily communication with some of their host members basically. Sutiyem claimed, “Cantonese is not useful. It can be used in Hong Kong only. If I work in other countries in the future, Cantonese is no use.” All the other friends behind them nodded their heads. They also agreed that if they had the chance to learn, they would choose to improve their English standard as it is an important world language nowadays.

Sutiyem also shared her Cantonese learning experience. She had very little knowledge of Cantonese when she first came to Hong Kong. “My madam usually wrote me what I have to buy from the market on papers and let me bring along. I couldn’t remember any words not till the forth month I have stayed.” At home, Sutiyem will speak Cantonese with the grandmother. After days and days of practicing, she knows how to bargain the price in market now. From her proud facial expression, we are sure that she was learning happily. However, not all the domestic helpers are as lucky as Sutiyem.

In some host families, the domestic helpers are not only required to learn Cantonese, some of them even asked to learn Putonghua. Yuni is one of the examples, as her Sir can only speak Mandarin. When being asked if her learning experience was similar as Sutiyem, Yuni shook her head with a simper, “I was forced to remember a lot of Cantonese words every day by my Madam.” She recalled at the time she just arrived in Hong Kong, she knew limited Cantonese only. She remembered she needs to learn Cantonese and Mandarin simultaneously when she just came to the host. “It’s so hard to remember the words in such a short period of time. I used to scold by my madam every day. She was so demanding and just got mad with my bad memory.” When she was reminiscing the story, Yuni hid her grins which she always shows. We are sure that learning new languages must have given her so much pressure in the past.

Features of text message of Sutiyem

Cell phones plays a dominant role in human's life nowadays. People from worldwide countries are increasingly relied on text messaging to convey their idea and data to others. A recent survey conducted by the Population Reference Bureau website reveals that in Indonesia, the world's fourth largest country, more than 240 millions people are counted as text-messaging users.

Regard to our consultant Sutiyem, she agreed that she is a frequent user of text-messaging. "I usually use text messaging to date my friends. "The message that she sent are all in English letter as it is the only typing language which is available in cell phones while she is proficient in.

Let us analyze some of the features that we found in Sutiyem 's text-messagings.

1) vocalization

sucei --> Cantonese (小姐 siu ze) 

                 meaning: Ms.

Sutiyem used the word sucei to intimate the pronunciation of Ms. in Cantonese.

2) unambigious abbreviation

u --> you

        meaning: you  

pls --> please

           meaning: please

Sutiyem replaced "you" with "u", "please" with "pls" to make the word length much shorter and so save the typing time.

3) minimal use of capitalisation

i --> I

thank--->thanks 

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4) spell phonetically

laswek --> last week

tichers --> teachers

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5) lexical shortening

se --> see

tomorow --> tomorrow

6) vowel missing

gd --> good

7) copula omission

se how tomorow -->see how is tomorrow

Do your text-messages share some of the features of Sutiyem's? Leave a comment to share with us !! ;)

reference:

http://pewsocialtrends.org/2010/08/03/text-messaging-plays-big-role-in-indonesian-census/

Game Corner II

                                          

Guess what language were they singing in?

1. English

2. Thai

3. Java

4. Bahasa

 

Game Corner I

                     

How many languages did Sutiyem speak in this video?

                                
A. 2

B. 3

C. 4

D. 5

Yuni calls upon her fellows