Cantonese I Monday Night ALESN 2/25/19 Class Summary and Notes

Hi Gang,

This past Monday night, we covered new material that I didn't cover during the 2017-2018 academic year because I had to stop teaching last February because my work schedule had changed. Therefore, going forward, I will type your class all new weekly notes and blog entries, the extent of which will depend on how much free time I have during a given week. Let's see how much time I have today to summarize your lesson and provide any notes along the way...

Vocabulary-wise, without actually re-teaching the lesson here in this email/blog entry, let me point out the important observations I made during class pertaining to our new words:

1. First of all, though it appears that we have 43 new vocabulary words, we actually have only 34 new concepts, some of them using multiple possible pronunciations or uses of old or new vocabulary items. If you group this new information properly during your home study time, you will only need to memorize at most 34 new concepts, not 43. You can further group these new vocabulary items into a very limited number of CATEGORIES, as I will try my best to explain below.
2. Remember that 1 and 33 are the same word, same usage, but that 33 is with the initial "ng" sound and 1 is after dropping that sound due to "the ng phenomenon" that I have explained multiple times in class.
3. 2, 7, 16, 28, 29, 35, 36, and 37 are all numbers that you will need to eventually know, but it will make more sense after next Monday's class, when I will draw a chart of the numbers on the board: first zero, then 1 through 10, and then using the words for 1 to 10, we will construct the Cantonese terms for 11 through 99.
4. 4, 25, 26, 27, 38, and 39 are all sentence final particles that we will see in action in various places in the dialogue.
5. 5, 21, 34 and 41 are terms related to telling time in 15 minute intervals or on the half hour.
6. 8, 9, 10, 13, 19, and 24 are related to 3 different methods of telling time, which we discussed in class this past Monday. These 3 methods are the DAAHP6 + number 1 through 11 SYSTEM, letting us tell time in 5 minute increments (10 after the hour, 25 after the hour, etc.); the GO3 JIH6 SYSTEM (allowing us to do exactly the same thing as the DAAHP6 SYSTEM); and the FAN1 JUNG1 SYSTEM, allowing us to tell the exact time (9:17, etc.).
7. The rest of the vocabulary words are related in this lesson to the concept of telling time: watches running fast, slow, ready yet, not ready yet, this kind of stuff. PLEASE MEMORIZE THESE WORDS, AS THEY ARE VERY BASIC TO CANTONESE AND YOU WILL EVENTUALLY NEED TO KNOW ALL OF THESE ITEMS.

When I did the Conversation Build Up, we went through word at a time, phrases at a time, and then sentences at a time. *Remember that I pointed out that it appears that the 2 speakers' names have been reversed in the book as to who is actually speaking when addressing the other person. Ask me about this during next class if you are unsure what I mean; I don't feel like explaining it here.

We saw that our dialogue takes place in an office, where one guy has come to get the other guy for their lunch together. They ask if they are ready yet. They talk about what time it is. The one guy asks the other guy if his watch is fast or slow or accurate. They talk about the possibility that the one guy's watch is no longer accurate, but that he isn't sure (special sentence final particle to communicate doubt, as we discussed in class). The one guy asks the other guy to wait for him. Sure, no problem. Sorry. It's all right.

YOUR HOMEWORK: Please go back and reread the dialogue after reviewing the vocabulary and understanding how the vocabulary words fit into related categories as I have mentioned above. If you can, try to memorize the new vocabulary words while keeping in mind that they are related to each other in the ways that I have suggested. If you need to, or maybe just as a nice review of the sounds of spoken Cantonese, please listen to the mp3 that goes with this lesson.

We will pick up next time with the Recapitulation on page 85, answer any questions, and then you all will break up into "Happy Happy Groups" to run the dialogue with a partner or partners. Following this, we will review some pronunciation reminders on pages 86 through 88 and then mention some Culture notes on page 89. Finally, I will cover or begin to cover some grammar points ("Structure Notes") beginning on page 89. Before explaining these grammar points, I will draw a chart on the board, as suggested at the beginning of this email, and explain to you the beautiful and simple system that Cantonese uses to count things. We will learn the words for the numbers 0 through 10, and then using the Cantonese words for the numbers 1 through 10, we will learn how to construct the remaining numbers from 11 through 99.

Thanks again for attending class and see you all on Monday.

Mandarin I ALESN Monday Night 2/25/19 Class Summary and Notes

Hi Gang,

This past Monday, we began Lesson 3 Dialogue 1 vocabulary and dialogue. HOWEVER, that is not where we left off the previous class.

You guys jumped ahead a few pages. When I asked where we were in the class, whoever told me was wrong, and whoever agreed with that person/persons was also not paying attention during our previous class.

No problem.

It's all good, because it was my responsibility for believing you guys. I accept full responsibility for accidentally skipping several important pages at the end of Lesson 2 Dialogue 2's Grammar Points. Therefore, we will need to backtrack a bit next Monday, catch up, and then move forward.

Please review Lesson 2 Dialogue 2 from this next blog entry below. This is just to set the stage for the stuff that we missed.

http://www.sayitrightchinese.com/2018/01/mandarin-i-alesn-thursday-january-11.html

I am absolutely certain that I did not cover some of the following material yet in your class, also from Lesson 2 Dialogue 2:

http://www.sayitrightchinese.com/2018/01/mandarin-i-alesn-thursday-january-18.html

I know this because the subtle nuances of mixed uses of bu4 and mei2 with you3 (to have) on the bottom of page 54 always confuse multiple students every year and lead to a somewhat long discussion each year regarding how this works. We absolutely did not discuss this particular stuff yet in your class.

This is where we will pick up next Monday, with the material covered in the second blog entry above (the Grammar Points for Lesson 2 Dialogue 2 -- mainly Grammar Point # 7). From here, we will quickly do the Lesson 2 Dialogue 2 Language Practice. And then, finally, we will move on to Lesson 3 -- hopefully towards the end of next Monday's class.

Regarding our false start with Lesson 3 Dialogue 1 last week, we went over the vocab and then I repeated the dialogue 3 times (3 different speeds from slow to almost normal). Once I go over the remainder of the Lesson 2 Dialogue 2 material mentioned above, we will finally move onto Lesson 3. At that point, we will review the vocab, dialogue, break into groups and then do the Grammar Points for Lesson 3 Dialogue 1. These will mainly focus on the numbers from 0 to 99. We will learn numbers, then applications of numbers, such as telling time, days of the week, months, years, and even the concept of money eventually.

But for now, sorry...we need to finish Lesson 2 Dialogue 2's Grammar Points. Future lessons will assume that you have learned this material and have some command of it. I would rather explain this stuff to you now than have to backtrack later on when the same material is repeated in the book and you guys might be confused about what is going on -- especially the dou1 stuff on page 54.

See you all on Monday,

Brendan

ALESN Monday night Cantonese I class summary and notes from 2/11/19: NO CLASS NEXT MONDAY 2/18 FOR PRESIDENT'S DAY/MID-WINTER BREAK!!!

Hi Gang,

PLEASE REMEMBER:

*NO CLASS NEXT MONDAY 2/18 FOR PRESIDENT'S DAY/MID-WINTER BREAK!!!*

After next class, we are going to move past where I stopped teaching last year when I turned my class over to Kam Yau.

In the meantime, one last time, please refer to the following 2018 blog entries covering lesson 3's dialogue, vocabulary, and grammar points:

http://www.sayitrightchinese.com/2018/01/cantonese-i-alesn-monday-january-8-2018.html

http://www.sayitrightchinese.com/2018/01/cantonese-alesn-monday-january-22-2018.html

http://www.sayitrightchinese.com/2018/01/cantonese-i-alesn-monday-january-29.html

YOUR HOMEWORK (ONCE AGAIN) IS TO REVIEW LESSON 3, AND TO PLEASE PREVIEW LESSON 4 VOCABULARY AND DIALOGUE.

Please come to class 2 Mondays from now with a good basic overview of what we are going to cover in lesson 4 -- of course without knowing the material itself yet.

Because you have 2 weeks, please listen to the mp3s accompanying lesson 4 and be ready to repeat the vocabulary and the dialogue Build Up and Recapitulation. Please also preview the pronunciation review (which should be review at this point in time) on pages 86-88. In addition, please scan the Structure Notes on pages 89-94. There is a lot of really good grammar in lesson 4 and I look forward to teaching you this material.

See you all IN 2 WEEKS (not next Monday),

Brendan

ALESN Monday night Mandarin I class summary and notes from 2/11/19: NO CLASS NEXT MONDAY 2/18 FOR PRESIDENT'S DAY/MID-WINTER BREAK!!!

ALESN Monday night Mandarin I class summary and notes from 2/11/19: NO CLASS NEXT MONDAY 2/18 FOR PRESIDENT'S DAY/MID-WINTER BREAK!!

Hi Gang,

PLEASE REMEMBER:

*NO CLASS NEXT MONDAY 2/18 FOR PRESIDENT'S DAY/MID-WINTER BREAK!!!*

At some point soon, our class is going to move past where I stopped teaching last year when I turned my class over to Jeremy G. Until that time, thankfully, I can send you links to last school year's blog entries, because yet again this was a busy week for me.

Please refer to the following 2018 blog entries covering lesson 2 Dialogue 2 and its related vocabulary:

http://www.sayitrightchinese.com/2017/12/mandarin-i-alesn-thursday-dec-21-2017.html

http://www.sayitrightchinese.com/2018/01/mandarin-i-alesn-thursday-january-11.html

In addition:

YOUR HOMEWORK (ONCE AGAIN) IS TO WATCH THE DVD VIDEO SEGMENT FROM EITHER THE SAN FRANCISCO STATE OR THE RHODE ISLAND UNIVERSITY WEBSITE, SENT TO YOU LAST YEAR.

Please come to class 2 Mondays from now with a good basic understanding of the dialogue that we covered this past Monday, having watched it several times in the scene from the DVD. Because you have 2 weeks, please also memorize all of the new vocabulary for this dialogue.

Next class, we will break into very brief groups at the beginning of the lesson to review the dialogue, since we didn't get much time for that last at the end of this past Monday night's class -- and then we will cover the grammar points from this dialogue. I encourage you to also preview the grammar points on pages 53-54, as well as the Language Practice exercises on pages 55-59, which we will hopefully do at the end of next class.

See you all IN 2 WEEKS (not next Monday),

Brendan

ALESN Mandarin I class summary and notes for Monday, Feb 4, 2019 class

Hi Gang,

This past Monday night, we quickly reviewed and answered some questions about Lesson 2 Dialogue 1 and vocabulary, then we spent a good portion of the class breaking up into groups and going the Language Practice exercises on pages 48-49, using the material from the text as well as either real or fake family photos. As I went around the room, everyone seemed to do pretty well with the material, either performing it well or at least asking informed, smart questions. Thanks for that!

Following this, we previewed the vocabulary on pages 51-52 and then we had Santiago's lovely girlfriend from Taiwan -- I believe her name is Chien Chien? -- recite for us our brand new Lesson 2 Dialogue 2 on pages 50-51 (page 51 for the pinyin version).

What a treat to have a native speaker in class and to hear her recite the new dialogue -- even if at the very end of class! Many thanks to Santiago for bringing his girlfriend to class as our special guest. I welcome anyone else who has a friend or significant other to feel free to email me and arrange a visit. We love to have guests who can read our vocabulary and dialogues, and who can answer language or cultural questions -- like when Chien Chien answered student Jean's question about how to say stepfather, stepmother, stepbrother and stepsister in Mandarin. Very cool stuff!

We also learned from Chien Chien that Taiwanese people often pronounce the character for the new vocabulary word that we just learned, HE2 ("and" for 2 or more nouns) as HAN1. This was new to me, and I love learning new things!

Please refer to the following 2018 blog entries covering lesson 2 Dialogue 2 and its related vocabulary:

http://www.sayitrightchinese.com/2017/12/mandarin-i-alesn-thursday-dec-21-2017.html

http://www.sayitrightchinese.com/2018/01/mandarin-i-alesn-thursday-january-11.html

I taught this class on Thursdays during the 2017-2018 academic year. You can see that because of the insane number of Monday school closings so far this year,  we are around 1 month behind where I was at this time last year. Very sorry for that! That is what happens when we miss 4 classes due to various school closings, not including Winter Break...

We will review the new vocabulary and then explore the new dialogue next Monday, spending most of next class going over the dialogue and then breaking up into small groups to give everyone a change to run the dialogue back and forth. We will also hopefully begin the grammar points for this dialogue, depending on how long it takes us to make it through Dialogue 2.

YOUR HOMEWORK IS TO WATCH THE DVD VIDEO SEGMENT FROM EITHER THE SAN FRANCISCO STATE OR THE RHODE ISLAND UNIVERSITY WEBSITE, SENT TO YOU LAST YEAR.

Please come to class on Monday with a good basic understanding of the dialogue, having watched it several times in the scene from the DVD.

See you all on Monday,

Brendan

ALESN Cantonese I Class notes and review from Monday, Feb 4, 2018

Hi Gang,

Since we covered mostly material that was previously covered in my 2017-2018, this will actually be my last email including links to previous blog entries. Starting next week, I will need to type new emails and blog entries for the rest of the academic year. Yay me.

Please review this 2018 blog entry covering the concept of the Topic Comment Sentence in Cantonese as it pertains to lesson 3:

http://www.sayitrightchinese.com/2018/01/cantonese-alesn-monday-january-22-2018.html

Please review this 2018 blog entry covering the concept of the general sentence structure map for a Cantonese sentence, as we have discussed during our last 2 sessions:

http://www.sayitrightchinese.com/2017/12/cantonese-i-alesn-monday-december-11.html

We also discussed again THE PRINCIPLE OF EQUIVALENCY AND PARALLEL STRUCTURE AND WORD ORDER/USAGE BETWEEN ANY "QUESTION WORD QUESTION" (WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, WHY, HOW, HOW MUCH/HOW MANY) AND ITS MOST LOGICAL ANSWER IN THE FORM OF A COMPLETE STATEMENT CONTAINING ALL OF THE SAME INFORMATION AS THE QUESTION.  

If anyone is unclear about this, please keep asking questions, because this is HUGE HUGE HUGE and will make or break your ability to ask and answer basic Cantonese questions as you learn more vocabulary and sentence structures during the rest of our course!

Here is last year's blog entry covering the meat of what we covered this past Monday, as well as the pronunciation review stuff that we glossed over 2 classes ago:

http://www.sayitrightchinese.com/2018/01/cantonese-i-alesn-monday-january-29.html

In addition to the lesson material contained in this blog entry, which goes to page 69, we did the exercises on pages 69 to the top of 72 this past Monday. HOMEWORK: Please review these exercises and come to class next Monday with any questions. We will speed through the remaining Lesson 3 exercises on pages 72-79 next Monday, and we will also try for the first time the "Say It In Cantonese" exercises on pages 79-80, where I will ask you all to say some very basic sentences that have been covered in lesson 3, by translating from English to Cantonese. ADDITIONAL HOMEWORK: Try all of the "Say It In Cantonese" exercises just mentioned and come to class with any notes/answers or any questions you might have for these as well.

Yay. Sounds fun, right?

It will be.

And then we will begin lesson 4 -- all next week.

See you all on Monday.

Brendan

Mandarin I Class summary and review from last Monday's class -- and see everyone tomorrow night...

Hi Gang,

Very sorry for the delay with this one. I flaked and thought that I had already typed and posted my class summaries for last week. Oops.

In the interest of time, I will direct you all to blog entries from last year covering the material from the lesson we are currently working on (Lesson 2 Dialogue 1 and related grammar points). Tomorrow night, we will quickly review the grammar points and then you will all break into small groups to quickly run the Language Practice sections for this dialogue. AND THEN we will begin dialogue 2. Yay.

These are the same inks to older blog entries that I included in last week's email. Same material, same pertinent information. ALSO, please note that the links for the Yo Yo Chinese blog entry and Youtube video that I have mentioned discussing tone sandhi for the Mandarin 3rd tone are included at the end of the first link below:

http://www.sayitrightchinese.com/2017/12/mandarin-i-alesn-thursday-december-7.html

http://www.sayitrightchinese.com/2017/12/mandarin-i-alesn-class-summary-insights.html

Please note that the second link above also discusses the principle of equivalency between questions and their related statement answers. This is a very important, fundamental Mandarin grammar point that you need to understand and use to your advantage starting now and continuing for the rest of the time you speak Mandarin Chinese!

In addition to the lesson material from the book and the principle of question/statement equivalency, we discussed the basic structure for a Mandarin Chinese sentence, and I diagrammed this on the board:
 

(WHEN) + WHO + (WHEN) + WHERE + WHAT HAPPENS + HOW MANY TIMES (etc.)
 

Remember that "WHEN" stands for some time phrase (now, yesterday, 2 weeks from now on a Tuesday, etc.) and will only appear in one of the 2 locations, hence it is in parentheses. Usually, this will appear right after the subject before anything else in the sentence, but occasionally it occurs at the beginning of the sentence for emphasis.
 

REMEMBER THAT WHEN WILL NEVER APPEAR AT THE END OF A SENTENCE, AS IT DOES IN ENGLISH (English's "I will go to the store tomorrow" MUST in Chinese  ALWAYS either be "I tomorrow go to the store" or "Tomorrow, I go to the store."

We discussed that not every sentence will have all of these components, but that this is where each must go if they do exist in a given sentence, in order for that sentence to be grammatically correct and with proper SYNTAX in Mandarin. The most simple, complete, grammatically correct Mandarin Chinese sentences will only involve a subject (WHO) and a verb (WHAT HAPPENS):

Ni3 hao3.

You good [hello].

etc.
 

You must all begin to understand and internalize this sense of sentence structure and syntax (word order) so that as you learn more and more vocabulary, your early attempts to communicate with native speakers will be worded properly and will be understood by your conversation partners. There are some specific instances where the Chinese word order is different from the English language word order and you must (MUST) get this right, or you will be speaking nonsense or near-nonsense and most likely will not be understood. Get the word order right, however, and you set the stage for understandable, productive beginner level conversations with your family members, friends, loved ones, and random waiters at restaurants in Flushing.

Again, sorry for the delay with this email / blog entry.

Best wishes to all and see you tomorrow night,

Brendan

Cantonese I class summary and review from last Monday night -- see everyone tomorrow night...

Hi Gang,

Sorry for my delay in sending this. Busy week and weekend and I thought I had already typed this last week. Oops.

In the interest of time, I will repaste links for three 2018 blog entries that do a great job of summarizing all of the material from lesson 3 that we have covered so far:

Here are last year's blog entries on Lesson 3's vocabulary, dialogue, and grammar points:

http://www.sayitrightchinese.com/2018/01/cantonese-i-alesn-monday-january-8-2018.html

http://www.sayitrightchinese.com/2018/01/cantonese-alesn-monday-january-22-2018.html

http://www.sayitrightchinese.com/2018/01/cantonese-i-alesn-monday-january-29.html

In addition, here is my very detailed December, 2017 blog entry discussing the basic structure for a Cantonese sentence, which will be crucial for you all to learn, understand, AND INTERNALIZE as you begin to put your thoughts into basic Cantonese sentences during your first from scratch attempts to speak with native speakers without following a dialogue script from your textbook. Of course, you won't be able to do this until you learn more vocabulary...but we need to ingrain good habits and proper thought patterns now, to set the stage for understandable attempts at communication when each of you feels ready:

http://www.sayitrightchinese.com/2017/12/cantonese-i-alesn-monday-december-11.html

We will pick up tomorrow with the remainder of the grammar points for this chapter and then we will quickly make our way through the exercises beginning on page 69 of your book. This is the exact point where I stopped teaching last year due to work scheduling issues, so beginning next week, you will get new, detailed blog entries for your weekly lessons for the rest of the current academic year. Yay.

See you all tomorrow,

Brendan

Oh -- I forgot to mention that we also discussed --

THE PRINCIPLE OF EQUIVALENCY AND PARALLEL STRUCTURE AND WORD ORDER/USAGE BETWEEN ANY "QUESTION WORD QUESTION" (WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, WHY, HOW, HOW MUCH/HOW MANY) AND ITS MOST LOGICAL ANSWER IN THE FORM OF A COMPLETE STATEMENT CONTAINING ALL OF THE SAME INFORMATION AS THE QUESTION.

 
I went on and on about this, and about how your ability to understand this concept as well as internalize it at the most basic level will allow you to begin to have basic conversations with Chinese speakers without feeling like you are at a loss for words when responding to various questions that your conversation partner might ask you.

 Excerpted from my Cantonese I blog from last year:

...[T]he concept of equivalency and parallel structure/ parallel word order for any Cantonese question and its most logical corresponding answer...

I explained that many beginning students get confused or panic and are at a loss for words when faced with even the most basic [Mandarin] question early on in their studies.  

Oh my god -- how do I answer this?!

Well, there is no reason to be panicked or confused; all you need to do is:

1. Take the exact word order and sentence structure of the question.
2. Make sure you understand the vocabulary of the question, so you know what is being asked of you.
3. Isolate the question word, remove it from the sentence, and replace it with the answer word or words, being sure to keep everything else in the question the same (same exact word order and same exact WORDS).
4. Remove any question sentence final particle and replace it with the appropriate answer sentence final particle, if applicable [more applicable to Cantonese, but occasionally applicable to Mandarin].
5. Change any pronouns as appropriate. (If I ask YOU a question about yourself, you will reply, "I blah blah blah").