Mandarin I Class Summary for this past Monday, December 13, 2021

 

Hi Gang,

This is a crazy week for me with parent health stuff, but I want to take some time to summarize your last class so that any new students or those who missed class this past week can catch up on their own. REMEMBER THAT THERE WILL BE NO CLASS THIS COMING MONDAY, AS I WILL BE OUT OF TOWN FOR A FAMILY EMERGENCY.

IN ADDITION, THERE ARE NO CLASSES UNTIL JANUARY 11 DUE TO WINTER BREAK.

Let's see what we covered this past Monday...

Starting on page 1 of your textbook, we discussed how every Chinese syllable has 3 components:

AN INITIAL SOUND

A FINAL SOUND

and

A TON

We reviewed the "SIMPLE FINALS," which we had introduced the previous first class on the handout that I provided, which new students may download from the first of the 2 welcome emails that I forwarded you when you joined the class from the waitlist.

You will remember that the simple finals are:

a     o     e     i     u    ü

We discussed that

a sounds like "father"

o sounds like "on" or "off" -- AND NEVER LIKE "OH MY GOD!!!"

e sounds like "wood" or sometimes like "duh," depending on where the native speaker is from

u sounds like "food"

ü is a challenging sound for beginners to make. You say "ee" like "meet," but you shape your lips like you are going to whistle or make a kissy face. This modifies the "ee" into UMLAUT U.

Finally, we saw that the i in Mandarin has 2 possible sounds, depending on which initial consonant it follows. If the i follows lines 1, 2, and 4 of the bo po mo fo table of initial consonant sounds, the i is pronounced like "meet" or "see." If the i follows lines 5 or 6 of the bo po mo fo table initial consonants, it sounds almost like a buzzy grunt. The actual sound of the i after the consonants from lines 5 and 6 is difficult to type and must be heard and imitated over and over until the student gets it right on a consistent basis.

We mentioned that one of the greatest cardinal sins of beginner Mandarin students is to pronounce "Wo3 Shi4" ["I am"] as "WHOA SHE."

DO NOT EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER

[EVER]

DO THIS!!!

The o sound in spoken Mandarin is always pronounced as "on off." The i sound after "sh" is always pronounced like the American English word "shirt," but without the "t" at the end.

The bo po mo fo table of initial consonant sounds in Mandarin Chinese was presented to the class as such, with specific finals assigned to each row:

1. bo po mo fo                                                        4. ji qi xi

2. de te ne le                                                           5. zi ci si

3. ge ke he                                                               6. zhi chi shi ri

We spent the rest of the class this past Monday going over these pronunciations, found in section B. Initials on page 2 of the textbook:

 Of note to remember:

b, p, m, f all sound exactly like they do in English.

d, t, n, l also sound exactly like English.

g sounds exactly like the "HARD G" [golly gosh go get it, NOT George, which is a "soft g"].

k sounds exactly like English.

h sounds like the beginning of the English male first name, "HUGH," and can be described as sort of a "h+y" kind of initial sound. If you want to be authentically Mandarin with your h sound, put a small amount of phlegm behind it.

You MUST MUST MUST ALWAYS say line 4 with a very wide, awkward smile on your face. If you do this, you cannot possibly mispronounce these 3 initial sounds, even if you try!!! The i sound in like 4 sounds like "see.

The z sound is actually "DZ," like the end of the English word "adds" -- "It all adds up..." The i in this line sounds like a bee buzzing in your ear, NOT like "see." DO NOT EVER PRONOUNCE THIS LINE'S I LIKE "SEE!!!"

The c sound is actually "TS," like the end of the English words "cats." REMEMBER THIS.

The s sound sounds like a very hissy English s.

IF YOU KEEP APPROXIMATELY THE SAME WIDE, AWKWARD SMILE THAT YOU USED FOR LINE 4 [BUT NOT QUITE AS WIDE] AND USE IT FOR LINE 5, MAKING SURE THAT YOUR I VOWEL SOUNDS LIKE A BEE BUZZING, YOU WILL PRONOUNCE ALL 3 OF THESE CORRECTLY.

ZHI sounds like an exaggerated beginning to the English word, "jerk," with a very over-emphasized "JER" and you do not pronounce the k in the English word.

CHI sounds like an exaggerated beginning to the English word "church," but you do not pronounce the final "ch."

SHI sounds like an exaggerated beginning to the English word "shirt," but you do not pronounce the final "t."

RI sounds like little kids pretending they are revving the engine on a toy car while they push it along the floor while playing.

Hopefully these hints will help you to internalize and remember these fundamental sounds of spoken Mandarin.

See everyone on January 11 after the Winter Break. Sorry again that I have to miss class this coming Monday due to a family emergency out of state.

Best wishes and Happy Holidays to All!

Brendan

Cantonese I RECAP from this past Monday night's class

Hi Everyone,

Here is a lengthy recap email summarizing what we covered during our most recent class:

After discussing some basic logistics of the class, we reviewed (actually, we did for the first time, because we didn't get to it during our first class) the bottom half of the handout from week one. We repeated 14 basic phrases with some variations toward the end, where we substituted several different language names into the Cantonese question asking, "Do you know how to speak ___[language name]___?"

Nei5 sik1 m4 sik1 gong2 ___________ aa3?           Can you speak ____[name of language]____?

Gwong2 dung1 waa2                                                 Cantonese [speech of Guangdong Province]

Zung1 man4*2                                                            Chinese [lit. language of China]

Jing1 man4*2                                                             English

Again, do not worry if you struggled with any of the words or phrases that we went through at the beginning of last class; we are just starting out, and these intro Cantonese phrases were simply examples chosen to illustrate some of the basic SOUNDS and SYLLABLES of Cantonese, without really being concerned about whether or not you should even remember them at all at this point in tim

From here, we turned to the textbook, and spent the rest of the class going over the initial consonant sounds of the language, located on the back of the title page right inside the cover of the textbook. I was encouraged to see some students with printed out pages from the book; I think 2 students with laptop and tablet respectively; and one student who had even had the entire book printed by Staples on double-sided paper and then spiral-bound like a course pack from a college class. Very cool!

Remember that every Cantonese syllable consists of an INITIAL sound; a FINAL sound; and a TONE.

The first thing that we looked at this past Monday were the 19 possible consonant INITIAL sounds of Cantonese. Remember that b,d,f,g [HARD "G" LIKE "GO" -- never a soft "g" like "George!!!"], h,k,l,m,n,p,s,t, and w are all identical sounds to American English. Gw, kw, and ng all sound like they do IN ENGLISH, but we do not normally begin English words with these sounds. In particular, we discussed the nuance of ng as an initial consonant in Cantonese, and I suggested that you all refer to the following sounds in English to remember how to say this Cantonese initial consonant:

"I am sittiNG_On the desk."

"I am gettiNG_Off the desk."

If you slur these words together while saying these English language phrases, it is the exact sound of the Cantonese word for "I" or "Me," minus the tone [NGO5].

We also mentioned that the j in jyutping romanization sounds like an English language "y" as in the word "yes;" and that the z in jyutping sounds like "DZ" or "DS" as in "It all aDDS up to me." If anyone knows what an ADZE is (it is an archaeological "ancestor" woodworking and farming tool that came before the axe many thousands of years ago), this is the exact pronunciation of the Cantonese [jyutping] "z" sound.

Just remember that the "j" in our Cantonese romanized texts is not "jelly johnny jimmy" but rather "yes yellow you got it." And remember, please, that the "z" is not "zoo," but rather "adze."

The ears of native speakers thank you.

For the final 10 minutes of class, we discussed the concept of Cantonese FINAL sounds (the VOWEL component of each Cantonese syllable that comes right after the initial sound), and in particular of LONG and SHORT vowel sounds in Cantonese Chinese.

In the final 5 minutes of class, we compared and contrasted:

AA vs. A [father vs. butt]

and then

AAI vs. AI [diphthong LONG vs. SHORT vowels]

I explained to the class how diphthongs work in Cantonese...holding either the first or the second vowel out slightly longer depending on if it is a LONG or a SHORT vowel sound. If it is a LONG vowel in Cantonese, the FIRST part of the DIPHTHONG [AA] is held slightly longer and the second half [I] held for a shorter duration; it is is a SHORT vowel, the opposite is true: say the first vowel sound quickly [A] and immediately hold the second part [I] of the diphthong out longer.

If you don't understand this, you were either not in class; in class but not paying attention; or the concept of Cantonese diphthongs is new to you. Have no fear -- we are picking up HERE at the beginning of our next class...

Anywho -- Next,

AAM vs. AM [LONG vs. SHORT vowels]

AAN vs. AN [LONG vs. SHORT vowels]

AANG vs. ANG [LONG vs. SHORT vowels

We then discussed 3 more long and short vowel finals for Cantonese syllables:

AAP vs. AP

AAK vs. AK

AAT vs. AT

For these last 3, I briefly explained and spoke examples of what some refer to as the "Cantonese STOP TONES." These are stops [not all glottal, but stops nonetheless] that can CUT syllables ending in these particular groupings of long and short vowels SHORTER than if the syllables did not finish with these 3 "consonant stops." I explained how the use of these 3 stop sounds at the end of select Cantonese syllables is extremely subtle and MORE IMPLIED THAN ACTUALLY PRONOUNCED ALOUD by native speakers.

To illustrate, I spoke the words:

BAAT3 [the number "8"]

and

BAAK3 [the number "100)

I explained that BAAT3 BAAK3 means "800" and that when properly pronounced aloud by a native speaker, both syllables sound almost identical, but there is definitely an audible difference between the 2 syllables -- the one that ends with "t" and the one that ends with "k" somehow sound subtly different from each other [in a room without reverb or background noise], even though a native speaker is not emphasizing either the "t" or the "k" final sound.

Don't worry if the sounds of these 3 "stop tones" seemed indistinguishable to you as a beginner student when I spoke them on Monday; we will have plenty of opportunities this year to learn some words that end with each shortened vowel and you will start to get a "feel" for how they work once you learn some vocabulary and once you hear these syllables "in action" in the context of some basic Cantonese phrases, once we move forward in the textbook.

We left off here, so we will review all of these initial and final sounds and then continue with AAU vs. AU and onward next time.

See you all next week!*

[*ACTUALLY, THE FOLLOWING WEEK'S CLASS HAS BEEN CANCELLED DUE TO A FAMILY EMERGENCY THAT I AM DEALING WITH. THANKS, EVERYONE!]

Daai6 gaa3 hou2 -- Welcome to ALESN Cantonese 1!

Hi Everyone,

Many thanks again to everyone who came to class last night. I think that we had 7 people, which means that 3 were missing. One student has emailed that after reviewing the PDF of the book and my description of what we will cover this year, the class is too basic for his needs -- as he is already functionally conversational at an intermediate level. That leaves 2 other students who were not in class last night. If you are one of the 2 remaining people, please let me know whether to expect you in class going forward, or if you will need to drop out due to scheduling or personal needs.

For everyone else, I was very impressed with the unexpected degree of accurate pronunciation and tones from multiple students last night when we did our very brief self-introduction thing around 2/3 of the way through class. This was very encouraging to me, as I mentioned, because it suggests that this year, we might be able to spend less time learning the pronunciation and tones fundamentals that need to precede the actual lessons and dialogues in our textbook.

As a reminder, your homework for next Monday, whether you were in class last night or not (as long as you intend to stay in the class), will be to download the textbook and audio files and to read the intro portion of the textbook and familiarize yourself with the pronunciation and tones section up to or around the tones diagram on page 18. You can spend 5 minutes looking at this, or you can immerse yourself and do some internet research, watch random Youtube videos on Cantonese tones, etc. -- whatever you feel motivated or inspired to do. Once we actually cover 1 hour worth of pronunciation material from the book next week, you will all have a much better idea FOR EACH OF YOU INDIVIDUALLY what you may OR MAY NOT need to spend time studying, focusing on, and reviewing -- as much or as little as necessary over the next few weeks before we launch into our first dialogue and we look at our first beginner level vocabulary list.

Please also take a look at the bottom half of handout #1, which we did not finish going over last night. We will begin next Monday by learning how to say the various phrases at the bottom of that sheet, before we move to the textbook. For those who did not attend class last night, handout #1 was attached to my first email that I sent out before last night's class.

A few suggestions to help you learn AND RETAIN proper pronunciation, tones, vocabulary, grammar and syntax, as well as situational language cues (i.e. under what circumstances you might expect to hear and use the various Cantonese concepts and specific vocabulary and sentence structures that you will be learning this year):

1. The fastest way to learn to pronounce Cantonese properly in a way that native speakers who don't know you will be able to understand what you are trying to communicate is to RECORD ALL OF YOUR CLASSES AND THEN LISTEN BACK, PRETENDING YOU ARE AN OUTSIDER. TRY YOUR BEST TO DISTANCE YOURSELF FROM ANY EMOTION, FROM ANY DISAPPOINTMENT OVER NOT SOUNDING AS "GOOD" AS YOUR NEIGHBOR, AS WELL AS FROM ANY GRATUITOUS PATTING YOURSELF ON THE BACK FOR BEING SUCH A "STAR STUDENT," SHOULD THAT BE THE CASE. You will find that you can learn a lot from listening back to what you and all of your classmates do RIGHT each week, and even more, from what you and your classmates might say incorrectly. I tell all of my absolute beginner students to do this each year (those who do not already know how to pronounce Cantonese accurately, who have not grown up speaking with their families, etc.), and each year only one or two students will actually record their classes and listen back each week. Invariably, each year, THOSE 1 OR 2 STUDENTS make the most progress -- sometimes even eclipsing the spoken language abilities of other ethnically Chinese students who may have grown up listening to and speaking Chinese. Not exaggerating. I once had a caucasian female Mandarin student who recorded and really listened back to and studied her classes each week. Within one academic year, she went from zero, never tried to speak Chinese ever before, to delivering a short speech in spoken Mandarin for her fashion design company to factory representatives in China where her US company was outsourcing all of the textile labor for their clothing line. It was very important that she pronounce Chinese slowly and accurately, so that her Chinese clients would understand the message that her US company intended to communicate. She was able to accomplish this goal, and it was impressive for the class to see it unfold and then to hear about it after the student returned from her trip later that spring.
2. The best way to stay motivated while learning a new language during the beginning and early stages, besides enthusiastically taking advantage of every possible opportunity to speak that language with anyone who might even remotely have time to speak with you, is to MAKE THE LEARNING PROCESS AS FUN AS POSSIBLE. This will be different for each person. For some people, collecting a personal library of books or PDF resources and then bombarding yourself with beginner level language and culture information, vocabulary, and basic concepts, is the way to go. For others, starting a collection of travel guides or history books about the place(s) in the world where the language is spoken can allow frequent daydreaming, where the student can imagine all kinds of exciting social interactions that he or she might one day have with native speakers of the language while visiting exotic locales where the language is spoken. For others, maybe the motivation is to deepen your relationship with your favorite grandparent, or to connect with overseas relatives that you do not yet know, but have always wanted to visit. For me, when I first started learning Cantonese, I was very into martial arts, and in particular into watching and collecting DVDs of vintage kung fu films from the 70s and 80s. I'd had opportunities to watch non-overdubbed Jackie Chan and other classic Chinese action movies on DVD, and was blown away by how much better and more engrossing the storylines were in these films when not butchered with ridiculous overdubbed English language tracks. For me, as fun as it was to hear "You bastard, I am going to kill you" fifty times in each Chinese kung fu film I might watch, it became a much deeper "foreign film" experience for me to listen to the original soundtracks in Cantonese and Mandarin and to daydream about how I might over time understand more and more of the spoken Chinese until one day, I might be able to watch these movies in their original Cantonese or Mandarin without subtitles. To that end, I RECOMMEND TO ALL OF MY STUDENTS TO PURCHASE OR DOWNLOAD ENGLISH LANGUAGE CHILDREN'S MOVIES OR TV SHOWS DUBBED INTO CHINESE WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES. MY PERSONAL FAVORITES, WHICH ARE AMAZING IN CANTONESE, ARE ALL OF THE HARRY POTTER MOVIES; ANY OF THE MANY SESAME STREET EPISODES AVAILABLE IN CANTONESE; AS WELL AS ANY DISNEY OR PIXAR ANIMATED MOVIE -- PERSONAL FAVORITES INCLUDE FROZEN, MEGAMIND, AND THE INCREDIBLES. Of course, movies originally in Cantonese from China, Taiwan or Hong Kong are also amazing resources. For me, my favorite genres are the aforementioned Hong Kong martial arts movies (especially Shaw Brothers's 70s and 80s "period" kung fu films) and romantic or other comedies. Laughter always helps with language learning -- especially for beginners.

Anyway, these are some suggestions that I can give to help you improve quicker rather than slower as a beginning Cantonese student -- especially for those of us who are not ethnically Chinese and may not have grown up hearing and speaking some amount of Chinese with our families.

Thanks for reading and see everyone next week,

Brendan

Da4 jia1 hao3 -- Welcome to all new ALESN Mandarin I students!

 Hi Everyone,

Many thanks again to everyone who came to class last night. I think that we had 11 people, which means that 10 were missing. Several students have emailed that they were ill or needed to work late, and 1 or 2 have dropped out and are in the process of being replaced with waitlist folks. If you are one of the 9 or so remaining people from my original class roster provided to me by our ALESN Program Administrator, please let me know whether to expect you in class going forward, or if you will need to drop out due to scheduling or personal needs. PLEASE REPLY ASAP, BECAUSE MY WAITLIST IS ALMOST AS LONG AS THE CURRENT ROSTER FOR THIS CLASS -- AND WE WANT TO GIVE INTERESTED STUDENTS THE OPPORTUNITY TO JOIN IF ANYONE CURRENTLY REGISTERED CAN NO LONGER TAKE MY CLASS.

Thanks in advance.

Last night was a very good and encouraging first class. We spent some time covering a basic handout and went around the room doing some very brief programmed self-introductions. I was pleasantly surprised at some of the students' pronunciation and tones. Other students are obviously "from zero" absolute beginners -- and that is certainly ok. More than ok, because if you really pay attention and make sure that you learn properly from the very beginning, you won't need to unlearn any mistakes that are common to beginner Mandarin students in general, and more specifically to students over the years in our ALESN program!

We also covered a brief overview of your textbook. Your homework for next Monday, whether you were in class last night or not (as long as you intend to stay in the class), will be to download your textbook and to read the intro portion and familiarize yourself with the pronunciation and tones section up to or around page 11. OBVIOUSLY, few or none of you will know how to pronounce many or most of these syllables or tones yet -- unless you really paid attention in class last night, or unless you have previous Mandarin language study experience. 

You are welcome to spend 5 minutes looking at this material in your book...or you can immerse yourself and do some internet research, watch random Youtube videos on the four Mandarin tones and the neutral tone, etc. -- whatever you feel motivated or inspired to do. Once we actually cover 1 hour worth of pronunciation material from the book next week, you will all have a much better idea FOR EACH OF YOU INDIVIDUALLY what you may OR MAY NOT need to spend time studying, focusing on, and reviewing -- as much or as little as necessary over the next few weeks before we launch into our first dialogue and we look at our first beginner level vocabulary list.

Please also take a look at the 2 links that I provided in my previous email to the the video material that will accompany our dialogues, once we begin the actual lessons in our book. It is worthwhile watching (before next week) the 5 minute-long lesson 1 dialogue 1 video to gain an idea of the campy, fun resource that I hope these videos will be for each of you this year to help reinforce the vocabulary, sentence structures, and lesson materials that we will cover between now and May or June.

A few suggestions to help you learn AND RETAIN proper pronunciation, tones, vocabulary, grammar and syntax, as well as situational language cues (i.e. under what circumstances you might expect to hear and use the various Mandarin concepts and specific vocabulary and sentence structures that you will be learning this year):

1. The fastest way to learn to pronounce Mandarin properly in a way that native speakers who don't know you will be able to understand what you are trying to communicate is to RECORD ALL OF YOUR CLASSES AND THEN LISTEN BACK, PRETENDING YOU ARE AN OUTSIDER. TRY YOUR BEST TO DISTANCE YOURSELF FROM ANY EMOTION, FROM ANY DISAPPOINTMENT OVER NOT SOUNDING AS "GOOD" AS YOUR NEIGHBOR, AS WELL AS FROM ANY GRATUITOUS PATTING YOURSELF ON THE BACK FOR BEING SUCH A "STAR STUDENT," SHOULD THAT BE THE CASE. You will find that you can learn a lot from listening back to what you and all of your classmates do RIGHT each week, and even more, from what you and your classmates might say incorrectly. I tell all of my absolute beginner students to do this each year (those who do not already know how to pronounce Mandarin accurately, who have not grown up speaking with their families, etc.). Each year, only one or two students will actually record their classes and listen back each week. Invariably, each year, THOSE 1 OR 2 STUDENTS make the most progress -- sometimes even eclipsing the spoken language abilities of other ethnically Chinese students in the class who may have grown up listening to and speaking Chinese. Not exaggerating. I once had a caucasian female Mandarin student who recorded and really listened back to and studied her classes each week. Within one academic year, she went from zero (never tried to speak Chinese before) to delivering a short speech in spoken Mandarin for her US fashion design company to factory representatives in China where her company was outsourcing all of the textile labor for their clothing line. It was very important that she pronounce Chinese slowly and accurately, so that her Chinese clients would understand the friendly and positive teamwork message that her US company intended to communicate. She was able to accomplish this goal, and it was impressive for the class to see it unfold and then to hear about it after the student returned from her trip later that spring.
2. The best way to stay motivated while learning a new language during the beginning and early stages, besides enthusiastically taking advantage of every possible opportunity to speak that language with anyone who might even remotely have time to speak with you, is to MAKE THE LEARNING PROCESS AS FUN AS POSSIBLE. This will be different for each person. For some people, collecting a personal library of books or PDF resources and then bombarding yourself with beginner level language and culture information, vocabulary, and basic concepts, is the way to go. For others, starting a collection of travel guides or history books about various place(s) in the world where the language is spoken can allow frequent daydreaming, where the student can imagine all kinds of exciting social interactions that he or she might one day have with native speakers of the language while visiting exotic locales where the language is spoken. For others, maybe the motivation is to deepen your relationship with your favorite grandparent, or to connect with overseas relatives that you do not yet know, but have always wanted to visit. For me, when I first started learning Cantonese (and several years later, Mandarin), I was very into martial arts, and in particular into watching and collecting DVDs of vintage kung fu films from the 70s and 80s. I'd had opportunities to watch non-overdubbed Jackie Chan and other classic Chinese action movies on DVD, and was blown away by how much better and more engrossing the storylines were in those films when not butchered with ridiculous overdubbed English language tracks. For me, as fun as it was to hear "You bastard, I am going to kill you" fifty times during each Chinese kung fu film I might watch, it became a much deeper "foreign film" experience for me to listen to the original soundtracks in Cantonese and Mandarin and to daydream about how I might over time understand more and more of the spoken Chinese until one day, I might be able to watch these movies in their original Cantonese or Mandarin without subtitles. To that end, I RECOMMEND TO ALL OF MY STUDENTS TO PURCHASE OR DOWNLOAD ENGLISH LANGUAGE CHILDREN'S MOVIES OR TV SHOWS DUBBED INTO CHINESE WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES. MY PERSONAL FAVORITES, WHICH ARE AMAZING IN MANDARIN, ARE ALL OF THE HARRY POTTER MOVIES, AS WELL AS ANY DISNEY OR PIXAR ANIMATED MOVIE -- PERSONAL FAVORITES INCLUDE FROZEN, MEGAMIND, AND THE INCREDIBLES. Of course, movies originally released in Mandarin from China, Taiwan or Hong Kong are also amazing resources. For me, my favorite genres are the aforementioned Hong Kong martial arts movies (especially Shaw Brothers's 70s and 80s "period" kung fu films, many of which were originally released in Mandarin) and romantic or other comedies. Laughter always helps with language learning -- especially for beginners.

Anyway, these are some suggestions that I can give to help you improve quicker rather than slower as a beginning Mandarin student -- especially for those of us who are not ethnically Chinese and may not have grown up hearing and speaking some amount of Chinese with our families.

Thanks for reading and see everyone next week,

Brendan

Brendan, your ALESN Cantonese I teacher for the 2021-2022 Academic Year, saying WELCOME TO ALL NEW AND RETURNING STUDENTS!!!

 Hi Gang,

I have been away from ALESN for a few years, so it is possible that some of you are returning students -- perhaps former students of Hung or Tsz or even Tony. If that is the case, welcome back! For all new students, WELCOME!

Let me tell you a bit about myself, in particular how it might impact my teaching over the coming months -- though I will try my best to not have that happen if at all possible:

First of all, before I tell you a bit about my background and my hopes for what I want us to accomplish in this class over the coming months, let me mention this crucial tidbit:

Unfortunately, both of my parents are currently ill with unrelated but serious medical concerns, and they are located 200+ miles from NYC. I have been driving back and forth between Brooklyn and Baltimore, MD every other week, usually leaving on a Tuesday and returning on a Friday or Saturday, for the past 2 months. This will continue for the foreseeable future. I have asked my parents to schedule all doctors' appointments mid or end-week so that I can teach for ALESN this year and so that I can start each work week right for myself at my NYC home office if it will be "a Baltimore week" for me. In the event that my parents need me on a Monday, I have arranged with Tsz for me to possibly teach online via the ALESN portal, if that might be doable for my schedule in Baltimore that week. 

Thank you all in advance for your kind understanding of my ongoing family emergency travel logistics, which may or may not impact my ability to teach on some Mondays going forward.

This said, I want to also mention what is perhaps a bit of TMI, but it will help to explain if my language skills might appear a bit rusty at times -- should any of the students ask questions at a higher level than the beginner lesson material that we will be learning:

It is true that I have studied Cantonese and Mandarin on and off since 2009, exclusively with ALESN, and that as of Feb 2020 right before the Pandemic Shutdown, my broken Cantonese and Mandarin conversational skills were effective enough for me to be able to teach 2-hour ESL lessons 4 nights a week, almost entirely in either Cantonese or Mandarin or both back and forth, to new Chinese immigrant ESL students via the YMCA, in the same building where we are currently studying with ALESN. 

It is also true that I have not spoken Cantonese or Mandarin in almost 2 years -- AND that over the past year, I was diagnosed with mercury poisoning and lyme disease. Luckily, for the past 3 months, I have been undergoing treatment and my brain has started working again. However, for most of this calendar year, I was experiencing all kinds of memory lapses and learning disability moments. 

I am extremely confident that I am more than qualified to teach your absolute beginner level class this year; I am also certain that if you pay attention, you will develop extremely accurate pronunciation and tones as you begin your Cantonese learning odyssey. As I say, though, it is possible that if someone asks me a more advanced question that I would have otherwise known the answer to immediately 2 years ago, I might not remember right away. My brain is still "coming back," so to speak. Thank you all in advance for your kind understanding. I didn't mean to share too much just now, but I also don't want my students to feel that I am unqualified if you ask me something that I should (and probably do) know, but I cannot recall immediately, the same moment as your question.

Ok -- enough of all of that. 

Let me now tell you a bit about my Chinese background and my hopes for your class. Following this, I will include links and attachments for some resources that we will be using in this class: your textbook, some audio stuff, some web stuff, etc.

A BIT ABOUT ME:

I started studying Cantonese before Mandarin as a hobby, with Tony Parisi, the co-founder of ALESN, in 2009. After several months of a false start, I returned in 2010 and studied Cantonese language and culture obsessively -- in class with Tony and other ALESN teachers, and for many hours each week on my own. In 2012, 2013 and 2017 respectively, I spent 1 month each time in Hong Kong, on purpose staying in Sham Shui Po, a very grungy, blue collar area in Kowloon where few locals speak English. This allowed me hours of daily opportunities to butcher the language during all manner of daily tasks and experiences. This, combined with constantly challenging myself to speak often, and to use Cantonese (not English) to ask Chinese people how to say what I didn't know how to communicate in Cantonese, allowed me to become very functionally conversational [WITH ALL KINDS OF ERRORS] across a wide variety of topics -- all the while speaking broken, but effective Cantonese with a "white person" accent.

Along the way, when ALESN began offering Mandarin classes as well, I started attending, and was able to quickly participate in Mandarin II and III classes via the miracle of cognates and by translating from Cantonese in real time in my head -- which we will discuss at length for those of you who might already speak Mandarin or another Chinese dialect.

I continued my [literally] obsessive self-directed Chinese studies until 2017, when after 10 years away from music (my original reason for moving to NYC in 1998), I started to feel a pull to sing again. It is a long story, but the summary is that when I was totally into Chinese, I had been accepted to a language certification program in Hong Kong and my intention was to do that and then return to start a PhD program here in the US in Applied Linguistics with a focus in Chinese. My life direction changed around 2018/2019, however, and now I am back to focusing on my music and on music journalism -- or at least that was the plan before the Pandemic started...

So, anywho, that is my background. 

I taught ESL to absolute beginner Chinese people IN CHINESE for the YMCA for most of the 2019-2020 academic year preceding the start of the Pandemic, but because I have not spoken either dialect at all for almost 2 years, I am currently, alas...ahem...rusty.

AS FAR AS OUR CLASS GOES, HERE IS MY HOPE REGARDING WHAT I WOULD LIKE TO ACCOMPLISH:

Though ALESN has been teaching Yale Romanization for Cantonese for some years now (which was my decision, when the program had switched in 2017), I have decided to return to an excellent JYUTPING Romanized textbook called Cantonese for Everyone. Don't worry if you have no idea what I just said; I will explain in class. This book is currently out of print/in between editions right now in 2021, and the cost and logistics of ordering a hard copy of the textbook from Hong Kong right now are a nightmare due to the Pandemic -- so I have decided to share a PDF and complete audio files with my students. 

PLEASE DOWNLOAD YOUR TEXTBOOK AND AUDIO FILES HERE:

[links removed]

I will explain the layout of the textbook this evening as well as over the next few classes if we have any new students join.

I love this textbook. It is extremely practical, and is written for adults without a bunch of dumbed-down language. If you pay attention in class and learn proper pronunciation and tones, you WILL be able to use this particular book as a launching pad to begin to speak real, basic Cantonese with real Chinese people you have never met before. And if you really pay attention and practice a lot, these Chinese strangers will actually understand you -- and vice versa!

In class tonight, we will be using the 2 attached PDF/Word handouts to hear and produce some very basic Cantonese sounds, and to learn some very basic words and sentences. Most likely, next week in our second class and then going forward, we will switch exclusively to studying from the book. I recommend that you either put the book on a laptop or tablet and bring that to class from now on -- or that you print the first 25 pages of the book (minus the intro text portion on Chinese language and culture, which you should read, but which we will not be covering in class). Once we have covered these initial 25 pages, you can print out additional lessons as necessary.

There is SO much that I could continue to type here regarding Cantonese language and culture; or Hong Kong; or my personal successes and failures learning to speak Chinese; or any number of related topics, but I think you have already read enough and I need to type my Mandarin I class Welcome email now.

If you are very curious and want to know more about what kind of teacher I am, or have been in the past, over the many years that I have taught for ALESN (I think this is my 7th or 8th year teaching for ALESN?), please feel free to check out my dedicated Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese language learning blog that I maintained for my ALESN students over a several year period. The Romanization of the entire blog/website is in Yale (again, I will explain in class), but there are some excellent lessons and resources tucked in there...I used a different textbook at the time as well, but as I say, it is an additional resource -- perhaps more about my personal philosophy of beginner language learning (regardless of the language) than it is of Cantonese I at ALESN:

www.sayitrightchinese.com

ONE FINAL THING, THOUGH I DON'T BELIEVE IT WILL BE A CONCERN THIS YEAR:

It is my very firm policy, backed up many times over the years by the "Powers That Be" at ALESN (of which I used to be one, with a title and everything), that an absolute beginner student will only be allowed to study ONE dialect at first -- until that student can demonstrate accurate pronunciation and tones in that first dialect without making goofy beginner mistakes. ONLY THEN will I allow one of my students to take my classes while simultaneously studying another Chinese language. As I say, I don't believe this applies to any of my students this fall, but if it does and I see you in both of my classes, we will need to have a little chat away from the other students after class or via email. Thanks in advance...

Very best wishes to All and WELCOME TO CANTONESE 1 AT ALESN!

Brendan

Brendan, your ALESN Mandarin I teacher for the 2021-2022 Academic Year, saying WELCOME TO ALL NEW AND RETURNING STUDENTS!!!

 

Hi Gang,

I have been away from ALESN for a few years, so it is possible that some of you are returning students -- perhaps former students of our other ALESN Mandarin 1 teachers. If that is the case, welcome back! For all new students, WELCOME!

Let me tell you a bit about myself, in particular about how it might impact my teaching over the coming months -- though I will try my best to not have that happen, if at all possible:

First of all, before I tell you a bit about my background and my hopes for what I want us to accomplish in this class over the coming months, let me mention this crucial tidbit: 

Unfortunately, both of my parents are currently ill with unrelated but serious medical concerns, and they are located 200+ miles from NYC. I have been driving back and forth between Brooklyn and Baltimore, MD every other week, usually leaving on a Tuesday and returning on a Friday or Saturday, for the past 2 months. This will continue for the foreseeable future. I have asked my parents to schedule all doctors' appointments mid or end-week so that I can teach for ALESN this year and so that I can start each work week right for myself at my NYC home office if it will be "a Baltimore week" for me. In the event that my parents need me on a Monday, I have arranged with Tsz for me to possibly teach online via the ALESN portal, if that might be doable for my schedule in Baltimore that week.

Thank you all in advance for your kind understanding of my ongoing family emergency travel logistics, which may or may not impact my ability to teach on some Mondays going forward.

This said, I want to also mention what is perhaps a bit of TMI, but it will help to explain if my language skills might appear a bit rusty at times -- should any of the students ask questions at a higher level than the beginner lesson material that we will be learning:

It is true that I have studied Cantonese and Mandarin on and off since 2009, exclusively with ALESN, and that as of Feb 2020 right before the Pandemic Shutdown, my broken Cantonese and Mandarin conversational skills were effective enough for me to be able to teach 2-hour ESL lessons 4 nights a week, almost entirely in either Cantonese or Mandarin or both back and forth, to new Chinese immigrant ESL students via the YMCA, in the same building where we are currently studying with ALESN.

It is also true that I have not spoken Cantonese or Mandarin in almost 2 years -- AND that over the past year, I was diagnosed with mercury poisoning and lyme disease. Luckily, for the past 3 months, I have been undergoing treatment and my brain has started working again. However, for most of this calendar year, I was experiencing all kinds of memory lapses and learning disability moments.

I am extremely confident that I am more than qualified to teach your absolute beginner level class this year; I am also certain that if you pay attention, you will develop extremely accurate pronunciation and tones as you begin your Mandarin language learning odyssey. As I say, though, it is possible that if someone asks me a more advanced question that I would have otherwise known the answer to immediately 2 years ago, I might not remember right away. My brain is still "coming back," so to speak. Thank you all in advance for your kind understanding. I didn't mean to share too much just now, but I also don't want my students to feel that I am unqualified if you ask me something that I should (and probably do) know, but I cannot recall immediately, the same moment as your question.

Ok -- enough of all of that.

Let me now tell you a bit about my Chinese background and my hopes for your class. Following this, I will include links and attachments for some resources that we will be using in this class: your textbook, some audio stuff, some web stuff, etc.

A BIT ABOUT ME:

I started studying Cantonese before Mandarin as a hobby, with Tony Parisi, the co-founder of ALESN, in 2009. After several months of a false start, I returned in 2010 and studied Cantonese language and culture obsessively -- in class with Tony and other ALESN teachers, and for many hours each week on my own. In 2012, 2013 and 2017 respectively, I spent 1 month each time in Hong Kong, on purpose staying in Sham Shui Po: a very grungy, blue collar area in Kowloon where few locals speak English. This allowed me hours of daily opportunities to butcher the language during all manner of daily tasks and experiences. This, combined with constantly challenging myself to speak often, and to use Cantonese (not English) to ask Chinese people how to say what I didn't know how to communicate in Cantonese, allowed me to become very functionally conversational [WITH ALL KINDS OF ERRORS] across a wide variety of topics -- all the while speaking broken, but effective Cantonese with a "white person" accent.

Along the way, when ALESN began offering Mandarin classes as well, I started attending, and was able to quickly participate in Mandarin II and III classes via the miracle of cognates and by translating from Cantonese in real time in my head -- which we will discuss at length for those of you who might already speak Mandarin or another Chinese dialect.

I continued my [literally] obsessive self-directed Chinese studies until 2017, when after 10 years away from music (my original reason for moving to NYC in 1998), I started to feel a pull to sing again. It is a long story, but the summary is that when I was totally into Chinese, I had been accepted to a language certification program in Hong Kong and my intention was to do that and then return to start a PhD program here in the US in Applied Linguistics with a focus in Chinese. My life direction changed around 2018/2019, however, and now I am back to focusing on my music and on music journalism -- or at least that was the plan before the Pandemic started...

So, anywho, that is my background.

I taught ESL to absolute beginner Chinese people IN CHINESE for the YMCA for most of the 2019-2020 academic year preceding the start of the Pandemic, but because I have not spoken either dialect at all for almost 2 years, I am currently, alas...ahem...rusty.

AS FAR AS OUR CLASS GOES, HERE IS MY HOPE REGARDING WHAT I WOULD LIKE TO ACCOMPLISH:

We will be using Integrated Chinese THIRD EDITION Level 1 Part 1 TEXTBOOK, which was an extremely popular high school- and college-level intro Chinese textbook for many years until it was recently supplanted by the 4th edition. WE WILL NOT BE USING THE REWRITTEN 4TH EDITION. I do not have a copy of the 4th edition; have never seen the 4th edition; and have no idea what the many page # differences or entirely rewritten sections might be. Please plan to study from the THIRD EDITION. Thanks in advance.

While I firmly believe in US Copyright law, the Pandemic has made things wonky all over, so I am breaking with my own rule from past years teaching at ALESN by providing PDFs of the textbook as free downloads to the students. You have your choice of Traditional or Simplified Character editions. Don't worry if you have no idea what this means; I will explain in class. IT DOES NOT MATTER TO ME WHICH EDITION YOU USE, BECAUSE FOR MY PURPOSES, THEY ARE FUNCTIONALLY IDENTICAL FOR THIS CLASS. I WILL NOT BE TEACHING CHINESE CHARACTERS. I WILL BE FOCUSING ON THE SOUNDS AND MEANINGS OF BASIC MANDARIN CHINESE WORDS AND PHRASES, WHICH WILL ALLOW YOU TO BEGIN TO HAVE BASIC CONVERSATIONS WITH NATIVE SPEAKERS WHO HAVE NEVER MET YOU BEFORE.

PLEASE DOWNLOAD YOUR TEXTBOOK HERE:

[link removed]

I will explain the layout of the textbook this evening as well as over the next few classes if we have any new students join.

I love this textbook. It is extremely practical, and is written for adults without a bunch of dumbed-down language. If you pay attention in class and learn proper pronunciation and tones, you WILL be able to use this particular book as a launching pad to begin to speak real, basic Mandarin with real Chinese people you have never met before. And if you really pay attention and practice a lot, these Chinese strangers will actually understand you -- and vice versa!

In addition to the textbook, the publishers of the Integrated Chinese series also produced all kinds of workbooks, audio resources, AND VIDEO RESOURCES to help reinforce the lesson material, especially the dialogues. This year, we will be referring often to the VIDEOS in particular that were designed to go with the lessons from your textbook. At this moment, I was able to find 2 separate, unrelated non-password-protected major US university websites with free streaming access to the complete dialogue and "culture moments" videos for your book. At least one of the sites also has complete audio for your book as well as access to the Level 1 Part 1 Workbook, for those of you interested in teaching yourself to read and write Chinese characters -- which again, will be outside the scope of what I will teach this year.

Please familiarize yourself with whichever website below that you prefer. Hopefully, both will remain un-password-protected for the duration of our 2021-2022 class. In past years, we used to rely on the University of Rhode Island's Chinese Department's website, but they are now password-protected, alas...

HERE ARE THE 2 WEBSITES THAT I FOUND LAST WEEK CONTAINING ADDITIONAL LEARNING RESOURCES FOR YOUR TEXTBOOK:

[links removed]

In class tonight, we will be using the attached PDF handout to hear and produce some very basic Mandarin sounds, and to learn some very basic words and sentences. Most likely, next week in our second class and then going forward, we will switch exclusively to studying from the book. I recommend that you either put the book on a laptop or tablet and bring that to class from now on -- or that you print the first 25 pages of the book (minus the intro text portions before the Pronunciation section -- which you should read, but which we will not be covering in class). Once we have covered these initial 25 pages, you can print out additional lessons as necessary. If you are going to print out your pages, please make sure that you print ALL of the pronunciation and tones pages prior to the first lesson!

There is SO much that I could continue to type here regarding Mandarin language and culture; or Hong Kong; or my limited experiences in Beijing, Guangzou, and Taiwan; or my personal successes and failures learning to speak Chinese; or any number of related topics, but I think you have already read enough and I don't want to exhaust you before class even starts...

If you are very curious and want to know more about what kind of teacher I am, or have been in the past, over the many years that I have taught for ALESN (I think this is my 7th or 8th year teaching for ALESN?), please feel free to check out my dedicated Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese language learning blog that I maintained for my ALESN students over a several year period. There are several sections devoted to my prior Mandarin 1 classes that I taught at ALESN. Lucky for you, ALL of my blog's Mandarin I category entries focus on lessons from the exact same edition of the exact same textbook that you will be learning from -- so if you ever want any additional insights on the same material covered in each class that I teach this year, all you need to do is visit the earliest entries each year under the Mandarin I category of the blog, and then proceed to read in reverse chronological order until you find the same lesson that we might be currently covering in your in-person 2021 or 2022 ALESN class:

www.sayitrightchinese.com

ONE FINAL THING, THOUGH I DON'T BELIEVE IT WILL BE A CONCERN THIS YEAR:

It is my very firm policy, backed up many times over the years by the "Powers That Be" at ALESN (of which I used to be one, with a title and everything), that an absolute beginner student will only be allowed to study ONE dialect at first -- until that student can demonstrate accurate pronunciation and tones in that first dialect without making goofy beginner mistakes. ONLY THEN will I allow one of my students to take my classes while simultaneously studying another Chinese language. As I say, I don't believe this applies to any of my students this fall, but if it does and I see you in both of my classes, we will need to have a little chat away from the other students after class or via email. Thanks in advance...

Very best wishes to All and WELCOME TO MANDARIN 1 AT ALESN!