Wednesday, November 7, 2018

ALESN Monday Night Cantonese I Class summary and notes for 11/5/18 Class...AND NO CLASS NEXT MONDAY BECAUSE OF VETERAN'S DAY!!!

ALESN Monday Night Cantonese I Class summary and notes for 11/5/18 Class...AND NO CLASS NEXT MONDAY BECAUSE OF VETERAN'S DAY!!!



Wed, Nov 7, 2018 at 11:26 AM

Hi Everyone,

FIRST OF ALL, NO CLASS NEXT MONDAY DUE TO VETERAN'S DAY. REMEMBER: ANYTIME THERE IS AN NYC PUBLIC SCHOOL CLOSING, WE DO NOT HAVE CLASS.

This past Monday, we went over more tones stuff and then started with the initial consonant sounds of Cantonese Chinese. We covered pages 5-11. I know it was dry, but I was pleased with the amount of information we covered this week.

I started class by teaching you all one very practical sentence -- asking where the bathroom is located in Cantonese:

sai2 sau2 gaan1 hai1 bin1 douh6 a3?

I am not going to go over this other than to quickly translate it word for word, because we really don't know enough about the basics of pronunciation, or grammar, or sentence structures for anything I say to make sense.

The exact translation for this question is as follows:

sai2 = to wash
sau2 = hand
gaan1 = measure word for room, being used to mean room in this situation
hai2 = to be located at
bin1 = which
douh6 = location
[bin1 douh6 = which location = where, a very common question word in Cantonese]
a3 [should be spelled aa3 but this is an exception with Yale romanization, as I explained in class] = sentence final particle, in this case suggesting a question

I will bring a phrasebook with me to class from now on and will try to teach one or more practical phrases at the beginning of each class, time and knowledge level permitting. I mentioned the Tuttle Essential Cantonese Phrasebook and Dictionary with New Manga Illustrations as my current choice for a fun, interesting, beginner level phrasebook in Yale romanized Cantonese.

From here, I mentioned that I have decided to reactivate my Cantonese and Mandarin language learning blog, dedicated to the proper pronunciation of syllables and tones for each dialect [spoken language]. My blog can be found at:


I will be pasting each weekly email into a blog entry from now on as soon as I click send, which means that going forward, if anyone misses a class or wants to review everything we covered during a certain period of time or for a certain lesson, whatever, you can reference my blog instead of searching for past emails. Of course, your class's section is the Cantonese I menu tab at the top of the screen.

I also mentioned that I am starting to offer in person and Skype private tutoring specifically focusing on pronunciation and tones for both beginner level Cantonese and beginner level Mandarin. If you are interested, please see the Tutoring tab on my blog and shoot me an email so we can discuss.

This past Monday, we covered the tones explanations and examples on pages 5 through 11. Please review this material in your book and come to next class [in 2 weeks] prepared with any questions about this material. We discussed that while English doesn't have tones per se, we do have differences in intonation, often on the same word or phrase, which can signify changes in emotion, mood, attitude, or other connotation. As an example not in the book, I said the word, "Hello" with multiple different intonations from neutral to happy/enthusiastic to sarcastic/angry. Same word, different intonation [tone], different meaning.

Finally, at the end of class, we covered the equivalent of the Mandarin BO PO MO FO table of initial consonant sounds in Cantonese, also presented in your textbook on page 11 as a bo po mo fo table (but very different from Mandarin, for those of you with Mandarin experience). We noted that the J, the CH, the NG, as well as the GW and KW initial consonants DO NOT appear as such in English, though I gave multiple examples of these same exact or similar sounds appearing at the end of certain words, or in between certain English language words in the case of NG. Please remember that J and CH may be problematic for some of you. They are NOT exactly like their respective English language sounds, and we will continue to go over the subtleties of both as the weeks progress.

We will pick up next time with the vowel/finals table at the top of page 12. YOUR HOMEWORK IS TO PREVIEW THE MATERIAL FROM PAGES 12 THROUGH 22 IN YOUR TEXTBOOK, LISTEN TO THE APPROPRIATE MP3 FOR LESSON 1 THAT YOU DOWNLOADED WITH THE PDF, AND ALSO TO SEARCH YOUTUBE FOR ONE OR MORE VIDEOS ON HOW TO PRONOUNCE YALE CANTONESE, OR HOW TO PRONOUNCE THE INITIAL CONSONANTS AND VOWELS OR "FINALS" OF CANTONESE. Be creative, try different searches on Youtube, find some videos, and spend a little time with these sounds before we reconvene in 2 weeks.

Also, you should check out the DVD store that I recommended near school and try to get a $1 - $6.99 Cantonese language kids' movie DVD of your choice, making sure with the people behind the counter that they read the packaging and verify for you that it has a Cantonese language SPOKEN language track and English language SUBTITLES. $1 to $6.99 is not a lot for me to ask you to spend, especially since this is a free class, so I want some stories next time, people, from at least a few of you, telling the class what movie you decided to purchase, if you had any issues configuring the language and subtitles on your screen, and if you watched any of the movie, what your experience was like. PLEASE DO THIS.

A HINT FOR FIRST TIME BUYERS OF CANTONESE LANGUAGE DUBBED KIDS' MOVIES ON DVD:

DO NOT USE THE ONSCREEN LANGUAGE OPTIONS MENU TO SELECT THE SPOKEN LANGUAGE. INSTEAD, START THE MOVIE AND DURING THE FIRST FEW SECONDS WHILE IT IS SHOWING THE DISNEY LOGO OR THE PIXAR LOGO OR WHATEVER, USE YOUR REMOTE CONTROL TO CHANGE THE SPOKEN LANGUAGE AND SUBTITLE TRACKS. MOST OF THE MOVIES YOU BUY WILL HAVE 2 OR 3 CHINESE LANGUAGE TRACKS: EITHER 1 OR 2 MANDARIN TRACKS AND 1 CANTONESE TRACK. THEY WILL ALL BE LABELED SIMPLY "CHINESE." USUALLY THE FINAL ONE (THE SECOND OR THIRD) IS THE CANTONESE TRACK, BUT NOT ALWAYS.

Cantonese and Mandarin sound very different from each other. Make sure you are listening to the correct track! If you are unsure, email me, because I own hundreds of these DVDs and if I have the one you purchased, I will pop mine into my DVD player and tell you which is the Cantonese track.

Thanks, and SEE YOU ALL IN 2 WEEKS.
Brendan

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