Sunday, June 29, 2008

"Sheet char"

When my friends and I were in HK, we went to this place and one of my friends ordered "sheet char" (which in Malaysia means 'iced tea').
But the HK waiter was puzzled and wondered about it.
We too were puzzled and wondered why he did not understand.

So we changed the order to "yeet char" (hot tea)

Later, back in KL, I mentioned this to my students. My students explained that "sheet" in HK means "snow", so my friend was ordering "snow tea" , which obviously puzzled the waiter...(and anyone of us if we knew that 'sheet' meant 'snow').

There are sociolinguistic differences in the Cantonese spoken between HK and Malaysia. Obviously, in this case the difference resulted in us not getting what we wanted (iced tea)....

but it may be a good idea to have someone invent "snow tea".....shaved ice with thick tea ....hmmmmmm

1 comment:

tkunhan said...

there's old ppl (guess u're not that old yet) saying taking too much of sheet char cause guys balls to be oversized