mats: its the result of a thousand years of sporadic emigration waves from guangdong and the port in guangzhou
mats: tens of millions of overseas chinese were glued to tv screens during in june 1989, and not just hong kongers and taiwanese
mats: during june*
mats: the party has been busy consolidating official usage of mandarin, and today in hk you are way more likely to communicate or get service if you use it first instead of mandarin, at least that was my experience there earlier this year
mats: although the locals love it when you do use canto
mats: somewhat unrelatedly, my grandmother still occasionally takes the bus in santa clara and she tells me that usually nobody speaks english, and touted this as 'well trump sucks but hes not totally wrong ...'
mats: i'm not an authority on the subject either, just another overseas chinese american , but i did happen to grow up speaking a bit of canto and mandarin at home
mats: some of my people were in hk and others left nanjing with the kmt, in 1949
mats: nobody learns to r/w in traditional chinese anymore, except some rare holdouts in tw i heard about but didn't meet, i expect cantonese is on its way out and will be irrelevant in 100 years
mats: but in the present day its still common, i have bumped into random vietnamese, mexican, thai people that know canto for whatever reason
mats: sorry, use it first instead of canto*
asciilifeform: mats: interesting
asciilifeform: mats: congrats of getting outta usa, btw.
mats: history is bittersweet for people my grandparents age, first having the japs force them from their lands, then communists forcing them from their country after having starved and fought to push out the japs, then settling in a white man's country
mats: jp as little brother in the 21st century relationship with cn hardly salves the wound, my grandmother still adamantly refuses to go to jp restaurants or own anything made there
mats: i admit tokyo is really nice, very clean and hygienic, i don't know what it is about the humidity and construction materials used in taipei and hk but it makes all the buildings look fucking run down
mats: i'm back in usa, haven't settled outside yet. need a job in tw/hk to do that
mats: when i have something concrete to report it'll go into #t
asciilifeform: neato mats .
shinohai: Oh hai asciilifeform, good afternoon. Back online after brief modem fiasco, reading logs, etc.
asciilifeform: wb shinohai
shinohai: Thx. Did I miss anything exciting?
asciilifeform: shinohai: is what logotron is for !
shinohai: Katolina is practicing her Enlish, having her read it aloud to me now xD
shinohai: (so I don't have to just yet, as am multitasking)