The Making of Daai Seng Aai by huitwai

THE MAKING OF DAAI SENG AAI

Jasmine Hui Tin-Wai

THE MAKING OF DAAI SENG AAI

CONTENTS HOW CAN COLLOQUIAL CANTONESE BE TAUGHT AS A WRITTEN LANGUAGE?

INSPIRATION

RESEARCH

NAVIGATING LEARNING RESOURCES

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CONTENT PLANNING

DESIGNING GRAPHICS AND PAGES

WEBSITE

PRODUCTION

LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY

HOW CAN COLLOQUIAL CANTONESE BE TAUGHT AS A WRITTEN LANGUAGE? Colloquial Cantonese is the informal language spoken by Hongkongers and Cantonese-speaking diaspora. It’s commonly heard on the streets, on TV, and everyday conversation, it’s also seen written on social media and even some publications. Like Mandarin Chinese, colloquial Cantonese is written using Hanzi (Chinese characters) and even includes characters not found in Standard Chinese (the common writing system of Chinese). However, Colloquial Cantonese is not taught in schools. To promote and preserve this language as both a spoken and written language, Daai Seng Aai was created. Daai Seng Aai is a textbook and workbook that introduces colloquial Cantonese and the essential information for learning the language as a beginner, such as Jyutping and grammar. The project encourages the usage of colloquial Cantonese in writing and celebrates the language’s uniqueness. The books are aimed towards the Cantonese-speaking diaspora, particularly those originating from Hong Kong.

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INSPIRATION Initially, I focused on the code-switching and use of loan words in Hong Kong Cantonese. This informed some of the written content of the textbook and workbook during their production. Some of my visual inspiration is drawn from the material I used in learning Cantonese, such as the covers of the textbooks (top left page), the worksheets, and practice packets (bottom left page).

A Hong Kong billboard in written Cantonese with a mixture of Eng‐ lish words in the typical code-switch style of Hong Kong speech.

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RESEARCH Researching for this project began with interviewing former and current Chinese language students. I wanted to hear about their experience with learning in a classroom setting and studying on their own. I was also interested in what parts of Chinese textbooks and workbooks stood out to students. An interviewee provided me some of their college level textbooks and workbooks. I also reviewed the textbooks I used when I was taking Cantonese classes, which target a younger audience. Having both the college level and elementary level textbooks informed the types of graphics I would make for my own textbook and workbook.

Left: Page from Integrated Chinese �

Right: Page from《全新版華語第二冊》

Key takeaways from my interviews include: •

Chinese to English translations are not always 1:1

•

Teach radicals and stroke order

•

Include sections about culture

•

Repetition is important

I would keep these in mind as I worked on this project.

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NAVIGATING LEARNING RESOURCES Part of my research involved actually learning and studying Cantonese. From this, I was compiling lessons and information from various Chinese and Cantonese learning resources. These ranged from video to audio to text resources. Throughout this process, I learned to distinguish Mandarin specific resources from Cantonese specific ones. This was especially important because Mainland Chinese writing standards differ from those in Taiwan and Hong Kong, which I needed to focus on. The differences include stroke order and type of punctuation used. “Stroke order” refers to the sequence the strokes or lines of a character are written. Learning proper stroke order is useful because it helps with the legibility of handwriting.

Hand written stroke order guide of the phrases featured in the workbook.

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CONTENT PLANNING I organized all of my research and written content into a Notion page. Before I started designing and formatting the content as book pages, I created rough paginations of both the textbook and workbook. This helped me to map out the flow of each book and plan the content.

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As time moved on and I continued to work on these books, some planned pages were removed due to time or realizing they weren’t necessary, such as the glossary and index pages. Through this, I learned to manage my expectations and capabilities better with the time and resources I have.

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DESIGNING GRAPHICS AND PAGES Once I was confident in the written content I had collected, I started laying out the copy onto an Affinity Publisher document. The textbook and workbook are my first full scale books made in this program (top right) and my workflow changed and improved a lot while working on this project because the program is just as robust as Adobe Indesign but has a more straightfoward layout of tools for how I work. My first graphics were the three on the page to the bottom right. They were the first attempt at teaching stroke order, however because of my fear of having poor legibility, I chose a different way of visualizing stroke order for the workbook. These graphics also use the initial color palette which later on became a deeper blue and yellow.

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In the process of establishing a color palette and unique identity, I created a rough design of the covers first (above). I chose to tilt the title to convey movement. Later, I hand wrote the Chinese characters of the title to express the informal aspect of colloquial Cantonese (below).

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I finally settled on a vertical format for the title and logo of the project. This is similar to the horizontal version where the character 大 daai6, meaning “big,” makes up part of the speech bubble.

大聲哎 daai6 seng1 aai1 means to “shout at the top of your lungs” so I wanted the logo/title to reflect that quality of loudness. For the final covers, the logo is tilted again to be dynamic.

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Stroke

Stroke Name

Tone

Example

� (High Level)

詩 si�, “poetry”

� (High Rising)

史 si�, “history”

竪 syu�, “vertical stroke”

� (Mid Level)

試 si�, “try”

鈎 ngau�, “hook stroke”

� (Low Falling)

時 si�, “time”

提 tai�, “rising stroke”

� (Low Rising)

市 si�, “market”

撇 pit�, “left falling stroke”

� (Mid-Low Level)

是 si�, “be”

捺 naat�, “right falling stroke”

點 dim�, “dot stroke” 橫 waang�, “horizontal stroke”

I printed a grayscale prototype of the textbook to get a feel of the size of the pages (top image in left page). Having a physical copy also allowed me to mark it up and take notes of what I wanted to add or change. A few pages were printed in color to see how well the yellow appears in print (bottom images in left page). This helped me finalize the color palette (above). I chose blue and yellow because blue is calming and associated with trust while yellow is associated with cheerfulness and intellect. Together, they feel youthful and optimistic which benefits the books. Below the color palette is a table listing the Cantonese tones (above left) and a table listing common strokes found in Chinese characters (above right). Both the textbook and workbook includes tables that help explain words and concepts, such as the two tables above.

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The textbook and workbook include spot illustrations throughout the books. Some were made to add information related to cultural objects and others were made to visualize the attitude or meaning of a phrase such as the final illustrations above.

食咗飯未呀 sik6 zo2 faan6 mei6 aa3 means “Have you eaten yet,” so I chose a bowl of rice to represent idea of a meal because 飯 can mean both rice and a meal.

矇查查 mung4 caa4 caa4 means “clumsy; confused,” thus the characters are drawn with swirling eyes and question marks hovering above their heads to denote confusion.

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Using the font DFKai-SB and the power of vector editing on Affinity Publisher, I discovered a method of separating the curves that make up the Chinese characters. This was used to create the step-by-step stroke order graphics in the workbook (left page).

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WEBSITE Most of the written content in the textbook was drawn from existing online and print resources for learning Cantonese. To acknowledge this, I created a simple website that links all of the resources I referenced as well as additional resources I recommend for further learning (right). The website was made using Carrd so the features are fairly limited, however it works well as simply a jumping off point for linking readers to resources for learning Cantonese.

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PRODUCTION

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After completing the design and proof reading the books as best as I could, I exported the pages and covers as separate PDF files and uploaded them to Blurb to be printed. Digital versions were also published to my Issuu account.

Above left: Front cover of the printed textbook. Above right: Back cover of the printed workbook. ��

The two books were delivered within about a week of ordering. The colors printed as I expected and I am very happy to be able to hold them in this complete form. For now, I have no plans of printing more copies of the books. Moving forward, I plan on presenting the website and the digital versions of the books to social media and online Cantonese and creative Asian communities to connect through shared interests and to celebrate this achievement with others.

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LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY My capstone project is part of my ongoing process of connecting with my Cantonese identity. Although I grew up speaking it with my family, my skills are very basic. This didn’t bother me until I started attending Cornish College of the Arts and lived away from my family. During the time I was away from family, I didn’t have anyone to speak Cantonese with. I would notice my skills worsen whenever I spoke to my parents. Losing Cantonese would be like losing a part of who I am. This experience drove me to study and practice whenever I could. Daai Seng Aai is also a way of sharing the resources and useful information I have learned to not only beginners, but to folks like me, Cantonese heritage speakers raised in a predominantly English speaking country so that we can all practice and preserve our mother tongue. As a project, Daai Seng Aai is complete. However, my pursuit of learning and studying the Cantonese language and culture is not over. I plan on further connecting with my heritage and community through art and design.

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Canto Speak, 2020

Cover and book design by Jasmine Hui Tin-Wai / HuiTWai.carrd.co The Making of Daai Seng Aai was created in Seattle, WA, USA using Affinity Publisher and Affinity Designer. Typefaces used in this book are Noto Sans Hong Kong and Noto Sans and Noto Serif, designed by Google, DFKai-SB, and Rubik, designed by Philipp Hubert and Sebastian Fischer.