Although Cantonese is spoken by 66 million people from southern China (Hong-Kong, Macau, Guangdong), south-east Asia and, indeed, in cities all around the world, very few reference books on this knotty language have ever been published. Subtitled The Language of Hong Kong Movies, Street Gangs and City Life, Hutton and Bolton have compiled a 500-page dictionary of everyday Cantonese including colloquialisms and slang from sources as diverse as comics, street gangs, teenagers, magazines and movies. Many of the entries have never been listed in common dictionaries before. The dictionary is aimed at foreign students and Chinese alike. The foreword, signed by a former police officer, states that the book is a valuable and useful tool, containing authentic word usage from the Hong-Kong underworld. Triad-trash talk aside, this is a practical guide to the vulgar and the vernacular that will help the reader to get around the oral Cantonese trickiness.
Singapore University Press/available at www.nus.edu.sg/npu

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
January 2006 issue



Guanzhou Chief editor: Christopher Cottrell
January 2006 issue