Hi Gang,
Jeremy is an amazing fellow, very fluent in and knowledgeable about Mandarin Chinese. Also, inspiringly for those of you who are not ethnically Chinese, Jeremy is a white dude like me -- only his Mandarin language skills are at a whole 'nother level -- leaps and bounds above mine.
Please attend class this Thursday. DO NOT SKIP JUST BECAUSE I AM LETTING YOU ALL KNOW IN ADVANCE THAT I WILL NOT BE TEACHING THIS WEEK. I assure you that you will learn a lot from Jeremy, who will pick up exactly where we left off last week.
Hopefully, Jeremy will also let me know what he covered, so I can summarize the material in a supplemental blog entry before my next class that I will teach next week.
See you all 2 Thursdays from now. Thanks, Everyone.
Monday, November 27, 2017
Friday, November 24, 2017
Cantonese I Class Summary, Insights, Homework for Monday, Nov 20, 2017
Hi Everyone,
I felt like our most recent class was a bit tedious, and I apologize if any of that was my doing. We covered the basics of Lesson 2's dialogue and vocabulary, but I felt like I may have moved a bit too slowly with some of the material...
CLASS SUMMARY:
It turns out that while we did go over the vocabulary on pages 54-55 during our previous class, I was mistaken that we had previewed the dialogue.
We began class this past Monday by reviewing the vocabulary for lesson 2. I pointed out the following tidbits of information:
- a3 (pronounced "aah" on a mid level tone) as a sentence final particle. Any time you see "sentence suffix" in our textbook, the author is referring to a sentence final particle. We will study a bunch of these during the coming weeks and months. a3 is a very versatile sentence final particle; it is used in this lesson to soften abruptness. If anyone has any questions about this usage, please ask me next week in class.
- dou1 is used in this lesson to mean "also," but it can mean all or every one of some group of things or people. We will see this other meaning in future lessons.
- ga3 is a sentence final particle formed by taking the final particle ge3 and adding a3 -- usually forming a question where the question asks, "Blah blah blah GA3?" and the answer states, "Blah blah blah GE3." We will see how this is used in the lesson.
- Gam2 really is a top 5 or top 10 Cantonese word. Learn it and memorize its proper usage. It is very conversational and "Cantonesey."
- gwai3 sing3 (or Neih5 gwai3 sing3 a3?) is the proper formal question to ask someone what their "honorable" last name is. The correct response will be, "Ngoh5 sing3 [insert your last name here]."
- Remember that in order to state the nationality of someone from a certain country (or on a smaller scale, to say that someone is from a certain town or city), just add YAHN4 after the name of the country, tow n or place. There are many examples of this in the vocabulary from lesson 2.
- Please remember that all 3 of the singular pronouns have the 5 tone, the low rising tone: NGOH5 (I or me); NEIH5 or LEIH5 (you singular); KEUIH5 (he, she, him, her, sometimes it).
- In order to make any of the singular pronouns plural, just add DEIH6: NGOH5 DEIH6 (we or us); NEIH5 DEIH6 or LEIH5 DEIH6 (yous guys or all y'all); and KEUIH5 DEIH6 (they or them). HOWEVER, you don't add this after nouns like "friend" or "student" as you do with the comparable word in Mandarin
- mat1 yeh5? is our first question word: what? This is sometimes abbreviated me1 yeh5 or mi1 yeh5. It is also abbreviated me1-eh(3)(6), where the 2 syllables are slurred together, but this is very casual or rude. You will hear this all the time and especially in comedy movies and other funny and sarcastic situations, but as a new student, DON'T SAY IT THIS WAY. You will sound angry or nasty.
- ne1 is our second sentence final particle that we are learning in this lesson. It means "how about?" [whatever comes before it]. Remember that some people confuse the meaning of ne1 with neih5 ne1 (how about YOU). NE1 by itself means "how about?" -- as in, "I like French food." "Italian food ne1?" How about Italian food?
- The vocabulary word, pahng4 yauh5 (friend) is introduced with its MEASURE WORD, go3. We discussed the general idea of measure words. I spent a while explaining that we do have measure words in English: a BUNCH of carrots; a LITTER of puppies; a SLICE of pizza or bread. Whereas other languages (European languages, for example) may have masculine, feminine, or even neuter nouns, Chinese has none of that -- but each noun is seen by the Chinese mindset as belonging to a specific category of nouns based on shape or functionality. A more in depth discussion is beyond the scope of the current lesson, even though I did give additional examples in class. We will return to the concept of MEASURE WORDS as we are introduced to other ones in future lessons.
- Finally, we were introduced to the concepts of sin1 saang1 and siu2 je2 (Sir and Miss or Ms.). I explained that because last names are so important to Chinese people, titles are the reverse of how they are spoken in English. Mr. Jones becomes "Jones Mr.." Miss Lee becomes "Lee Miss."
Following the build-up, we had Allison read the Dialogue aloud several times, and then you all repeated after her a few times, one phrase or sentence at a time. We will begin next class by reviewing the dialogue. Everyone will have a chance at the beginning of next class to say one or more lines in front of the class as we go around. Following this, we will break into small groups so that everyone can practice the dialogue. Allison and I will walk around and correct pronunciation and answer any questions. If we have time, we will also begin Lesson 2's grammar next time as well.
INSIGHTS:
I don't really have any insights at the moment for this past week's class. Just this:
KEEP ON KEEPIN' ON.
In other words, whatever each of you might be struggling with, recognize it, commit to working on that exact bit of knowledge, and just keep working on it as much and as often as you need until you make the progress that you want OR NEED to make in order to progress to the next lesson, the next group of vocabulary words to memorize, the next step in your growing knowledge of Cantonese.
Make a deal with yourself that you will continue to improve or a daily, weekly, monthly basis and that you will begin to speak Cantonese with the people you would like to communicate with. Keep this goal in mind each time you attend class and each time you study or practice between class. It is important to stay motivated throughout the week while you are studying Cantonese -- not just on Mondays when you attend class.
HOMEWORK:
Your homework for next class is to review Lesson 2's vocabulary and dialogue, and make a list of any problem words or pronunciation/tones issues. Bring this list to class on Monday, ready to ask any questions that will help you to clarify whatever you need to work on this week.
Go back and rewatch Cecilie's "In A Bar" video from link I posted last week (below in this section of the blog). On the right hand side of the screen, click on video 2 and watch that as well. There are many fun and funny learn Cantonese videos on Cecilie's Cantocourse Youtube channel. Depending on time and interest, we may start discussing these videos in class.
See everyone on Monday.
Saturday, November 18, 2017
Mandarin I Class Summary, Insights, Homework for Thursday, November 16, 2017
Hi Gang,
Before I forget:
NO CLASS NEXT THURSDAY BECAUSE OF THANKSGIVING; SEE YOU ALL IN 2 WEEKS!
Let's review what we covered this past week in class:
CLASS SUMMARY:
First, we reviewed the vocabulary on pages 21 and 22. Esther read everything aloud and you guys repeated after her. This time, she read everything nice and slow(ly). After reviewing and clarifying/elaborating on some of the vocabulary and concepts / meanings of the vocabulary, I had Esther read the dialogue again, this time slower than last week. Following Esther's reading, we reviewed the dialogue sentence by sentence to make sure that everyone understood the meaning of the concepts before repeating. This is going to be our workflow going forward with every dialogue -- first reviewing the meaning and then repeating it.
It is very important that everyone understand WHAT they are saying BEFORE they say it -- right?
We saw that problematic words for some members of the class were:
Hardy har har --
Mispronouncing Mandarin...
From here, we went around the room and everyone had a chance to say one or more lines of Mandarin from the dialogue as a sort of "check" to make sure that everyone's pronunciation was moving in the right direction. For the most part, everyone did great -- good job.
For those of you with crappy pronunciation, don't worry -- BUT MAKE SURE THAT YOU ADMIT TO YOURSELF THAT YOUR PRONUNCIATION CURRENTLY SUCKS.
This is very important; you need to be VERY HONEST with yourself without getting emotional about your current crappy pronunciation. You do need to recognize that you are not currently getting it right -- and in some cases, some of you are really botching things up. This is fine at this early stage.
It is very important that you DO NOT develop a "good enough" attitude at any point during your learning process. If your pronunciation and/or tones suck, you NEED to be honest with yourself, recognize this about yourself, do NOT make it emotional at all, and just make a pact with yourself, a promise to yourself that you will continue to make weekly efforts to improve until you no longer need to improve -- until your pronunciation and tones will be consistently understood my native speakers without them craning their necks or raising an eyebrow.
Don't worry; if learning to speak Mandarin Chinese is really important to you, you WILL get it -- because what is the alternative? That you go through the rest of your life sucking at this, speaking really shitty Mandarin? I don't think so. If this means anything to you, you WILL get it right. But you need to never EVER become complacent about your studies, and you need to never EVER adopt a "good enough for rock and roll" philosophy when it comes to your Mandarin pronunciation and tones.
Following our going around the class, we broke up into "happy happy groups," as I jokingly refer to them, and Esther and I walked around for the next 15-20 minutes correcting pairs and trios, answering questions as they arose. I was very pleased with what I saw and heard. Good job, everyone!
For the final 5-10 minutes of class, we began the grammar points on pages 22 and 23, which is where we will pick up next time.
INSIGHTS:
For your insights this week, I am going to paste something I just typed for my Cantonese I class and change the references from Cantonese to Mandarin:
It is so, so, SO important to remember the subtle pronunciation and tones issues that we have been covering and reviewing over and over again. There is a reason I have been reviewing this stuff and really beating these concerns into the ground this year. Of course, for those of you actually reading this blog on a weekly basis, I am going to assume that you realize, based on the subtitle of this blog as well as some of my early diatribes in both the Cantonese I and Mandarin I sections, that my entire focus this year will be on the correct PRONUNCIATION of Cantonese and Mandarin at the most basic level for our beginner students.
You must must MUST do whatever you need to do to get past "the hump" in your learning process as quickly as possible where you are worried "whether you are saying that right," so you can move on and begin memorizing lots of vocabulary with some sense of confidence that you can pronounce that vocabulary in a way that a real native Mandarin speaker will understand what the hell you are trying to say.
You MUST get past this hump, no matter what it takes, so that you can turn your attention and any emotional energy you are investing in your new hobby or interest of learning Mandarin Chinese from the most basic worry about pronunciation and tones to the next step, which is simply learning as many vocabulary words as possible from our lessons and on your own, so that along with the basic sentence structures you are beginning to learn in class, you can start to substitute new words in and out of the sentences you are learning to express new thoughts, concepts, questions and answers.
THIS is the basis of the initial acquisition of a BASIC CONVERSATIONAL ABILITY in Mandarin Chinese.
We will talk more about this is class next time, and going forward whenever the mood strikes...
HOMEWORK:
Your homework for next Monday is to LISTEN TO THE MP3s available for Lesson 1 Dialogue 1 and vocabulary from my earlier blog entry. Focus on the correct pronunciation and tone for each syllable of each word. If you can already pronounce the current lesson's words accurately enough within THE SHEET / SHIT WINDOW OF INTELLIGIBILITY, then you can skip this step.
Absolutely watch, rewatch, AND REWATCH the video for Lesson 1 Dialogue 1 that you all should have downloaded weeks ago from my previous blog entry. Besides noticing the insane number of pencils that Li3 You3 drops on the ground when she meets Wang2 Peng2, pay special attention to the correct pronunciation and tone for each syllable of each word that is spoken. Notice the pitch contours of each sentence.
If you are struggling with your tones, you can practice a trick I just shared with my Cantonese class -- very helpful for them since they have 2 more tones spread out over a larger vocal range to worry about from the start, compared to the 4 basic tones of Mandarin over a smaller vocal range that you all are learning right now:
Every sentence that you are learning in Mandarin can be approached in 2 ways when you are studying and memorizing vocabulary and grammar:
Once you "get" the tones (once you "own" them and understand them at a DEEPER level than simply some abstract system numbered from 1 to 4 plus this "thing" called a neutral tone), you will have an INTERNAL MEMORY of the sound and "vibe" of each tone for your personal speaking voice for the rest of your life -- or at least for the rest of the time that you decide to study Mandarin Chinese.
REMEMBER: NO CLASS NEXT THURSDAY BECAUSE OF THANKSGIVING; SEE YOU ALL IN 2 WEEKS!
Before I forget:
NO CLASS NEXT THURSDAY BECAUSE OF THANKSGIVING; SEE YOU ALL IN 2 WEEKS!
Let's review what we covered this past week in class:
CLASS SUMMARY:
First, we reviewed the vocabulary on pages 21 and 22. Esther read everything aloud and you guys repeated after her. This time, she read everything nice and slow(ly). After reviewing and clarifying/elaborating on some of the vocabulary and concepts / meanings of the vocabulary, I had Esther read the dialogue again, this time slower than last week. Following Esther's reading, we reviewed the dialogue sentence by sentence to make sure that everyone understood the meaning of the concepts before repeating. This is going to be our workflow going forward with every dialogue -- first reviewing the meaning and then repeating it.
It is very important that everyone understand WHAT they are saying BEFORE they say it -- right?
We saw that problematic words for some members of the class were:
- gui4 (remembering that it is pronounced GWAY with a falling tone. UI is short for UEI, spelled UI "for convenience sake," according to our book)
- xing4 (remember the X sound, as opposed to the SH sound)
- XIAO3JIE3, pronounced xiao2jie3 due to tone sandhi, as we have discussed multiple times now
- Remember that the IAO of xiao3 and jiao4 is pronounced as if it were a QUADRATHONG (4 consecutive momentary vowel songs in a row: JEE-AAH-OH-OO). It is NOT "jow." This can be a tough concept for Cantonese speakers who tend to want to pronounce this as if the syllable rhymes with the Cantonese word for wine. It does NOT, if pronounced properly in Mandarin. If you are a Cantonese speaker, don't be lazy. ENUNCIATE your Mandarin compound finals properly, especially ones that contain multiple sequential vowel sounds as part of the same compound final sound.
- XIAN1SHENG: this is a perfect opportunity for you to change your mouth shape from the wide smile of the X initial consonant of the first syllable to the retroflex SH consonant that we learned when we pronounced the ZH CH SH R line of the bo po mo fo table!
Hardy har har --
Mispronouncing Mandarin...
From here, we went around the room and everyone had a chance to say one or more lines of Mandarin from the dialogue as a sort of "check" to make sure that everyone's pronunciation was moving in the right direction. For the most part, everyone did great -- good job.
For those of you with crappy pronunciation, don't worry -- BUT MAKE SURE THAT YOU ADMIT TO YOURSELF THAT YOUR PRONUNCIATION CURRENTLY SUCKS.
This is very important; you need to be VERY HONEST with yourself without getting emotional about your current crappy pronunciation. You do need to recognize that you are not currently getting it right -- and in some cases, some of you are really botching things up. This is fine at this early stage.
It is very important that you DO NOT develop a "good enough" attitude at any point during your learning process. If your pronunciation and/or tones suck, you NEED to be honest with yourself, recognize this about yourself, do NOT make it emotional at all, and just make a pact with yourself, a promise to yourself that you will continue to make weekly efforts to improve until you no longer need to improve -- until your pronunciation and tones will be consistently understood my native speakers without them craning their necks or raising an eyebrow.
Don't worry; if learning to speak Mandarin Chinese is really important to you, you WILL get it -- because what is the alternative? That you go through the rest of your life sucking at this, speaking really shitty Mandarin? I don't think so. If this means anything to you, you WILL get it right. But you need to never EVER become complacent about your studies, and you need to never EVER adopt a "good enough for rock and roll" philosophy when it comes to your Mandarin pronunciation and tones.
Following our going around the class, we broke up into "happy happy groups," as I jokingly refer to them, and Esther and I walked around for the next 15-20 minutes correcting pairs and trios, answering questions as they arose. I was very pleased with what I saw and heard. Good job, everyone!
For the final 5-10 minutes of class, we began the grammar points on pages 22 and 23, which is where we will pick up next time.
INSIGHTS:
For your insights this week, I am going to paste something I just typed for my Cantonese I class and change the references from Cantonese to Mandarin:
It is so, so, SO important to remember the subtle pronunciation and tones issues that we have been covering and reviewing over and over again. There is a reason I have been reviewing this stuff and really beating these concerns into the ground this year. Of course, for those of you actually reading this blog on a weekly basis, I am going to assume that you realize, based on the subtitle of this blog as well as some of my early diatribes in both the Cantonese I and Mandarin I sections, that my entire focus this year will be on the correct PRONUNCIATION of Cantonese and Mandarin at the most basic level for our beginner students.
You must must MUST do whatever you need to do to get past "the hump" in your learning process as quickly as possible where you are worried "whether you are saying that right," so you can move on and begin memorizing lots of vocabulary with some sense of confidence that you can pronounce that vocabulary in a way that a real native Mandarin speaker will understand what the hell you are trying to say.
You MUST get past this hump, no matter what it takes, so that you can turn your attention and any emotional energy you are investing in your new hobby or interest of learning Mandarin Chinese from the most basic worry about pronunciation and tones to the next step, which is simply learning as many vocabulary words as possible from our lessons and on your own, so that along with the basic sentence structures you are beginning to learn in class, you can start to substitute new words in and out of the sentences you are learning to express new thoughts, concepts, questions and answers.
THIS is the basis of the initial acquisition of a BASIC CONVERSATIONAL ABILITY in Mandarin Chinese.
We will talk more about this is class next time, and going forward whenever the mood strikes...
HOMEWORK:
Your homework for next Monday is to LISTEN TO THE MP3s available for Lesson 1 Dialogue 1 and vocabulary from my earlier blog entry. Focus on the correct pronunciation and tone for each syllable of each word. If you can already pronounce the current lesson's words accurately enough within THE SHEET / SHIT WINDOW OF INTELLIGIBILITY, then you can skip this step.
Absolutely watch, rewatch, AND REWATCH the video for Lesson 1 Dialogue 1 that you all should have downloaded weeks ago from my previous blog entry. Besides noticing the insane number of pencils that Li3 You3 drops on the ground when she meets Wang2 Peng2, pay special attention to the correct pronunciation and tone for each syllable of each word that is spoken. Notice the pitch contours of each sentence.
If you are struggling with your tones, you can practice a trick I just shared with my Cantonese class -- very helpful for them since they have 2 more tones spread out over a larger vocal range to worry about from the start, compared to the 4 basic tones of Mandarin over a smaller vocal range that you all are learning right now:
Every sentence that you are learning in Mandarin can be approached in 2 ways when you are studying and memorizing vocabulary and grammar:
- You can study and learn to read aloud the actual words, with each syllable's actual pronunciation and tone, over the duration of any one sentence; OR
- You can substitute an "aah" syllable or any other basic vowel syllable of your choice (perhaps even one you are having trouble with, such as the famous IAO), and you can "sing" each sentence on that vowel, simply focusing on getting the TONAL CONTOUR correct from start to finish.
Once you "get" the tones (once you "own" them and understand them at a DEEPER level than simply some abstract system numbered from 1 to 4 plus this "thing" called a neutral tone), you will have an INTERNAL MEMORY of the sound and "vibe" of each tone for your personal speaking voice for the rest of your life -- or at least for the rest of the time that you decide to study Mandarin Chinese.
REMEMBER: NO CLASS NEXT THURSDAY BECAUSE OF THANKSGIVING; SEE YOU ALL IN 2 WEEKS!
Cantonese I Class Summary, Insights, Homework Monday, November 13, 2017
Hi Gang,
Sorry for my delay in typing this past Monday night's class's blog entry. I performed in public for the first time in 8 or 10 years during a 2 minute gospel vocal section of a larger 35 minute long piece of new (classical) music last night, and I was a bit preoccupied with rehearsing for that last week during my free time that I might have otherwise spent typing this blog entry. Thanks for everyone's patience.
Let's review what we covered during our last class:
CLASS SUMMARY:
After reviewing the Vocabulary for lesson 1 on page 30 of your textbook, followed by lesson 1's dialogue's Recapitulation on page 3, I gave you guys a chance to break up into small groups and practice the very simple dialogue with each other as a review of the material that we covered during our previous class.
A few students, including Joseph, had some very good questions related to pronunciation and tones, and we spent a bit of time clarifying certain syllables and discussing several hints / methods for practicing tones, including "singing" the tones on an "ah" syllable of phone numbers that you might see on subway billboards, etc. (at least the numbers 1-6 within whatever phone number you might be looking at, skipping 0 and 7-9). I also mentioned memorizing certain example vocabulary words that highlight the contrasting sounds between pairs or series of tones, such as words that have both a 2 and a 5 in them, so you can learn to distinguish the subtle difference between the "feel" of a mid rising tone and a low rising tone. Other example words we discussed contrasted the 1 tone vs. the 4 or 6 tone, to help cement the sound and "feel" of a high level tone with a low level or low falling tone, to help you get comfortable with the "feel" of the top part of your vocal register that you will be using to speak the 1 tone in Cantonese vs. the "feel" of the lower part of your vocal register that you will use for 4 and 6 tones.
I hope that everyone found these hints helpful. I explained how I came to my Cantonese studies during/right after several years of intensive sightsinging classes here in NYC, so I learned the 6 tones of Cantonese that we are teaching at ALESN (minus the high falling tone, which I added later on) with a musician's ear towards the subtleties between pitch levels and level vs. rising or falling intonations. Most people are NOT coming from this approach, but I explained how this helped me to cement the sound AND FEEL of my tones for my own voice and my own "inner ear."
This allowed me to get past the initial, perhaps boring, "bullshit" phase of learning Chinese rather quickly (the very first "from scratch" phase where I was obsessively concerned simply with "whether I got that right," or "whether I pronounced that right" in the first place) -- so I could turn my attention to grammar and sentence structures and learning lots of vocabulary. My hope for all of you is that you can each figure out what works best for your own learning approach, so that you can also quickly get past obsessing over pronunciation and move on to the much more interesting (and rewarding) secondary initial phase of beginning to learn vocabulary, grammar, and word order.
After reviewing lesson 1's dialogue and discussing strategies for improving pronunciation and tones, we turned to lesson 2's vocabulary on pages 54 and 55. Even though there appear to be 31 new words to memorize, I broke them down for everyone and showed that there are really only maybe 23 new concepts to learn, with some repeating word endings, etc., making a total of 31 new vocabulary items. This will make these new words easier to learn for those of you who followed my explanation in class.
We will review this idea during our next class as well -- how to streamline your learning process for new vocabulary words by breaking them down and recognizing patterns, such as the pattern that we saw with the use of the word YAHN4 for person when describing someone's nationality. In English, we say "AmericAN" or "BritISH" or SenegalESE," but in Chinese (regardless of the dialect), you just give the name of the country and then add YAHN4 afterwards: "America PERSON" or "England PERSON" or "Senegal PERSON."
We then turned to the dialogue. We approached the Build-Up on page 32 and I don't recall finishing this (I haven't had time to listen to the recording I made of class, so I apologize if I am not remembering this properly -- busy week for me last week). I feel like we left off without properly finishing this dialogue's Build-Up, so this is where we will start next time.
INSIGHTS:
In the interest of time, because I also have to type a Mandarin I blog entry today, I don't really have many insights today. Just that it is so, so, SO important to remember the subtle pronunciation and tones issues that we have been covering and reviewing over and over again. There is a reason I have been reviewing this stuff and really beating these concerns into the ground this year. Of course, for those of you actually reading this blog on a weekly basis, I am going to assume that you realize based on the subtitle of this blog as well as some of my early diatribes in both the Cantonese I and Mandarin I sections that my entire focus this year will be on the correct PRONUNCIATION of Cantonese and Mandarin at the most basic level for our beginner students.
You must must MUST do whatever you need to do to get past "the hump" in your learning process as quickly as possible where you are worried "whether you are saying that right," so you can move on and begin memorizing lots of vocabulary with some sense of confidence that you can pronounce that vocabulary in a way that a real native Cantonese speaker will understand what the hell you are trying to say.
You MUST get past this hump, no matter what it takes, so that you can turn your attention and any emotional energy you are investing in your new hobby or interest of learning Cantonese Chinese from the most basic worry about pronunciation and tones to the next step, which is simply learning as many vocabulary words as possible from our lessons and on your own, so that along with the basic sentence structures you are beginning to learn in class, you can start to substitute new words in and out of the sentences you are learning to express new thoughts, concepts, questions and answers.
THIS is the basis of the initial acquisition of a BASIC CONVERSATIONAL ABILITY in Cantonese.
We will talk more about this is class next time, and going forward whenever the mood strikes...
HOMEWORK:
Your homework for next Monday is to LISTEN TO THE MP3 that accompanies Lesson 2, focusing on the Build-Up and Recapitulation of the dialogue at the beginning of the mp3, as well as the correct pronunciation of the vocabulary words at the end of the mp3 (I believe; it has been a long time since I have listened to the mp3s for this book -- someone please let me know if the vocabulary words are read aloud earlier during the recording instead of at the very end, following the chronological order of the text in the book).
In addition to paying attention to the pronunciation and tones of individual syllables, please also begin to pay attention to the interplay of tones as they function in real time, from syllable to syllable within any one sentence, creating a PITCH CONTOUR as the tones "bounce" from one to the next, on and on from the beginning to the end of each phrase or sentence.
We will talk more about observing and studying THIS in future classes.
Every sentence that you are learning in Cantonese can be approached 2 ways when you are studying and memorizing vocabulary and grammar:
As a fun addition to your Cantonese studies from now on , I am going to start assigning weekly or every-so-often videos by my Hong Kong friend Cecilie Gamst Berg from her Cantocourse Youtube channel.
Here is your first viewing assignment, an absolute beginner video teaching the vocabulary words YAUH5 and MOUH5 (to have and to not have):
Sorry for my delay in typing this past Monday night's class's blog entry. I performed in public for the first time in 8 or 10 years during a 2 minute gospel vocal section of a larger 35 minute long piece of new (classical) music last night, and I was a bit preoccupied with rehearsing for that last week during my free time that I might have otherwise spent typing this blog entry. Thanks for everyone's patience.
Let's review what we covered during our last class:
CLASS SUMMARY:
After reviewing the Vocabulary for lesson 1 on page 30 of your textbook, followed by lesson 1's dialogue's Recapitulation on page 3, I gave you guys a chance to break up into small groups and practice the very simple dialogue with each other as a review of the material that we covered during our previous class.
A few students, including Joseph, had some very good questions related to pronunciation and tones, and we spent a bit of time clarifying certain syllables and discussing several hints / methods for practicing tones, including "singing" the tones on an "ah" syllable of phone numbers that you might see on subway billboards, etc. (at least the numbers 1-6 within whatever phone number you might be looking at, skipping 0 and 7-9). I also mentioned memorizing certain example vocabulary words that highlight the contrasting sounds between pairs or series of tones, such as words that have both a 2 and a 5 in them, so you can learn to distinguish the subtle difference between the "feel" of a mid rising tone and a low rising tone. Other example words we discussed contrasted the 1 tone vs. the 4 or 6 tone, to help cement the sound and "feel" of a high level tone with a low level or low falling tone, to help you get comfortable with the "feel" of the top part of your vocal register that you will be using to speak the 1 tone in Cantonese vs. the "feel" of the lower part of your vocal register that you will use for 4 and 6 tones.
I hope that everyone found these hints helpful. I explained how I came to my Cantonese studies during/right after several years of intensive sightsinging classes here in NYC, so I learned the 6 tones of Cantonese that we are teaching at ALESN (minus the high falling tone, which I added later on) with a musician's ear towards the subtleties between pitch levels and level vs. rising or falling intonations. Most people are NOT coming from this approach, but I explained how this helped me to cement the sound AND FEEL of my tones for my own voice and my own "inner ear."
This allowed me to get past the initial, perhaps boring, "bullshit" phase of learning Chinese rather quickly (the very first "from scratch" phase where I was obsessively concerned simply with "whether I got that right," or "whether I pronounced that right" in the first place) -- so I could turn my attention to grammar and sentence structures and learning lots of vocabulary. My hope for all of you is that you can each figure out what works best for your own learning approach, so that you can also quickly get past obsessing over pronunciation and move on to the much more interesting (and rewarding) secondary initial phase of beginning to learn vocabulary, grammar, and word order.
After reviewing lesson 1's dialogue and discussing strategies for improving pronunciation and tones, we turned to lesson 2's vocabulary on pages 54 and 55. Even though there appear to be 31 new words to memorize, I broke them down for everyone and showed that there are really only maybe 23 new concepts to learn, with some repeating word endings, etc., making a total of 31 new vocabulary items. This will make these new words easier to learn for those of you who followed my explanation in class.
We will review this idea during our next class as well -- how to streamline your learning process for new vocabulary words by breaking them down and recognizing patterns, such as the pattern that we saw with the use of the word YAHN4 for person when describing someone's nationality. In English, we say "AmericAN" or "BritISH" or SenegalESE," but in Chinese (regardless of the dialect), you just give the name of the country and then add YAHN4 afterwards: "America PERSON" or "England PERSON" or "Senegal PERSON."
We then turned to the dialogue. We approached the Build-Up on page 32 and I don't recall finishing this (I haven't had time to listen to the recording I made of class, so I apologize if I am not remembering this properly -- busy week for me last week). I feel like we left off without properly finishing this dialogue's Build-Up, so this is where we will start next time.
INSIGHTS:
In the interest of time, because I also have to type a Mandarin I blog entry today, I don't really have many insights today. Just that it is so, so, SO important to remember the subtle pronunciation and tones issues that we have been covering and reviewing over and over again. There is a reason I have been reviewing this stuff and really beating these concerns into the ground this year. Of course, for those of you actually reading this blog on a weekly basis, I am going to assume that you realize based on the subtitle of this blog as well as some of my early diatribes in both the Cantonese I and Mandarin I sections that my entire focus this year will be on the correct PRONUNCIATION of Cantonese and Mandarin at the most basic level for our beginner students.
You must must MUST do whatever you need to do to get past "the hump" in your learning process as quickly as possible where you are worried "whether you are saying that right," so you can move on and begin memorizing lots of vocabulary with some sense of confidence that you can pronounce that vocabulary in a way that a real native Cantonese speaker will understand what the hell you are trying to say.
You MUST get past this hump, no matter what it takes, so that you can turn your attention and any emotional energy you are investing in your new hobby or interest of learning Cantonese Chinese from the most basic worry about pronunciation and tones to the next step, which is simply learning as many vocabulary words as possible from our lessons and on your own, so that along with the basic sentence structures you are beginning to learn in class, you can start to substitute new words in and out of the sentences you are learning to express new thoughts, concepts, questions and answers.
THIS is the basis of the initial acquisition of a BASIC CONVERSATIONAL ABILITY in Cantonese.
We will talk more about this is class next time, and going forward whenever the mood strikes...
HOMEWORK:
Your homework for next Monday is to LISTEN TO THE MP3 that accompanies Lesson 2, focusing on the Build-Up and Recapitulation of the dialogue at the beginning of the mp3, as well as the correct pronunciation of the vocabulary words at the end of the mp3 (I believe; it has been a long time since I have listened to the mp3s for this book -- someone please let me know if the vocabulary words are read aloud earlier during the recording instead of at the very end, following the chronological order of the text in the book).
In addition to paying attention to the pronunciation and tones of individual syllables, please also begin to pay attention to the interplay of tones as they function in real time, from syllable to syllable within any one sentence, creating a PITCH CONTOUR as the tones "bounce" from one to the next, on and on from the beginning to the end of each phrase or sentence.
We will talk more about observing and studying THIS in future classes.
Every sentence that you are learning in Cantonese can be approached 2 ways when you are studying and memorizing vocabulary and grammar:
- You can study and learn to read aloud the actual words, with each syllable's actual pronunciation and tone, over the duration of any one sentence; OR
- You can substitute an "aah" syllable or any other basic vowel syllable of your choice (perhaps even one you are having trouble with, such as the famous EUI), and you can "sing" each sentence on a vowel, simply focusing on getting the TONAL CONTOUR correct from start to finish.
As a fun addition to your Cantonese studies from now on , I am going to start assigning weekly or every-so-often videos by my Hong Kong friend Cecilie Gamst Berg from her Cantocourse Youtube channel.
Here is your first viewing assignment, an absolute beginner video teaching the vocabulary words YAUH5 and MOUH5 (to have and to not have):
Sunday, November 12, 2017
Our FINAL Cantonese 2 Workshop Class, Saturday, November 11, 2017
😒
Our final class...
Instead of continuing with the exercises in Lesson 16 (the first lesson in Volume 2 of the FSI Cantonese textbook), we reviewed the vocabulary for Lesson 17 and then covered the dialogue and a few quick Culture Notes before wrapping up this workshop.
I was hoping to continue this as a year-long class, but I can't do that with a 4 student enrollment, because once the weather starts getting bad, weekly attendance will drop to 1 or 2 people, and that is no good. Sorry, everyone!
Depending on interest and classroom availability, I may hold additional 4 week Cantonese 2 workshops later in the year, teaching additional lessons from this same book.
Rather than type a long blog entry summarizing our class, I will leave off here, since we will not be returning next week and there is no homework. I encourage everyone who took this class for the 4 weeks that I held it to continue reading and learning from this book on your own. There are some excellent vocabulary words, sentence structures, and grammar points discussed in Volume 2 of the FSI Cantonese textbook, and even though it was published in 1970, it remains an excellent resource for learning Yale romanized conversational Cantonese.
See you all on the flip side.
In the interest of saving space at the top of the home screen, I may remove this class from the menu bar and substitute a new category: INTERVIEWS WITH ALESN TEACHERS ABOUT LEARNING CANTONESE AND MANDARIN IN OUR PROGRAM OR ON YOUR OWN THROUGH INTENSIVE SELF-STUDY.
Most likely, I will simply refer to this new content as "Interviews" in the menu at the top of the screen. The Cantonese 2 blog entries will still be available at the right side of your screen under categories.
Thanks again, and best wishes to everyone!
Our final class...
Instead of continuing with the exercises in Lesson 16 (the first lesson in Volume 2 of the FSI Cantonese textbook), we reviewed the vocabulary for Lesson 17 and then covered the dialogue and a few quick Culture Notes before wrapping up this workshop.
I was hoping to continue this as a year-long class, but I can't do that with a 4 student enrollment, because once the weather starts getting bad, weekly attendance will drop to 1 or 2 people, and that is no good. Sorry, everyone!
Depending on interest and classroom availability, I may hold additional 4 week Cantonese 2 workshops later in the year, teaching additional lessons from this same book.
Rather than type a long blog entry summarizing our class, I will leave off here, since we will not be returning next week and there is no homework. I encourage everyone who took this class for the 4 weeks that I held it to continue reading and learning from this book on your own. There are some excellent vocabulary words, sentence structures, and grammar points discussed in Volume 2 of the FSI Cantonese textbook, and even though it was published in 1970, it remains an excellent resource for learning Yale romanized conversational Cantonese.
See you all on the flip side.
In the interest of saving space at the top of the home screen, I may remove this class from the menu bar and substitute a new category: INTERVIEWS WITH ALESN TEACHERS ABOUT LEARNING CANTONESE AND MANDARIN IN OUR PROGRAM OR ON YOUR OWN THROUGH INTENSIVE SELF-STUDY.
Most likely, I will simply refer to this new content as "Interviews" in the menu at the top of the screen. The Cantonese 2 blog entries will still be available at the right side of your screen under categories.
Thanks again, and best wishes to everyone!
Mandarin I Class Summary, Insights, Homework Thursday, November 9, 2017
Hi Everyone,
Another productive class. We were in a different room on the first floor by the men's room this past Thursday; nice, large classroom, but a very small white board, so I apologize for that if anyone had a tough time reading the things I wrote on the board when we reviewed the pronunciation and tones.
CLASS SUMMARY:
We spent the first half of class reviewing all of the pronunciation and tones material from start to finish. I wrote each row of each initial consonant and each final (simple and compound) from our familiar tables that we have been studying, and everyone repeated everything fairly accurately. I was pleased to hear this. I am sure that some of you are still having issues with pronouncing some of the initial or final sounds, or with any or all of the tones, but have no fear -- we will be reviewing all of the same pronunciation and tones issues from now on, but within the context of actual Mandarin Chinese vocabulary in our lessons' dialogues that we will be covering going forward.
We spent the second half of class covering Lesson 1 Dialogue 1: Greetings.
We discussed that Di4 yi1 ke4 means "the FIRST lesson." I mentioned that we will begin learning numbers in a subsequent lesson, but I pointed out that if you add di4 before a CARDINAL NUMBER (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.), it becomes an ORDINAL NUMBER (first, second, third, fourth, fifth, etc.).
Dialogue 1 is called "Exchanging Greetings," and it is about -- surprise, surprise: exchanging greetings...
We previewed the vocabulary -- 15 new words, including 2 proper names of 2 of the characters that we will meet in our book. Esther read the vocabulary out loud and everyone repeated after her several times for each word. I then explained a few things about some of the words:
We saw and heard that the dialogue is very short. Esther read it 3 times -- fast, faster, and fastest, lol. I had asked her to read it super slow, medium slow and slightly slow, but I don't think she understood what I was going for. I reread the dialogue at a slower speed, and then we went over it word by word and phrase by phrase to make sure that everyone understood the meaning of what was happening. Finally, you all repeated the dialogue once or twice, and then class was over.
INSIGHTS:
This was our first foray into attempting to speak actual conversational Mandarin Chinese, as opposed to ga ga goo goo baby syllables and tone exercises, with a few sample words thrown in to illustrate pronunciation examples. Everyone did well for being dumped into the deep end, so to speak, even though this was a very short dialogue -- so maybe more like the deeper part of the shallow end?
We will pick up next time with the same dialogue, repeating it a few times after me and Esther, and then we will go around the room and everyone will have a chance to read one or two lines from the dialogue out loud in front of the class. Following this, my intention is to have you all split into small groups and practice running the dialogue back and forth for 10 minutes or so -- and then we will cover some basic grammar points -- all during our next class.
HOMEWORK:
Your homework for next week is to watch THE VIDEO that you all should have downloaded to accompany this dialogue from the link that I posted 3-4 weeks ago. Please scan below in this blog category for the download link if you are a new student, or if you are a lazy student who hasn't bothered to download the videos yet.
Please watch the video for lesson 1 dialogue 1 multiple times. I am not sure if the videos ripped from the DVD are encoded with an option to select subtitles, as with the DVD itself. If they are, please select the pinyin subtitles, so you can watch and read along at the same time. If not (or even so), please also have your book in front of you while watching the video and please follow the pinyin text of the dialogue while the actors in the video are performing the dialogue.
Please also listen to the mp3 recording of the dialogue, downloadable from one of the links provided at the same time as the video links in a previous blog entry. The book's mp3s are also readily available via a Google search. For any of you still struggling with your pronunciation, this is an excellent tool to help you work out the kinks and also to help you start to feel comfortable pronouncing accurate, basic Mandarin Chinese.
See you all next Thursday.
Another productive class. We were in a different room on the first floor by the men's room this past Thursday; nice, large classroom, but a very small white board, so I apologize for that if anyone had a tough time reading the things I wrote on the board when we reviewed the pronunciation and tones.
CLASS SUMMARY:
We spent the first half of class reviewing all of the pronunciation and tones material from start to finish. I wrote each row of each initial consonant and each final (simple and compound) from our familiar tables that we have been studying, and everyone repeated everything fairly accurately. I was pleased to hear this. I am sure that some of you are still having issues with pronouncing some of the initial or final sounds, or with any or all of the tones, but have no fear -- we will be reviewing all of the same pronunciation and tones issues from now on, but within the context of actual Mandarin Chinese vocabulary in our lessons' dialogues that we will be covering going forward.
We spent the second half of class covering Lesson 1 Dialogue 1: Greetings.
We discussed that Di4 yi1 ke4 means "the FIRST lesson." I mentioned that we will begin learning numbers in a subsequent lesson, but I pointed out that if you add di4 before a CARDINAL NUMBER (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.), it becomes an ORDINAL NUMBER (first, second, third, fourth, fifth, etc.).
Dialogue 1 is called "Exchanging Greetings," and it is about -- surprise, surprise: exchanging greetings...
We previewed the vocabulary -- 15 new words, including 2 proper names of 2 of the characters that we will meet in our book. Esther read the vocabulary out loud and everyone repeated after her several times for each word. I then explained a few things about some of the words:
- Ni3 hao3, even though it is technically two 3 tones in a row and is written this way in pinyin, is actually pronounced "ni2 hao3," which we discussed as a tone sandhi rule during our previous classes.
- Qing3 wen4 (please, may I ask [you a question]) illustrates the importance of getting your tones right. We discussed that qing3 wen3 means "please may I kiss [you]" and qing3 wen2 means "please may I smell [you]." Yet another example of the importance of learning the proper tones as you learn new vocabulary words.
- Ni3 gui4 xing4? (your honorable last name?) we discussed as a question that Chinese people are likely to ask when meeting a new person, because it is more important to Chinese people what your last name is than your first name. We discussed a bit of the cultural background for this concept.
- We discussed that Wo3 rhymes with "law" and will NEVER EVER sound like "whoa." Do NOT pronounce it this way, or I will blow a gasket when I hear you in class...
- We discussed jiao4 as an example of how it is important to pronounce all of the aspects of the sounds of compound finals. This is not "jow" as it would be pronounced in English. It is pronounced (with a wide smile to get the proper pronunciation of the JI initial consonant) JEE-AAAH-OH-OO. Said properly in super slow-mo, this compound final is a quadrathong -- 4 separate back to back simple vowel sounds strung together in this specific order. I will remind you all of this and of other similar elongated compound finals as the year progresses.
- We discussed shen2ME and ming2ZI as perfect examples for you all to practice the neutral tone.
- Finally, we discussed Li3 You3 (pronounced "Li2 You3" because of tone sandhi) and Wang2 Peng2 as the names of our 2 characters. Remember that Li3 is her last name and You3 is her first name; Wang2 is his last name and Peng2 is his first name.
We saw and heard that the dialogue is very short. Esther read it 3 times -- fast, faster, and fastest, lol. I had asked her to read it super slow, medium slow and slightly slow, but I don't think she understood what I was going for. I reread the dialogue at a slower speed, and then we went over it word by word and phrase by phrase to make sure that everyone understood the meaning of what was happening. Finally, you all repeated the dialogue once or twice, and then class was over.
INSIGHTS:
This was our first foray into attempting to speak actual conversational Mandarin Chinese, as opposed to ga ga goo goo baby syllables and tone exercises, with a few sample words thrown in to illustrate pronunciation examples. Everyone did well for being dumped into the deep end, so to speak, even though this was a very short dialogue -- so maybe more like the deeper part of the shallow end?
We will pick up next time with the same dialogue, repeating it a few times after me and Esther, and then we will go around the room and everyone will have a chance to read one or two lines from the dialogue out loud in front of the class. Following this, my intention is to have you all split into small groups and practice running the dialogue back and forth for 10 minutes or so -- and then we will cover some basic grammar points -- all during our next class.
HOMEWORK:
Your homework for next week is to watch THE VIDEO that you all should have downloaded to accompany this dialogue from the link that I posted 3-4 weeks ago. Please scan below in this blog category for the download link if you are a new student, or if you are a lazy student who hasn't bothered to download the videos yet.
Please watch the video for lesson 1 dialogue 1 multiple times. I am not sure if the videos ripped from the DVD are encoded with an option to select subtitles, as with the DVD itself. If they are, please select the pinyin subtitles, so you can watch and read along at the same time. If not (or even so), please also have your book in front of you while watching the video and please follow the pinyin text of the dialogue while the actors in the video are performing the dialogue.
Please also listen to the mp3 recording of the dialogue, downloadable from one of the links provided at the same time as the video links in a previous blog entry. The book's mp3s are also readily available via a Google search. For any of you still struggling with your pronunciation, this is an excellent tool to help you work out the kinks and also to help you start to feel comfortable pronouncing accurate, basic Mandarin Chinese.
See you all next Thursday.
Tuesday, November 7, 2017
Cantonese I Class Summary, Insights, Homework for November 6, 2017
Hi Gang,
A smaller but successful class last night, and I am happy to report that it was our last pronunciation and tones class. We are right on schedule compared to what I envisioned for the amount of time I wanted to spend covering these two most important beginning aspects of Cantonese this year. Thanks to everyone for bearing with this material and for doing your best to pronounce everything accurately and with proper tones. Yay.
CLASS SUMMARY:
We began class last night with a review of the table of initials at the bottom of page 11 in your textbook. Remember that lines 1 and 2 all sound like English language initial consonants. We discussed that the j sound in Yale romanized Cantonese is sort of like a cross between the sound of "jam jelly Jimmy George" and the "dz" or ds" sound at the end of "the creature with 2 heaDS." I mentioned that to be safe and to go for the most accurate pronunciation possible for me as a white outsider second language learner, I split the difference. I mentioned that along the potAYto potAHto tomAYto tomAHto pronunciation continuum for the j sound, one end has it sounding purely like "Jimmy jelly jolly" and the other end like "heaDS."
We saw some other potential accent variations in the next entry on line 3: the ch sound of Yale romanized Cantonese. On one end of the spectrum, we have an almost English language "ch" sound, like "church Charlie Chaplin" but with a slightly wider "smile" to the mouth when pronouncing the sound. On the other end of the pronunciation spectrum, we have the "ts" sound at the end of the word "caTS," as in, "Brendan has 2 caTS." To be safe, again, your white teacher splits the difference. I pointed out that KETCHUP, perhaps the only famous mainstream English language word to come from Cantonese, historically has had 2 different spellings on bottles here in the US, based on 2 different romanization systems' spellings of the ch sound of Yale romanized Cantonese: ketCHup, based on the "ch" spelling of this sound as in Yale; and caTSup, based on an earlier romanization of the same exact Cantonese sound as "ts." Remember that I touched on this last time giving the example of choi3 (vegetable or food/cuisine in Yale) vs. tsoi3, an alternate romanized spelling of the same Cantonese word.
Line 4 presents one issue: the ng initial consonant, which I touched on last time as well, so I will only mention here that all of my students need to choose one of the three possible ways to pronounce this initial consonant and then stick with it and get really confident at saying it so that this sometimes difficult initial sound is not difficult for you. My recommendation is that you simply learn to pronounce ng as "ng" and that you do NOT do one of the other 2 shortcuts that I mentioned. If you can pronounce the initial ng properly when you want to, you can always drop it and say oh5 for I or me if you want to adopt a hip Hong Kong accent.
Line 5 presented no issues to students.
From here, we turned the page and spent a good amount of time reviewing the table of final syllables at the top of page 12. We spent more time on column 1, the "a" related vowel-finals of Cantonese as spelled in Yale romanization. I spent a fair amount of time clarifying the differences between the single a short vowel finals in this column and the double aa long vowel finals. The one exception in the column is actually the first final, the single a by itself without any other final sounds attached. To simplify spelling, though this should be written as "aa" in Yale to preserve consistency, it is shortened to a for appearance purposes on the printed page -- so says our book. Personally, I feel that Yale should have kept this sound as "aa" -- as it is spelled in jyutping, another romanization system that we have used in the past at ALESN.
Thus, "Neih5 hou2 ma3?", where the "ma3" is an aa sound like in the English word fAther, not a single a sound as in the English word "Above."
Please practice and review the sounds of the long versus short aa and a finals in column 1, listening to the mp3 from lesson 1 of your book as many times as necessary until you are clear on the differences between these sounds. Remember: Sesame STREET vs. Sesame CHICKEN...
Column 2, the "e" related vowel finals, did not present any issues for students. Remember that kek features a slightly different e sound than the sound of the e in je, gei, and geng.
The third column, EU is the most challenging set of vowel finals for new students. Because I discussed this last time, I just want to mention 2 key points: First, please remember that eui is NOT the same as oi. If you pay attention to nothing else from this one class I have taught, let it be that eui when pronounced properly DOES NOT SOUND LIKE oi. You must learn to make these 2 vowels sound different -- either now or eventually as the year progresses. You must, so do it.
Secondly, remember that the eung and the euk sounds have a spectrum of accents ranging from the French sounding "eu" vowel that we discussed in class on one end to the "er" sound of the English word "her" on the other end of spectrum. I also discussed this in my last Cantonese I blog post.
The 4th i vowel column basically sounds like the "ee" sound of the English word "free," except for the last example: syllables ending in ik. Example words sik1 (to know a skill or to know a person, place or thing) and sihk6 (to eat) were discussed. Both of these words sound like the English "sick."
Remember for the o vowel column that a single o final vowel by itself in Cantonese sounds like the English "on" or "off. We discussed the various other o finals that can be created by combining with additional final sounds mentioned in column 5.
Column 6, the u vowel final sounds, all sound like "oo" as in "food," except for ut and uk, as in fut and guk, both of which sound like the vowel in the English language word "foot." I pointed out that, counterintuitively, the sound of cheut1, to go out, though it uses the eut vowel, is pronounced by some native speakers in our class on one of of the patAYto potAHto accent continuum to sound almost identical to the ut final in column 6. Don't get hung up on this -- just be aware that some native speakers will pronounce eut and ut as almost identical sounds.
Finally, the yu pucker sound as in jyu, gyun, and kyut, was explained. This is the same sound as the umlaut u of Mandarin and it can be a tough sound for beginner students, so make sure you pay attention to it and get it right if it is hard for you.
From here, we touched on the more salient points of the English language text elaborations on all of the sounds just mentioned. I suggested that any students in class who learn more kinesthetically should pay special attention to the exact alignments and placements of the lips, tongue, and other parts of the vocal apparatus mentioned in these detailed descriptions, because they may help you. For other students who learn by listening and imitating the teacher or mp3s, I recommend that you still read these portions of the text, but maybe skim them and then forget about the text from pages 12 through 22 -- unless you need help making any one particular initial consonant or final sound.
Following our review of these notes as well as a few that we did not cover last time, we moved through some Culture Notes from pages 22 through the top of 24. The book does an excellent job, in English, of explaining some basic Cantonese Chinese cultural considerations that will affect your understanding of the language from the start -- foremost among them word order when giving someone's title and last name in Chinese. Remember that Mr. Jones, Ms. Lee, Doctor Wong in English all translate to the Cantonese word order of Jones Mr., Lee Ms., and Wong Doctor.
We don't really know enough of the language yet to put the [Sentence] Structure Notes into proper perspective yet, which we covered on pages 24 through 26. Instead of me recapping them here, please just reread this material on your own and keep it in the back of your mind as we start to learn the dialogues and move forward with new vocabulary and grammar concepts in future classes.
Finally, we finished last night's class with a quick review of the vocabulary list on page 30 and a repetition of the Recapitulation of Lesson 1's dialogue on page 3. We will repeat Lesson 1's dialogue again at the beginning of next class and then go around the room and have everyone read lines from the dialogue. Because this is a short one, we may or may not break into small groups for you all to practice while I go around and correct folks. We will spend most of next class beginning lesson 2.
INSIGHTS:
In the interest of time, just one insight this week, which is the same one I gave my Mandarin I class last Thursday, as we just finished the pronunciation and tones intro stuff in that class as well:
Each of you needs to do whatever is necessary FOR YOU to learn consistent proper pronunciation and tones of these Cantonese syllables within a window of what is acceptable and understandable when a native speaker is listening to you speak, in order for this person to understand what you are trying to communicate in Cantonese.
For some of you, no further pronunciation work will ever be needed because you have already been speaking and listening to basic Cantonese for your entire life as a result of your family and upbringing. If this is you, great! Now you can focus on learning vocabulary, grammar, sentence patterns, etc. and you will be on your way towards speaking progressively more and more interesting and useful Mandarin.
For others, you will need to put in more time, a lot of time, ALL OF YOUR SPARE TIME, if you really want to be able to communicate with speakers of this language in a way that they will understand you instead of scratching their heads and shrugging their shoulders, or having to revert to English during your conversations.
This is ok, if you fit into the second category.
If you do fit into the second category, don't whine about it. Just make a deal with yourself that you will keep working on your Cantonese pronunciation and tones until you no longer need to work on your Cantonese pronunciation and tones. Pronunciation and tones are the two most important initial aspects of your Chinese studies, and you MUST MUST MUST eventually get them right, at any cost.
It is only after you no longer have to worry about pronunciation and tones that REAL LEARNING can begin. Only then can you confidently begin to acquire vocabulary, sentence patterns, grammar, syntax (word order and related concepts) -- and only then can you begin to speak accurate Cantonese with your friends, relatives, in-laws, etc.
HOMEWORK:
For homework this week, please review all of this pronunciation and tones stuff. We are now officially done with the pronunciation and tones intro part of the class. We will review Lesson 1's dialogue next week and then move on to lesson 2!
If you have not and you need to, please review the tones videos further down in this section of the blog. I have added many additional videos, sent by students days and weeks after the assignment was due. They are all good videos and have something to teach you about the 6 tones of Cantonese Chinese. In addition, I have posted other videos in the previous postings in this category that will help with pronunciation and with providing a general overview/context for your Cantonese studies this year.
Your main homework for next week is to review all of this pronunciation and tones stuff for as long as you need to, and then to preview the vocabulary and dialogue for Lesson 2 on pages 54-55 and pages 32-34.
See you all next week.
A smaller but successful class last night, and I am happy to report that it was our last pronunciation and tones class. We are right on schedule compared to what I envisioned for the amount of time I wanted to spend covering these two most important beginning aspects of Cantonese this year. Thanks to everyone for bearing with this material and for doing your best to pronounce everything accurately and with proper tones. Yay.
CLASS SUMMARY:
We began class last night with a review of the table of initials at the bottom of page 11 in your textbook. Remember that lines 1 and 2 all sound like English language initial consonants. We discussed that the j sound in Yale romanized Cantonese is sort of like a cross between the sound of "jam jelly Jimmy George" and the "dz" or ds" sound at the end of "the creature with 2 heaDS." I mentioned that to be safe and to go for the most accurate pronunciation possible for me as a white outsider second language learner, I split the difference. I mentioned that along the potAYto potAHto tomAYto tomAHto pronunciation continuum for the j sound, one end has it sounding purely like "Jimmy jelly jolly" and the other end like "heaDS."
We saw some other potential accent variations in the next entry on line 3: the ch sound of Yale romanized Cantonese. On one end of the spectrum, we have an almost English language "ch" sound, like "church Charlie Chaplin" but with a slightly wider "smile" to the mouth when pronouncing the sound. On the other end of the pronunciation spectrum, we have the "ts" sound at the end of the word "caTS," as in, "Brendan has 2 caTS." To be safe, again, your white teacher splits the difference. I pointed out that KETCHUP, perhaps the only famous mainstream English language word to come from Cantonese, historically has had 2 different spellings on bottles here in the US, based on 2 different romanization systems' spellings of the ch sound of Yale romanized Cantonese: ketCHup, based on the "ch" spelling of this sound as in Yale; and caTSup, based on an earlier romanization of the same exact Cantonese sound as "ts." Remember that I touched on this last time giving the example of choi3 (vegetable or food/cuisine in Yale) vs. tsoi3, an alternate romanized spelling of the same Cantonese word.
Line 4 presents one issue: the ng initial consonant, which I touched on last time as well, so I will only mention here that all of my students need to choose one of the three possible ways to pronounce this initial consonant and then stick with it and get really confident at saying it so that this sometimes difficult initial sound is not difficult for you. My recommendation is that you simply learn to pronounce ng as "ng" and that you do NOT do one of the other 2 shortcuts that I mentioned. If you can pronounce the initial ng properly when you want to, you can always drop it and say oh5 for I or me if you want to adopt a hip Hong Kong accent.
Line 5 presented no issues to students.
From here, we turned the page and spent a good amount of time reviewing the table of final syllables at the top of page 12. We spent more time on column 1, the "a" related vowel-finals of Cantonese as spelled in Yale romanization. I spent a fair amount of time clarifying the differences between the single a short vowel finals in this column and the double aa long vowel finals. The one exception in the column is actually the first final, the single a by itself without any other final sounds attached. To simplify spelling, though this should be written as "aa" in Yale to preserve consistency, it is shortened to a for appearance purposes on the printed page -- so says our book. Personally, I feel that Yale should have kept this sound as "aa" -- as it is spelled in jyutping, another romanization system that we have used in the past at ALESN.
Thus, "Neih5 hou2 ma3?", where the "ma3" is an aa sound like in the English word fAther, not a single a sound as in the English word "Above."
Please practice and review the sounds of the long versus short aa and a finals in column 1, listening to the mp3 from lesson 1 of your book as many times as necessary until you are clear on the differences between these sounds. Remember: Sesame STREET vs. Sesame CHICKEN...
Column 2, the "e" related vowel finals, did not present any issues for students. Remember that kek features a slightly different e sound than the sound of the e in je, gei, and geng.
The third column, EU is the most challenging set of vowel finals for new students. Because I discussed this last time, I just want to mention 2 key points: First, please remember that eui is NOT the same as oi. If you pay attention to nothing else from this one class I have taught, let it be that eui when pronounced properly DOES NOT SOUND LIKE oi. You must learn to make these 2 vowels sound different -- either now or eventually as the year progresses. You must, so do it.
Secondly, remember that the eung and the euk sounds have a spectrum of accents ranging from the French sounding "eu" vowel that we discussed in class on one end to the "er" sound of the English word "her" on the other end of spectrum. I also discussed this in my last Cantonese I blog post.
The 4th i vowel column basically sounds like the "ee" sound of the English word "free," except for the last example: syllables ending in ik. Example words sik1 (to know a skill or to know a person, place or thing) and sihk6 (to eat) were discussed. Both of these words sound like the English "sick."
Remember for the o vowel column that a single o final vowel by itself in Cantonese sounds like the English "on" or "off. We discussed the various other o finals that can be created by combining with additional final sounds mentioned in column 5.
Column 6, the u vowel final sounds, all sound like "oo" as in "food," except for ut and uk, as in fut and guk, both of which sound like the vowel in the English language word "foot." I pointed out that, counterintuitively, the sound of cheut1, to go out, though it uses the eut vowel, is pronounced by some native speakers in our class on one of of the patAYto potAHto accent continuum to sound almost identical to the ut final in column 6. Don't get hung up on this -- just be aware that some native speakers will pronounce eut and ut as almost identical sounds.
Finally, the yu pucker sound as in jyu, gyun, and kyut, was explained. This is the same sound as the umlaut u of Mandarin and it can be a tough sound for beginner students, so make sure you pay attention to it and get it right if it is hard for you.
From here, we touched on the more salient points of the English language text elaborations on all of the sounds just mentioned. I suggested that any students in class who learn more kinesthetically should pay special attention to the exact alignments and placements of the lips, tongue, and other parts of the vocal apparatus mentioned in these detailed descriptions, because they may help you. For other students who learn by listening and imitating the teacher or mp3s, I recommend that you still read these portions of the text, but maybe skim them and then forget about the text from pages 12 through 22 -- unless you need help making any one particular initial consonant or final sound.
Following our review of these notes as well as a few that we did not cover last time, we moved through some Culture Notes from pages 22 through the top of 24. The book does an excellent job, in English, of explaining some basic Cantonese Chinese cultural considerations that will affect your understanding of the language from the start -- foremost among them word order when giving someone's title and last name in Chinese. Remember that Mr. Jones, Ms. Lee, Doctor Wong in English all translate to the Cantonese word order of Jones Mr., Lee Ms., and Wong Doctor.
We don't really know enough of the language yet to put the [Sentence] Structure Notes into proper perspective yet, which we covered on pages 24 through 26. Instead of me recapping them here, please just reread this material on your own and keep it in the back of your mind as we start to learn the dialogues and move forward with new vocabulary and grammar concepts in future classes.
Finally, we finished last night's class with a quick review of the vocabulary list on page 30 and a repetition of the Recapitulation of Lesson 1's dialogue on page 3. We will repeat Lesson 1's dialogue again at the beginning of next class and then go around the room and have everyone read lines from the dialogue. Because this is a short one, we may or may not break into small groups for you all to practice while I go around and correct folks. We will spend most of next class beginning lesson 2.
INSIGHTS:
In the interest of time, just one insight this week, which is the same one I gave my Mandarin I class last Thursday, as we just finished the pronunciation and tones intro stuff in that class as well:
Each of you needs to do whatever is necessary FOR YOU to learn consistent proper pronunciation and tones of these Cantonese syllables within a window of what is acceptable and understandable when a native speaker is listening to you speak, in order for this person to understand what you are trying to communicate in Cantonese.
For some of you, no further pronunciation work will ever be needed because you have already been speaking and listening to basic Cantonese for your entire life as a result of your family and upbringing. If this is you, great! Now you can focus on learning vocabulary, grammar, sentence patterns, etc. and you will be on your way towards speaking progressively more and more interesting and useful Mandarin.
For others, you will need to put in more time, a lot of time, ALL OF YOUR SPARE TIME, if you really want to be able to communicate with speakers of this language in a way that they will understand you instead of scratching their heads and shrugging their shoulders, or having to revert to English during your conversations.
This is ok, if you fit into the second category.
If you do fit into the second category, don't whine about it. Just make a deal with yourself that you will keep working on your Cantonese pronunciation and tones until you no longer need to work on your Cantonese pronunciation and tones. Pronunciation and tones are the two most important initial aspects of your Chinese studies, and you MUST MUST MUST eventually get them right, at any cost.
It is only after you no longer have to worry about pronunciation and tones that REAL LEARNING can begin. Only then can you confidently begin to acquire vocabulary, sentence patterns, grammar, syntax (word order and related concepts) -- and only then can you begin to speak accurate Cantonese with your friends, relatives, in-laws, etc.
HOMEWORK:
For homework this week, please review all of this pronunciation and tones stuff. We are now officially done with the pronunciation and tones intro part of the class. We will review Lesson 1's dialogue next week and then move on to lesson 2!
If you have not and you need to, please review the tones videos further down in this section of the blog. I have added many additional videos, sent by students days and weeks after the assignment was due. They are all good videos and have something to teach you about the 6 tones of Cantonese Chinese. In addition, I have posted other videos in the previous postings in this category that will help with pronunciation and with providing a general overview/context for your Cantonese studies this year.
Your main homework for next week is to review all of this pronunciation and tones stuff for as long as you need to, and then to preview the vocabulary and dialogue for Lesson 2 on pages 54-55 and pages 32-34.
See you all next week.
Mandarin Class Summary, Insights, Homework for Thursday, Nov 2, 2017 Mando I -- sorry for delay...
Hi Gang,
It was a busy end of last week and weekend for me. I am limited for time to type this entry, so let me get right to it:
CLASS SUMMARY:
Last Thursday, we first reviewed the simple finals, the bo po mo fo table (focusing on lines 4, 5, and 6) , and then we spend the rest of class covering the rest of the compound final exercises on pages 6 and 7, as well as WITH TONES added in on pages 8 and 9. We covered the table of all possible tone combinations in two syllable combinations on pages 9 and 10 at the very end of class. This table puts everything together for you, because in real spoken Chinese, no one tone exists by itself. All sentences and conversations are made up of multi-syllable words and phrases, combining any number of possible tones in real time, as quickly as you or your conversation partner can speak the words you are trying to communicate.
In order of what we covered, here are some points to keep in mind, starting with our review of the simple finals and bo po mo fo stuff at the beginning of class:
SIMPLE FINALS:
Remember that o always sounds like "on" or "off" and that the u with the umlaut is a specific pinched / puckered sound that MUST sound different from the regular u sound.
BO PO MO FO TABLE:
Remember that you MUST get the correct pronunciations of lines 4, 5, and 6 (with 2 different simple final i vowel sounds), and that your ability to accurately produce the sounds of 5 and 6 as well as to differentiate them from each other will determine how well a Chinese person will understand you when you speak. These sounds (lines 4, 5, and 6) appear in almost every single Chinese sentence in our book and you MUST get their pronunciations correct at any cost -- whatever it takes, however many hours of practice and study and listening to and imitating mp3s it might take you.
Bottom line: if you do not put in the time now to fix any errors you might have in pronouncing lines 4, 5, and 6, you WILL speak shitty sounding Mandarin for the rest of your life. Depending on how bad your mispronunciations of these consonants might be, Mandarin speakers will range from being very tolerant and eager to understand what you are trying to say to cringing, shrugging their shoulders and walking away from you with a perplexed look on their faces. So, fix any issues with these consonants NOW.
PRACTICES B.1.A THROUGH B.3.E., PAGES 2-3:
Our review of these consonant - simple final combination syllables verged on ga ga goo goo baby talk at times, but you all did very well here. Pages 2 and 3 are the easy ones. Make sure to study these if you had any issues during our review. These are the most basic syllable sounds of Mandarin.
PRACTICES B.4.A THROUGH B.6.J., PAGES 4-5:
Ahhhh -- now came the hard stuff: comparing and contrasting the initial consonants in lines 4, 5, and 6 of the bo po mo fo table, but this time with all kinds of various simple final vowel sounds. Make sure that you guys remember that the i vowel after a j, q, or x sounds like "ee" in the English word "see," whereas the i after line 5 consonants (z, c, s) sounds like a grunt/place holder and after line 6 consonants (zh ch sh r) sounds like a variation of the same grunt -- slightly different, but definitely NOT an "ee" sound.
Remember that the z sound in Mandarin is NOT "zoo" but rather the sound of "dz" or "ds" in "the creature with two heaDS." Remember that you need to pretend you are scraping peanut butter or something sticky off the roof of your mouth with your tongue in order to have the correct tongue placement for zh ch sh r, and that the r sound in Mandarin is NOT "red rover" but rather the very beginning of the English word "red" said in super slo-mo and stopping right before the turn-over from the initial "r" sound to the "ed" vowel and final consonant. The Mandarin r is one of the hardest sounds for new learners to make. Please see previous blog entries for elaboration on how to make this sound. You have several choices, which I touched on previously in the Mandarin I section of this blog.
PAGES 6 AND 7: REVIEW OF THE COMPOUND FINALS WITH VARIOUS INITIAL CONSONANTS:
We reviewed all 6 lines of the compound finals, which I discussed in detail during my last Mandarin I blog entry. Remember that line 3 in effect starts with a "y" sound and line 4 in effect starts with a "w" sound. The subtle differences between some of the finals within each line as well as comparing from one line to the next mean that you all need to really study and practice these -- at least those of you who may be having pronunciation issues with any of these sounds. Remember some of the pinyin spelling "conventions" or shortcuts for some of the finals such as iu, ui, and uei. If you are not sure what I am talking about, check out the explanations and footnotes to the table at the top of page 6 in your textbook.
There is no real way for me to type up "how" to pronounce exercises C.1 through C.6 on pages 6-7, so my suggestion to all of you is to go back, practice these until you consistently get them right when you pronounce them aloud AND WHEN YOU HEAR THEM INSIDE YOUR HEAD WHEN READING ALONG WITH THE TEXT.
The second skill is even more important than the first; once you get to the point where you can hear the sounds of the syllables and eventually the tones inside your head before you even speak, THEN you will be able to anticipate the proper pronunciation and tones when your own voice actually makes these sounds, AND THEN you will be speaking accurate Mandarin when you go to have a conversation with a native speaker of the language.
In order to get to this point, you may need a lot of mp3 listening practice, a lot of repetition, a lot of study time, and a lot of practice time with a classmate, friend, family member, or other person familiar with the sounds of Mandarin -- preferably a native speaker.
From here, we quickly reviewed the tones chart on page 8. By this time, you should all be very familiar with the 4 tones of spoken Mandarin as well as the concept of the neutral tone. On pages 8 and 9 (exercises D.1.A through D.1.M), we repeated the same exact consonant + simple final sounds found on pages 4 and 5, but this time with tones. Everyone did well when repeating after me. The question begins to be: how accurate will your tones be when you are not repeating after anyone -- when you must hear the tone in your head and then make the correct sound of the tone on the correct syllable in real time while reading aloud the text from the book? We will begin to explore this during our next class when we begin Lesson 1 Dialogue 1.
At the bottom of page 9 onto page 10, we explored all of the possible 2-tone combinations starting with the possibilities for the 1 tone plus another tone and ending with the possibilities for two syllables where the first is a 4 tone plus a second syllable with the same or a different tone. Everyone did well when repeating after me, but again, we will see how well you all begin to do next week when we break up into small groups and you begin to run the first dialogue of the first lesson with your conversation partners.
We discussed words with the Beijing accent er sound, which I will leave for now until we see them in the text of future lessons. We explored the basics of tone sandhi: when one or more of the tones in a multi-syllable word or phrase change(s) according to common speech practice and usually according to certain patterns or "rules." I will also leave this discussion for a later date, once we begin to see examples in the text.
Finally, we talked about the neutral tone and then repeated some tone combination exercises on various syllables from various real Mandarin Chinese words. Everyone did well repeating these in class.
INSIGHTS:
In the interest of time, just one insight this week:
Each of you needs to do whatever is necessary FOR YOU to learn consistent proper pronunciation and tones of these Mandarin syllables within a window of what is acceptable and understandable when a native speaker is listening to you speak, in order for this person to understand what you are trying to communicate in Mandarin Chinese.
For some of you, no further pronunciation work will ever be needed because you have already been speaking and listening to basic Mandarin for your entire life as a result of your family and upbringing. If this is you, great! Now you can focus on learning vocabulary, grammar, sentence patterns, etc. and you will be on your way towards speaking progressively more and more interesting and useful Mandarin.
For others, you will need to put in more time, a lot of time, ALL OF YOUR SPARE TIME, if you really want to be able to communicate with speakers of this language in a way that they will understand you instead of scratching their heads and shrugging their shoulders, or having to revert to English during your conversations.
This is ok, if you fit into the second category.
If you do fit into the second category, don't whine about it. Just make a deal with yourself that you will keep working on your Mandarin pronunciation and tones until you no longer need to work on your Mandarin pronunciation and tones. Pronunciation and tones are the two most important initial aspects of your Chinese studies, and you MUST MUST MUST eventually get them right, at any cost.
It is only after you no longer have to worry about pronunciation and tones that REAL LEARNING can begin. Only then can you confidently begin to acquire vocabulary, sentence patterns, grammar, syntax (word order and related concepts) -- and only then can you begin to speak accurate Chinese with your friends, relatives, in-laws, etc.
HOMEWORK:
For homework this week, please review all of this pronunciation and tones stuff. We are now officially done with the pronunciation and tones intro part of the class. We will start Lesson 1 Dialogue 1 on Thursday, later this week.
Please preview Lesson 1 Dialogue 1 and its related vocabulary on pages 20-22 of your text.
Even if you can already read Chinese characters in another dialect, you MUST MUST MUST read from the pinyin during class until you no longer have any pronunciation or tones issues. Please don't make me single any of you out in class this year, my returning students -- and you know who you are. If your pronunciation of Mandarin is not completely accurate at this point, save reading the characters for your studies at home. During class, read from the pinyin and fix your pronunciation problems -- period. Thanks in advance to returning students for your cooperation.
Also for homework, and this will be part of the homework from now on -- every week from now on:
Starting now with Lesson 1 Dialogue 1, please start watching the videos from the DVD that I asked you all to download from Rhode Island University's website 3 weeks ago. We will be using the video for each dialogue from now on as an aid to help you all understand, memorize, and learn the proper pronunciation of all of the words and concepts in each dialogue -- starting now and for the rest of the year.
So, watch the video for Lesson 1 Dialogue 1 a few times before next class. It is short -- like 3 minutes long. Watch it 4 or 5 times if you can. Seeing live action actors perform the short dialogues that we are going to start learning will help to reinforce the concepts in a way that everyone will be able to visualize during your home studies between classes.
See you all on Thursday.
It was a busy end of last week and weekend for me. I am limited for time to type this entry, so let me get right to it:
CLASS SUMMARY:
Last Thursday, we first reviewed the simple finals, the bo po mo fo table (focusing on lines 4, 5, and 6) , and then we spend the rest of class covering the rest of the compound final exercises on pages 6 and 7, as well as WITH TONES added in on pages 8 and 9. We covered the table of all possible tone combinations in two syllable combinations on pages 9 and 10 at the very end of class. This table puts everything together for you, because in real spoken Chinese, no one tone exists by itself. All sentences and conversations are made up of multi-syllable words and phrases, combining any number of possible tones in real time, as quickly as you or your conversation partner can speak the words you are trying to communicate.
In order of what we covered, here are some points to keep in mind, starting with our review of the simple finals and bo po mo fo stuff at the beginning of class:
SIMPLE FINALS:
Remember that o always sounds like "on" or "off" and that the u with the umlaut is a specific pinched / puckered sound that MUST sound different from the regular u sound.
BO PO MO FO TABLE:
Remember that you MUST get the correct pronunciations of lines 4, 5, and 6 (with 2 different simple final i vowel sounds), and that your ability to accurately produce the sounds of 5 and 6 as well as to differentiate them from each other will determine how well a Chinese person will understand you when you speak. These sounds (lines 4, 5, and 6) appear in almost every single Chinese sentence in our book and you MUST get their pronunciations correct at any cost -- whatever it takes, however many hours of practice and study and listening to and imitating mp3s it might take you.
Bottom line: if you do not put in the time now to fix any errors you might have in pronouncing lines 4, 5, and 6, you WILL speak shitty sounding Mandarin for the rest of your life. Depending on how bad your mispronunciations of these consonants might be, Mandarin speakers will range from being very tolerant and eager to understand what you are trying to say to cringing, shrugging their shoulders and walking away from you with a perplexed look on their faces. So, fix any issues with these consonants NOW.
PRACTICES B.1.A THROUGH B.3.E., PAGES 2-3:
Our review of these consonant - simple final combination syllables verged on ga ga goo goo baby talk at times, but you all did very well here. Pages 2 and 3 are the easy ones. Make sure to study these if you had any issues during our review. These are the most basic syllable sounds of Mandarin.
PRACTICES B.4.A THROUGH B.6.J., PAGES 4-5:
Ahhhh -- now came the hard stuff: comparing and contrasting the initial consonants in lines 4, 5, and 6 of the bo po mo fo table, but this time with all kinds of various simple final vowel sounds. Make sure that you guys remember that the i vowel after a j, q, or x sounds like "ee" in the English word "see," whereas the i after line 5 consonants (z, c, s) sounds like a grunt/place holder and after line 6 consonants (zh ch sh r) sounds like a variation of the same grunt -- slightly different, but definitely NOT an "ee" sound.
Remember that the z sound in Mandarin is NOT "zoo" but rather the sound of "dz" or "ds" in "the creature with two heaDS." Remember that you need to pretend you are scraping peanut butter or something sticky off the roof of your mouth with your tongue in order to have the correct tongue placement for zh ch sh r, and that the r sound in Mandarin is NOT "red rover" but rather the very beginning of the English word "red" said in super slo-mo and stopping right before the turn-over from the initial "r" sound to the "ed" vowel and final consonant. The Mandarin r is one of the hardest sounds for new learners to make. Please see previous blog entries for elaboration on how to make this sound. You have several choices, which I touched on previously in the Mandarin I section of this blog.
PAGES 6 AND 7: REVIEW OF THE COMPOUND FINALS WITH VARIOUS INITIAL CONSONANTS:
We reviewed all 6 lines of the compound finals, which I discussed in detail during my last Mandarin I blog entry. Remember that line 3 in effect starts with a "y" sound and line 4 in effect starts with a "w" sound. The subtle differences between some of the finals within each line as well as comparing from one line to the next mean that you all need to really study and practice these -- at least those of you who may be having pronunciation issues with any of these sounds. Remember some of the pinyin spelling "conventions" or shortcuts for some of the finals such as iu, ui, and uei. If you are not sure what I am talking about, check out the explanations and footnotes to the table at the top of page 6 in your textbook.
There is no real way for me to type up "how" to pronounce exercises C.1 through C.6 on pages 6-7, so my suggestion to all of you is to go back, practice these until you consistently get them right when you pronounce them aloud AND WHEN YOU HEAR THEM INSIDE YOUR HEAD WHEN READING ALONG WITH THE TEXT.
The second skill is even more important than the first; once you get to the point where you can hear the sounds of the syllables and eventually the tones inside your head before you even speak, THEN you will be able to anticipate the proper pronunciation and tones when your own voice actually makes these sounds, AND THEN you will be speaking accurate Mandarin when you go to have a conversation with a native speaker of the language.
In order to get to this point, you may need a lot of mp3 listening practice, a lot of repetition, a lot of study time, and a lot of practice time with a classmate, friend, family member, or other person familiar with the sounds of Mandarin -- preferably a native speaker.
From here, we quickly reviewed the tones chart on page 8. By this time, you should all be very familiar with the 4 tones of spoken Mandarin as well as the concept of the neutral tone. On pages 8 and 9 (exercises D.1.A through D.1.M), we repeated the same exact consonant + simple final sounds found on pages 4 and 5, but this time with tones. Everyone did well when repeating after me. The question begins to be: how accurate will your tones be when you are not repeating after anyone -- when you must hear the tone in your head and then make the correct sound of the tone on the correct syllable in real time while reading aloud the text from the book? We will begin to explore this during our next class when we begin Lesson 1 Dialogue 1.
At the bottom of page 9 onto page 10, we explored all of the possible 2-tone combinations starting with the possibilities for the 1 tone plus another tone and ending with the possibilities for two syllables where the first is a 4 tone plus a second syllable with the same or a different tone. Everyone did well when repeating after me, but again, we will see how well you all begin to do next week when we break up into small groups and you begin to run the first dialogue of the first lesson with your conversation partners.
We discussed words with the Beijing accent er sound, which I will leave for now until we see them in the text of future lessons. We explored the basics of tone sandhi: when one or more of the tones in a multi-syllable word or phrase change(s) according to common speech practice and usually according to certain patterns or "rules." I will also leave this discussion for a later date, once we begin to see examples in the text.
Finally, we talked about the neutral tone and then repeated some tone combination exercises on various syllables from various real Mandarin Chinese words. Everyone did well repeating these in class.
INSIGHTS:
In the interest of time, just one insight this week:
Each of you needs to do whatever is necessary FOR YOU to learn consistent proper pronunciation and tones of these Mandarin syllables within a window of what is acceptable and understandable when a native speaker is listening to you speak, in order for this person to understand what you are trying to communicate in Mandarin Chinese.
For some of you, no further pronunciation work will ever be needed because you have already been speaking and listening to basic Mandarin for your entire life as a result of your family and upbringing. If this is you, great! Now you can focus on learning vocabulary, grammar, sentence patterns, etc. and you will be on your way towards speaking progressively more and more interesting and useful Mandarin.
For others, you will need to put in more time, a lot of time, ALL OF YOUR SPARE TIME, if you really want to be able to communicate with speakers of this language in a way that they will understand you instead of scratching their heads and shrugging their shoulders, or having to revert to English during your conversations.
This is ok, if you fit into the second category.
If you do fit into the second category, don't whine about it. Just make a deal with yourself that you will keep working on your Mandarin pronunciation and tones until you no longer need to work on your Mandarin pronunciation and tones. Pronunciation and tones are the two most important initial aspects of your Chinese studies, and you MUST MUST MUST eventually get them right, at any cost.
It is only after you no longer have to worry about pronunciation and tones that REAL LEARNING can begin. Only then can you confidently begin to acquire vocabulary, sentence patterns, grammar, syntax (word order and related concepts) -- and only then can you begin to speak accurate Chinese with your friends, relatives, in-laws, etc.
HOMEWORK:
For homework this week, please review all of this pronunciation and tones stuff. We are now officially done with the pronunciation and tones intro part of the class. We will start Lesson 1 Dialogue 1 on Thursday, later this week.
Please preview Lesson 1 Dialogue 1 and its related vocabulary on pages 20-22 of your text.
Even if you can already read Chinese characters in another dialect, you MUST MUST MUST read from the pinyin during class until you no longer have any pronunciation or tones issues. Please don't make me single any of you out in class this year, my returning students -- and you know who you are. If your pronunciation of Mandarin is not completely accurate at this point, save reading the characters for your studies at home. During class, read from the pinyin and fix your pronunciation problems -- period. Thanks in advance to returning students for your cooperation.
Also for homework, and this will be part of the homework from now on -- every week from now on:
Starting now with Lesson 1 Dialogue 1, please start watching the videos from the DVD that I asked you all to download from Rhode Island University's website 3 weeks ago. We will be using the video for each dialogue from now on as an aid to help you all understand, memorize, and learn the proper pronunciation of all of the words and concepts in each dialogue -- starting now and for the rest of the year.
So, watch the video for Lesson 1 Dialogue 1 a few times before next class. It is short -- like 3 minutes long. Watch it 4 or 5 times if you can. Seeing live action actors perform the short dialogues that we are going to start learning will help to reinforce the concepts in a way that everyone will be able to visualize during your home studies between classes.
See you all on Thursday.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)