Week 11 and my Cantonese is coming on thanks to the infinite patience of my tutor! In some ways, Cantonese is an easy language to learn because there are no tenses and everything is related to eating. In other ways it is fraught with flashing neon danger signs. Slight changes in intonation result in wildly different meanings. For example, ‘Gau’ is the number 9… and also dog… and also something too rude to mention.

Which totally explains the constipated expression on my vet’s face when I’ve been making innocent conversation about the welfare of my dog…