This is book number four in the Hong Kong Children's book series: Taming Babel
Tailor-made for young readers at ages 8 - 12 in Hong Kong and beyond, the Hong Kong Children's Stories series is a collection of six English stories written with the local Hong Kong context in mind. Ideal for language learning, leisure and reading aloud among Hong Kong readers young and old, the book series will bring together original short stories and pictures about various aspects of Hong Kong's everyday life:
Book 1: Culinary Charades, which is about Hong Kong food
Book 2: The Summer of 1997, which is about walking down memory lane in Hong Kong
Book 3: Unforgettable Neighbours, which is about animals in Hong Kong
Book 4: Taming Babel, which is about the Cantonese language
Book 5: Herstory, which is about Hong Kong women
Book 6: A Tale of Two Haunted Universities, which is about Hong Kong women
Learn Cantonese the fast and easy way with this book! People keep saying learning Cantonese is hard, and to speak proficient Cantonese like Hong Kongers is to sing songs with its nine-tone system. While it is stunningly entertaining to witness how a melodic text such as 'yü yü yü, yü yü yü, yü yü yü, yü yü yü, yü yü yü.' can carry the grammatically flawless and romantic content of 'You and I, met in the rain, you said to me, "while it's still raining, come to my place. I'll bring you comfort."', one tiny mistroke in the language tone can turn the lexical meaning of 'a computer' into 'an idiot'. But perhaps learning Cantonese is not as challenging as it sounds? In Taming Babel, expatriates and foreigners who study, work and live in Hong Kong, share with you useful tips and tricks you do not know when learning Cantonese.
Anna Tso, PhD, associate professor of English and Comparative Literature at The Open University of Hong Kong. Interested in language arts and children's literature in Hong Kong, she has published research articles in peer-reviewed journals across Asia, Europe, the U.K., the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Her books include Teaching Shakespeare to ESL Students (Springer, 2017) and Academic Writing for Arts and Humanities Students (McGraw-Hill Education, 2016). She does use her published books in her English language and literature classes. If the Hong Kong Children's Stories series is published, she will use it in her class and share it in the reading clubs she leads for the Hong Kong Public Libraries.
Book series illustrator: Joanne Lo was born in Canada and raised both in Toronto and Hong Kong. Growing up and living on a beautiful outlying island called Cheung Chau, she has a special love for nature, animals, art and one's spiritual growth. She began her career in creative media since graduating from university majoring in Cultural Studies and Visual Studies. She is the illustrator of Teaching Shakespeare to ESL Students (Springer, 2017), a book housed in the Yale and Harvard University Libraries and downloaded for over 4,850 times since its publication. Currently, she is working on a funded children's book series about Hong Kong memories.
