Jack Yan (甄爵恩)You can’t get around the CBD of #Guangzhou speaking #Cantonese now. This is literally the origin of the Cantonese language. There is a building called the Canton Tower there.
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Future SprogI just visited there!
Got by fine with English. Signage was bilingual (primarily Chinese Simplified then English) but also colour and number coded.
One or two shops I needed to use a translation app but on the majority staff spoke at least a little English.
@futuresprog A bit sad to know that you can speak English there and not the actual language of the place. It would be like going to London and finding English was no longer spoken, but everyone can speak French because of all the tourists.
I saw it more that they’re cosmopolitan, educated, enough that they can speak multiple languages. Cantonese was still the primary language.
When I showed up at the hotel I said “hello” to the doorman and he replied, “don’t you mean ‘neih-hao’?”
@futuresprog Nee-hao is Mandarin though … nay-ho or lay-ho would be Cantonese …
It may have been closer to “nay-ho”. I had just arrived in the country and hadn’t yet got my ears dialed in enough except to notice it wasn’t the same as Mandarin or Hokkien.
Does Hainan have their own dialect? Their food shows up in Guangzhou as well as Singapore.
@futuresprog Good to know! And yes, Hainan will have its own language—itʼll be from the Min branch, so it wonʼt be intelligible to a Mandarin speaker unless theyʼve specifically learned it. 'Dialect' underplays the reality as these are way more different than, say, Swedish and Danish. They writing system might be the same but some of the words are different.
四@jackyan @futuresprog Well you can live in Scandinavia and not speak anything but English. So sometimes the big language erodes the local (Ireland, Welsh, Scotland) and sometimes it complements.
But agreed, I’d hate to see any language getting relegated to the history books. It’s great if I can communicate in a secondary with people around the world. But that’s just practical. But it should be secondary.
@yon @futuresprog Head outside the main cities in Sweden and Finland and they wonʼt speak English. Iʼve not been to Norway though, and Denmark I was mainly in København.
I will try to use the native language wherever I can though. The last thing I want is homogeneity. Itʼd be so boring.
I will try to use the native language wherever I can though. The last thing I want is homogeneity. Itʼd be so boring.
@jackyan @futuresprog You can get by pretty well in smaller cities in Sweden too (I mean I grew up in Sweden and never lived in a major city:)). Haven’t been back for a long time now, but in the 80s you would have been having a lot of issues. Us late GenX and younger tends to be able to speak it.
We can see an odd form of boring homogeneity here in the states (yeah, I know:/) where so much is the same due to all the mergers and acquisitions. :( It’s so boring and I fear more and more regional differences (of the positive kind) just get eroded. So it’s not just language. :(
Copenhagen is my favorite city I’ve been to in Scandinavia. Everything is great as long as I can keep them from thinking I’m Swedish. I don’t understand their weird counting!
@yon @futuresprog Oh, places like Helsingborg and Jonköping are AOK for English, even Trelleborg down south, but I'm talking, say, Bromma, which isn't that far outside Stockholm. Now I'm curious, where did you grow up?
My last trip to Stockholm last year was bittersweet as it looks heaps more like any European city—Corollas and Mercedes EQEs as taxis, for example.
I love København. So liveable and fun.
My last trip to Stockholm last year was bittersweet as it looks heaps more like any European city—Corollas and Mercedes EQEs as taxis, for example.
I love København. So liveable and fun.
@jackyan @futuresprog Grew up in a small town 133km south-ish of Stockholm (knew that because it said so at the train station:)). But lived in the south east as well (the Alabama of Sweden) and in Växjö (the biggest one I lived in).
Haven’t been back in well over a decade. So things must have changed if nothing else. But I grew up with Corollas:)
@yon So up from Norrköping? Never been to the southeast though I was invited to visit friends in Blekinge (I know, not technically the southeast). I know of Växjö but never visited.
I had a gap of 14 years—2010 and 2024—between visits and it changed a lot. If you were there a decade ago maybe the change wouldn’t have been as noticeable. In 2010 the government had sold so many state assets that basic things weren’t being done in Stockholm but I could still recognize the place.
@yon But now it feels more insular, less confident, less proudly Swedish compared with the 2000s and 2010. SAS was terrible, like a budget airline. SJ was about the same but no nice in-train magazines any more. It went from the loudness of Victoria Silvstedt and Systrarna Graaf to the depth of Rebecca Ferguson and Sofia Mattsson. 😁
@jackyan @futuresprog SAS has been bailed out so many times they should have just nationalized it. :(
SJ was glorious when it was state ran, awful since the capital took over:(
I think Sweden probably peak in the 80s and a bit into the 90s.
And as far as music goes I have always been into metal, so my perspective is different :) That and some various old punk and such. :)
@yon @futuresprog It is surprising that they kept bailing it out as they were generally happy for, say, Saab to go to the wall. It would have been easier to nationalize SAS.
Ah, I would be lost on metal …
Ah, I would be lost on metal …
@jackyan @futuresprog It was the right wing government that didn’t bail out SAAB so that’s a thing.
I’m personally against bailing out, but I’m ok with the government investing in a strategic way. That’s good. They could have owned a big portion of SAAB (automobile). Couldn’t have done worse than GM that pretty much ruined SAAB:(
@jackyan @futuresprog Katrineholm to be precise:) Pretty small place. And I used to live in Blekinge for many years as well, cannot recommend at all though. I have never missed that one.
The deregulation and privatization of Sweden should be a dire warning for the rest of the world. It’s been an unmitigated disaster and worse in every possible way. State owned and ran was a hell of a lot better.
I’m not going to dive into Swedish politics, but imho the whole lot of them are failures at this point:( I miss the old politics. It was rotten already when I was born:(
@yon Oh wow, I know where Katrineholm is, but have never been there. Usually I’m going on the E4 or E18 (I used to head to a spot near Arboga for a conference).
Oh, New Zealand was the poster child for privatization in the 1980s so all the alarm bells went off when I saw what Sweden was like in 2010. It was reliving all of that. We sold off a lot of money-making assets, too. The conservatives sold Absolut Vodka—talk about getting rid of the golden goose!
Oh, New Zealand was the poster child for privatization in the 1980s so all the alarm bells went off when I saw what Sweden was like in 2010. It was reliving all of that. We sold off a lot of money-making assets, too. The conservatives sold Absolut Vodka—talk about getting rid of the golden goose!
@jackyan There’s similar stories from here in the U.S. as well. A state owning something that is great for the population, and brings in money. Sells it off for a pittance, quality drops, price skyrockets, and population looses.
Norway did great with their oil though. That’s a success story.