sharon 💭 @tsoi2lam4@scholar.social
24 y.o. cantonese-english linguist and language educator in hong kong ✨ #cantowithsharon
fellow of the higher education academy | bilingual phonetics/syntax, typology, L2 acquisition | loves languages, photography, art, movies, musical theatre & video games | she/her
i care about a lot of causes but will talk more about mental health, asian/poc representation, language diversity & conservation, gender equality & diversity, and the hong kong democratic movement!
My username @tsoi2lam4 is my Cantonese & part of my legal name romanised in Jyutping, a standard system created by local linguists. It means excitement/diversity and rain after a long draught. Numbers represent tones.
I've always gone by my English name (the other half of my legal given name I've used since birth) even with locals, but I have started to embrace my Canto name after getting together with my partner who's from the States.
Just wanted to put it here in case anybody was curious✨
"Losing the bottom" - Another way to bail on somebody in Cantonese #cantowithsharon
Another similar expression is "losing the bottom / 甩底 / lat1 dai2".
Cantonese people often use clay pots for cooking, and while they are generally sturdy, they can be brittle. A small crack would easily cause the bottom of the pot to detach, spilling all the contents from the pot. This unreliability is used to describe people who doesn't do what they promised to do (i.e. bailing on sb).
"Flying an airplane" - Bailing on somebody in Cantonese #cantowithsharon
Expressions and idioms often draw from shared experiences and other cultural anecdotes. Here's one from Cantonese.
"Flying an airplane / fong3 fei1 gei1 / 放飛機" A few decades ago, there was supposed to be an exciting airplane show above Hong Kong's Victoria Harbour. There was lots of anticipation, before the whole thing went MIA, resulting in this expression.
Thinking about doing a thread/series on Cantonese facts and interesting local expressions. Could also include some general linguistic facts for fun. Mmmm. Would be a nice little project on this platform.
Last boost reminds me of the odd students who quit the video call when cold called/when I start an activity with breakout rooms... I’ve also found students who weren’t talking in breakout rooms. Life of a mandatory course teacher😔
Teaching fun
I had a student who was on their phone the entire seminar. As part of the wrap-up discussion, I cold-called them and they didn't notice. One of the other students wanted to answer the question, but I made it clear I was asking a specific person because they'd been playing with their phone on camera the entire seminar.
I definitely made my point to literally everyone in the class except for the one who got named and shamed. 🤣
american history, new administration
Sitting here reading about the concessions America made to confederate slavers after THEY lost the war, and feeling mighty concerned about what the new administration might do in the name of appeasing white folks to achieve "unity" or (in common parlance) "heal the nation"
Just came back from an orthodontist appointment and decided to start my Invisalign journey by extracting all four of my wisdom teeth (two at a time, I'm not mad), unfortunately right as the semester is about to start. I'm wondering how bad it would impact my teaching...
I spent the rare relaxing evening watching video essays on characterisation in Breaking Bad and how it brings me back to the good old times in high school literature class☺️
Mental health/illnesses
While depression, anxiety, bipolar, body dysmorphia, and even personality dissociative disorder are relatively visible in society/media/social media, I don't see borderline personality disorder being discussed a lot.
I've recently started researching on it for my own wellbeing (not self-diagnosing, just trying to learn about the differences from my own anxiety and panic attacks), and would like to know more. Does anybody know about this disorder?
My username @tsoi2lam4 is my Cantonese & part of my legal name romanised in Jyutping, a standard system created by local linguists. It means excitement/diversity and rain after a long draught. Numbers represent tones.
I've always gone by my English name (the other half of my legal given name I've used since birth) even with locals, but I have started to embrace my Canto name after getting together with my partner who's from the States.
Just wanted to put it here in case anybody was curious✨
We send emails with links and put up posters with QR codes for out-of-class workshops I teach. Somehow every month students would send me loads of emails asking how they can sign up... And I swear the links work!!😭
We are training new student tutors in online language advising, and I've been observing mock consultation sessions all morning. Half of them didn't share their screens when reviewing essays and my anxiety about our service this semester is through the roof.
Sometimes online teaching requires more common sense than digital literacy.
First day on this platform and I'm surprised at how welcoming it is, especially when compared to other scholar/academic communities on other platforms. One down side of a smaller, closely knit community however is that it feels like nobody is in the Asian time zone💔
Of course it would be even better if the university can hire Cantonese linguists and teachers to teach in their programme in the future as we fear for our future in academia, or even safety, if we choose to continue on this path.
Stanford has withdrawn the decision to fire the last remaining teacher in their Cantonese (my mother tongue in Hong Kong that China is working hard to eradicate) programme. While the programme was known to be mediocre, it's a small but symbolic win for a language under pressure due to politics and not unpopularity 🏆
Donc :
Pomme de terre : patate.
Pomme d'or : tomate.
J'essaie d'imaginer des mots en "pomme de …" pour l'ananas (en anglais, "pomme de pin"), l'avocat (aguacate), la goyave, la papaye. Le maracuja aurait pu s'appeler "pomme de la passion" plutôt que "fruit de la passion".
À cette époque, le mot "pomme" a une signification plus large, désignant tout fruit rond. Notre pomme ("malum" en latin étant le fruit de référence), le mot a fini par désigner ce seul fruit.
@cypnk for #Linguistics researchers, this is a good way to get a time aligned transcript of video.
The resulting file can be converted to linguist friendly formats like #Praat TextGrid.
Some converters are here: https://github.com/nzilbb/ag/blob/master/bin/README.md#getting-textgrid-transcripts-of-youtube-videos
If people are having feelings about the shift of users to the fediverse and away from capitalist social media, I might recommend this book:
Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media by Sarah T. Roberts (Yale UP, 2019)
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300235883/behind-screen
its helpful in understanding why moderation at Twitter, FB, or another social media site is so terrible, and to understand why content moderation is fundamental to the problems of the internet.
Hello friends! I'm an early career linguist and educator teaching academic literacy and researching bilingual phonetics and syntax. I'm currently teaching multimodal communication in the University of Hong Kong, and am looking to apply for doctorate programmes in (applied) linguistics.
I'm going to share my thoughts here, deep or silly, about languages, my teaching, and the world from my perspective💕 And probably my photography and other things I enjoy in life.
See y'all around! #introduction
24 y.o. cantonese-english linguist and language educator in hong kong ✨ #cantowithsharon
fellow of the higher education academy | bilingual phonetics/syntax, typology, L2 acquisition | loves languages, photography, art, movies, musical theatre & video games | she/her
i care about a lot of causes but will talk more about mental health, asian/poc representation, language diversity & conservation, gender equality & diversity, and the hong kong democratic movement!
