Taishanese

As I turned on the water for my shower, I heard a voice from outside my bathroom window. The voice was clearly Chinese because I heard a female voice speaking Taishanese. The voice was coming from half a block away, but it was very loud. It sounded as if the person was standing on my front lawn. With the water still running, I was still able to hear the person speak loudly. It sounded as if there was an argument going on, but it was just a conversation. I was very curious; too bad I couldn’t go out to confirm what was happening.

Many Taishanese people tend to speak loudly. Maybe it's because of 中氣十足 or speaking loudly expresses friendliness, or they are just plain rude. As a Taishanese myself, I'm going to omit the last one. There are occasions in which I find speaking Taishanese in pubic to be embarrassing. For some reason, the volume goes up a notch, making passersby think that there is an argument going on.

There are many Taishanese people who live in Saskatoon. It was very cool to speak Taishanese while in Beijing because some Mandarin people do not understand Cantonese. When you are bargaining prices you do not want to let them know that you are interested in purchasing a certain item, so they won't make the prices go even higher. It was as though we were speaking a secret language.

Many artistes in Hong Kong are Taishanese like Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Flora Chan, Moses Chan, Maggie Cheung Ho Yee, Myolie Wu, Bernice Liu, and even Melissa Ng's mother is Taishanese.