Malibu morning picture of the day - Friday, April 2, 2014

"Joe Sun,"

Here's your picture. We've been basically posting blue rectangles all this week (or at least potentially).

This is that same gap I've shown you before with Palos Verdes Peninsula on the left and Santa Catalina Island on the right (very ghostly here). Now, here's a turn to the right.

"Joe Sun" (早晨)is a roman approximation of the Cantonese morning greeting my father taught us all when were small. It was easy to remember and associate because to a child "sun" and "morning" are fairly equivalent concepts. Like most orally learned "mother-tongue" expressions, you just learn them and when to use them and don't know their literal meaning until you get around to studying the language (if you ever do). The first word means "early" and the second means "morning," by the way. If you you're going to say it right, you gotta hit "joe" in the bottom note of your speaking range. I like to think of Cantonese as a language that you sing more than you speak. A lot of people think it sounds angry (as is said a lot about German), but I've come to find Cantonese quite beautiful and expressive. But I digress, but this is a blog, right?

I noticed this phenom of use-without-understanding not just in myself, but in others not long ago when I went into a Salvadoran bakery down on the the corner where I live. I went in to pick up some bread rolls for dinner on the way home. "Six French bread rolls please." I said. The clerk looked puzzled, and said they didn't have any, so I pointed. "Oh, that's pan Francés." 

"So what does that translate to in English?" I asked. The clerk, I should say here that she was not a foreign-born Salvadoran national, but an American-born, probably 20-something young woman. She thought about it and then gave me an irksome look. I probably made my comment intoned with end-of-day sarcasm and workday-tired condescension--in other words, like a smart-ass jerk. "Fifty cents each," she replied. (They were probably 35 cents each.)

"Thanks. I'll call it by it's proper name next time." So, while I was intellectually correct, pan Francés WAS and IS the proper name in THAT bakery. So be polite out there.

Love,
Pops