23
18
u/excusememoi Feb 12 '25
It reminds me of an animation regarding the weather on a Hong Kong TV channel, and (to be best of my knowledge) it depicted some kid layered up in a winter clothing during a blizzard and shivering like he's about to succumb to hypothermia... but the temperature reads something like 9°C, so I'm just there watching it while living in Canada like "You have got to be kidding me right."
27
u/html_lmth Feb 12 '25
9°C or below in Hong Kong feels unbearable. We simply don't have the infrastructure to handle the cold as indoor heating are not that common. Students at school, for example, have nowhere warm to recover if they didn't wear enough, and you are just going to freeze for 9 hours.
4
3
11
7
7
u/Teleonomix 鬼佬 Feb 12 '25
If the strongest one is "single digit temperature" then what do Cantonese speakers in Canada say when it is -40 C outside?
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6
u/NoWish7507 Feb 12 '25
cantonese doesn't work below single digits. It is well documented in the linguist community. Something about the tones, I don't remember well.
7
u/beastlybea Feb 12 '25
These also get thrown around at my parents’ house:
今日都幾凍
今日凍到黐線
今日凍到阿媽都唔認得
1
7
3
u/Kind-Jackfruit-6315 Feb 12 '25
Please tell me there's a missing minus sign in front of these numbers...
2
u/New-Distribution637 Feb 12 '25
What's the second to last one? How do I pronounce that word?
6
u/Super_Novice56 BBC Feb 12 '25
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/乸#Translingual
Seems like it's naa2. Never seen it in my life before :D
4
u/ShigeruNinja Feb 12 '25
I also thought that I never seen that word before, but then I realized that many of us pronounced it with L like laa2
3
u/Super_Novice56 BBC Feb 12 '25
Actually now looking at the example my parents used to say it all the time.
I suppose that's what happens when you're almost illiterate like me. :D
3
u/sflayers Feb 12 '25
Literally means female, e.g. 公乸 (male and female), or some old fashioned insults 乸型 (sissy)
2
2
2
u/the-interlocutor Feb 15 '25
I’m in Saskatoon 🇨🇦right now…and it’s going to be -34 with wind chill making feel like -39. 凍到你阿媽姓乜都唔記得... 🥶🥶🥶
2
1
1
1
1
u/cantorofleng Feb 12 '25
Y'all missed 好死凍 for so damned cold, and you call yourselves Hong Kongers?(/s)
1
1
0
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u/pandaeye0 Feb 12 '25
Note to serious learners: It is fun but don't take it too seriously. I am not saying the feeling of temperature is a subjective thing. I mean the 4th to the 7th phrases carry mostly the same meaning, even when we are not talking about temperatures. There are no clear differentiation between the level of emphasis among those. Actually some of them are the same thing pronounced differently.