A Nail in the Calendar

NOTE: This is a throwback post from one of my older blogs (posted about four years ago).  I thought it was pretty fun so wanted to repost it. It really shows my thought process, even today! Although at point I didn't know characters; I just added them to the repost. 


Sometimes my Cantonese vocabulary is kind of random.  There are very simple words that I don't know, like "heavy" and "short,"  and then I know some pretty random words like "chicken bouillon" and "lemon Ribena." But that's because a lot of the words I learn, I choose for a specific purpose.  Like today.  I had to go to the hardware store, and I always learn something when I go to the hardware store.

I have one lamp, and its light-bulb burned out at least a month ago.  Also, I bought a calendar, probably also a month ago, and it's been sitting on my floor since I didn't have a way to hang it up.  Yeah, I tend to procrastinate on house things.  So I needed a light-bulb and a nail.

Since I had the burned-out bulb I could show them, I didn't need to know how to say light-bulb, but I didn't know how to communicate that I wanted a nail.  I looked up "nail" on Cantodict, an online Cantonese dictionary.  Now Cantodict is super helpful, but sometimes I'm kind of wary using it.  When you look up "nail", this is what comes up.

http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/scripts/wordsearch.php?level=0

See? There are quite a lot of entries for nail, so which one is the correct one? I was thinking it might be the fourth entry, since it says "a nail", but I don't really know what "a snag" is in relation to a nail, so I wasn't sure. I finally settled on it probably being 釘 deng1 since in "nail gun" I know that 打 daa2 is hit and 機 gei1 is machine.  So that problem was solved.  

Then calendar. Same thing. Actually, I take that back. Calendar is even worse. There are twice as many entries, and almost all of them are specific, like "lunar calendar" or "desk calendar" but the entry for just "calendar" was halfway down the page, so I was wondering if that was really what I wanted.  Finally after combing the page, I found a "wall calendar" and settled on that one. 

掛曆 gwaa3 lik6.

Off to the hardware store! Whenever I go to there, I can't tell who actually is working unless they're behind the counter. There's all sorts of guys hanging around. I went to the counter and waited patiently while a guy in a black t-shirt measured out screws into a bag for the customer in front of me. Suddenly, an old man broke from the pack and came up to me. He saw that I was holding a lightbulb, so he had it out of my hand and darted off to the back before I could get out my "你有冇呢個 ? Lei5 jau5 mou5 li1 go3?" Do you have this one?  But he knew what I needed.  

While he was looking, the other customer left and I could ask the black t-shirt guy "你有冇細釘 ? Lei5 jau5 mou5 sai6 deng1? Do you have a small nail?"  I must have chosen the right word because he nodded knowingly and said "有 Jau5."  We have it.  But then he asked me a question I didn't understand.  Oops, I wasn't prepared for that one.  I must have looked confused, because he added "wood-ah" and tapped a nearby wooden shelf.  Oh yes, I did need it for wood.  Would have to look up wood when I went home. 

By then the old man came back with two lightbulbs for me.  He was ringing me up when black t-shirt came back with a handful of nails.  He kind of laughed when I said I only wanted 一個釘 jut1 go3 deng1. One nail.  But he didn't even charge me for it, so that was nice.  

So I went home and happily screwed in my new lightbulb (which turned out to be yellow not white!) an hung my calendar.  I don't know how often I'll use these words, but it's good know.  Forced learning is the kind that tends to stick.