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").

MANDARIN I ALESN SUMMARY AND NOTES ON WHAT WE COVERED LAST CLASS -- SORRY FOR THE DELAY!

MANDARIN I ALESN SUMMARY AND NOTES ON WHAT WE COVERED LAST CLASS -- SORRY FOR THE DELAY!

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	Thu, Jan 24, 2019 at 10:24 AM
Hi Everyone, Again, sorry for my delay in sending this summary email. I took it easy the first 4-5 days after my surgery and am finally getting back to regular work now. This email will be brief because I am playing catch up today. Last week, we covered Lesson 2 Dialogue 1's vocabulary and dialogue, and then I believe (though I don't have my recording of the class in front of me to verify) that we broke into small groups at the end of class and you had a chance to run the dialogue with your partner. We will review the vocab and dialogue on Monday and then launch right into the grammar points for the lesson, hopefully followed by "Language Practice" exercises, possibly putting us in the positing to begin lesson 2 Dialogue 2 during our following class. I say "hopefully" and "possibly" because after rereading last year's blog entries on this same material, which I have provided links for below, I see that there are several important concepts that I need to begin to discuss...AND NOW is the time to introduce those topics to the class, starting this coming Monday... Here are the blog entries from last year pertaining to this material: 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 We can see several things from these blog entries: I should probably review the entire contents of the first blog entry with you all during our next class, because I seem to have covered this material more comprehensively last year than I did last week. I will do my best to make up for that by reviewing this blog entry with you on Monday. I need to explain " 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 will, beginning next class. I also need to diagram and teach you guys the basic pan-Chinese [but specifically Mandarin, of course] general sentence structure map of [WHEN] WHO [WHEN] WHERE WHAT [ACTION] HOW/HOW MANY TIMES. I will try my best to speak about this on Monday. I also realize from the Cantonese email I just sent to that class that I need to discuss the concept of the TOPIC COMMENT SENTENCE in Mandarin [and Chinese languages in general] -- will try to introduce this topic on Monday as well. I think it happens more in Cantonese than Mandarin, but we will still see it at times in our book and it is worthwhile bringing it up and briefly discussing it on Monday. YOUR HOMEWORK is to: Review Lesson 2 Dialogue 1's vocabulary and dialogue, AND WATCH THE SCENE FROM THE DVD VIDEO THAT YOU SHOULD HAVE ALL DOWNLOADED BY NOW!!! Please read through the two 2017 blog entries from the links above, which expand upon various important concepts from this lesson that we will be talking about on Monday -- including several brand new concepts that we have never seen before in class! See everyone next Monday, Brendan On Mon, Jan 21, 2019 at 1:17 PM Brendan Davies wrote: Hi Gang, I am recovering from minor surgery that I had at the end of last week and will be getting back to work (and things like emailing my ALESN classes) tomorrow. I will send your class summary and notes from last week's class sometime in the next couple of days, as well as post the same information on the blog at that time. Best wishes to all in the meantime, and enjoy your COLD night off. PLEASE DO NOT ACCIDENTALLY COME TO THE SCHOOL. THE BUILDING WILL BE LOCKED AND NO ONE WILL BE THERE, BECAUSE TODAY IS A FEDERAL HOLIDAY AND NYC SCHOOLS ARE CLOSED. See you all next week, Brendan

Cantonese I ALESN review of what we covered in our last class -- sorry for the delay

Cantonese I ALESN review of what we covered in our last class -- sorry for the delay

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	Thu, Jan 24, 2019 at 10:03 AM
Hi Everyone, Again, sorry for my delay in sending this summary email. I took it easy the first 4-5 days after my surgery and am finally getting back to regular work now. This email will be brief because I am playing catch up today. Last class, we covered Lesson 3 Vocabulary and Dialogue, which we had quickly previewed at the end of the previous class. I am not sure if I am remembering correctly because I haven't had a chance to review my recording of the class, but I believe that we took some time and you all broke into groups and got to run the dialogue back and forth. Because of the 2 week break between classes due to the Holiday this past Monday, we will review the vocab and dialogue at the beginning of next week's class before continuing with the grammar and any exercises we might get to. I hope that this is a fun process for you all now that we are firmly entrenched in dialogues, real vocabulary words with everyday practical usage and applications, and some very basic, important grammar and structure (syntax) points that will begin to help us formulate our thoughts into workable, accurately spoken basic Cantonese sentences about everyday topics of interest to all of us. 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 We can see several things from these blog entries: I still need to diagram and teach you guys the basic pan-Chinese [but specifically Cantonese, of course] general sentence structure map of [WHEN] WHO [WHEN] WHERE WHAT [ACTION] HOW/HOW MANY TIMES. I will try my best to speak about this on Monday. I need to discuss the concept of the TOPIC COMMENT sentence in Cantonese [and Chinese languages in general] -- will try to introduce this topic on Monday I stopped teaching for ALESN last year halfway through lesson 3, so starting next week, I will need to type full blog entries each week explaining the various vocabulary, dialogue and grammar points. Yay me. YOUR HOMEWORK is to: Review lesson 3's vocabulary and dialogue, listening to the mp3 for the lesson as necessary to make sure that you are beginning to get the pronunciation [and tones] of the new words, as well as a general feel for the cadence or flow of these new Cantonese conversational sentences. Please read through the three January, 2018 blog entries from the links above, which expand upon various important concepts from this lesson that we will be talking about over the next 2 classes. See everyone next Monday, Brendan On Mon, Jan 21, 2019 at 1:15 PM Brendan Davies wrote: Hi Gang, I am recovering from minor surgery that I had at the end of last week and will be getting back to work (and things like emailing my ALESN classes) tomorrow. I will send your class summary and notes from last week's class sometime in the next couple of days, as well as post the same information on the blog at that time. Best wishes to all in the meantime, and enjoy your COLD night off. PLEASE DO NOT ACCIDENTALLY COME TO THE SCHOOL. THE BUILDING WILL BE LOCKED AND NO ONE WILL BE THERE, BECAUSE TODAY IS A FEDERAL HOLIDAY AND NYC SCHOOLS ARE CLOSED. See you all next week, Brendan

ALESN Mandarin I Class summary and notes from this past Monday's class -- sorry for the 4 day delay...

Hi Gang,

Sorry for the 4 day delay in sending this email -- just busy...

This past Monday was our first day back in 3 weeks, so we spent the beginning of class reviewing the previous dialogue and vocabulary. Then I picked up with the 4 grammar points on pages 29-32:

1. SHI4, the verb TO BE
2. Yes or no questions ending with MA
3. The negative adverb BU4 (and its possible tone change at times to BU2 when preceding 4 tone Mandarin verb, such as BU2 XING4 (to not have the last name of)
4. The adverb YE3 (also)

Following my explanation of these grammar points and after going over the examples, we broke up into small groups and you all had a chance to do the Language Practice exercises on pages 32-34. We also learned some vocabulary words for some new nationalities that had not been covered so far in class, to help us ask and tell each other where we are from.

We finished the class with an introduction to Lesson 2 Dialogue 1 about FAMILY MEMBERS. We saw that this conversation / discussion takes place while 2 friends are looking at a family photo of one of the guys. YOUR HOMEWORK IS TO WATCH THE DVD VIDEO FROM THE SAN FRANCISCO STATE WEBSITE FOR THIS DIALOGUE SEVERAL TIMES, UNTIL YOU COMPLETELY UNDERSTAND IT AND YOU FEEL THAT YOU ARE READY TO REALLY WORK THE DIALOGUE IN NEXT MONDAY'S CLASS.

We are going to review the vocabulary and dialogue, re-break everything down from the dialogue into its basic concepts and the literal word order as it translates into English, and then after repeating it a number of times, we are going to break into small groups and you will all have a chance to run the dialogue back and forth for 10 or 15 minutes. Following this, we will cover (or begin to cover) 4 important grammatical concepts on pages 45-48. YOU ARE ENCOURAGED TO PREVIEW THIS MATERIAL AS WELL, AS PART OF YOUR HOMEWORK WHILE PREPARING FOR NEXT MONDAY'S CLASS.

As I mentioned in your email from 3 weeks ago, I am not sure what happened, but apparently my 2017 blog entries skip Lesson 1 Dialogue 2. There appears to have been some kind of miscommunication last year wherein Jeremy, our Thursday night Mandarin 2 teacher, had subbed for me that week and he had accidentally skipped Lesson 1 Dialogue 2 in favor of jumping right into Lesson 2 Dialogue 1. Apparently, my shy class at the time didn't think to stop him and ask him to back up to the previous dialogue...and then for whatever reason, I never actually covered Lesson 1 Dialogue 2 in a proper 2017 blog entry -- though I apparently did cover it in class... 

 

Sorry!!!

Please review your recordings that you should have all made of last week's lesson, and please review the DVD videos for Lesson 1 Dialogue 2 and Lesson 2 Dialogue 1.

See everyone on Monday, when we will jump right into Lesson 2 Dialogue 1. Yay.

Best,

Brendan

Cantonese I Class summary and notes from last Monday's class -- sorry for the 4 day delay...

Hi Gang,

Sorry for the delay...busy week.

This past Monday, we covered all but the final conversation drills from lesson 2 and then we briefly previewed the vocabulary and recapitulated dialogue for lesson 3, which is what we will cover this coming Monday.

Because this past Monday was our first week back after 3 weeks off, we began by quickly reviewing the vocabulary and dialogue for lesson 2. Then I briefly reviewed the book's notes and grammar points up to page 42, which is where we had left off before Christmas. From here, I quickly covered the grammar points from page 42 through page 44:

• Choice type questions (in other words, YES OR NO questions). I explained the uses of blah blah blah MA3 questions to take any statement and turn it into a yes or no question. I also covered the equivalent questions formed by verb MH4 verb A3 questions -- also yes no or "choice type questions." I gave lots of examples. We will continue coverage of these 2 types of yes/no questions for the rest of the year, so don't worry if you didn't "get" everything the first time during last Monday's class.
• Question word questions: WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, WHY, HOW, HOW MUCH/HOW MANY? So far, we have seen WHAT questions (mat1 yeh5 / mi1 yeh5 / me1 yeh5 questions). ***NOTE WHERE THE QUESTION WORD "WHAT" GOES IN A CANTONESE QUESTION: IT GOES AT THE END OF THE SENTENCE: blah blah blah HAIH6 MAT1 YEH5 A3? We will discuss the placement of Cantonese question words at length as they come up for the rest of the course. I briefly introduced the WHO question at the end of last Monday's class when I previewed lesson 3's vocabulary and dialogue...
• GE3 "noun forming boundword" = "OF OR PERTAINING TO" whatever comes before it. We have already seen this in lesson 2's dialogue with Pronoun SING3 [LAST NAME] GE3 = "He or she is one of those Wong people." I explained that there are other uses, and that the most common use of GE3 is actually "apostrophe s" -- as in possession: BOB GE3 = Bob's [whatever it is that Bob owns]. Ngoh5 GE3 = MY or MINE...We will cover other uses of GE3 as the course unfolds.
• Pronunciation variations of MAT1 YEH5, including the briefest contracted form of all, ME1?!, which is rude [watch Cecilie's CantoCourse Cantonese The Movie Episode 1 In A Bar Youtube video for her discussion of ME1?!].

Everyone in class did very well with the various transformation, expansion, and response drills on pages 44-49. In the interest of time, I asked you all to do the Conversation Drills on pages 49-53 on your own. I wanted to allow time for a brief preview of Lesson 3, which we did. SO, YOUR HOMEWORK IS TO REVIEW LESSON 2 AND TO DO THE JUST MENTIONED CONVERSATION DRILLS ON YOUR OWN.

Everyone is sounding really, really good when you are repeating after me. How well are you all doing when there is no one in the room to repeat after?

Well, I hope?

Good...

Please refer to the following THREE 2017 blog entries covering the material mentioned above:

http://www.sayitrightchinese.com/2017/12/cantonese-class-summary-insights.html

I AM ALSO REMINDED FROM THIS BLOG ENTRY THAT FOLLOWING THE MENTION OF QUESTION WORD QUESTIONS IN 2017, I DIGRESSED WITH THE GENERAL SYNTAX OF A CANTONESE SENTENCE, IN THE FORM OF A MAP THAT YOU CAN USE FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE TO CONSTRUCT A GRAMMATICALLY CORRECT CANTONESE SENTENCE ABOUT ANYTHING EVEN WHEN YOU ARE NOT COMPLETELY FAMILIAR WITH THE VOCABULARY INVOLVED.

Please preview this information in the above blog entry and we will cover it on Monday. Please also watch the ridiculous and spot on "2 White Guys Speaking Cantonese" video at the end of the blog entry. It should make you smile. It is very well done. These 2 guys grew up in Macau and I think went through the Chinese school system there, and live in Canada now, which is where they are originally from, I believe. They have other videos as well, if you like them.

Here is the next 2017 blog entry, also covering this same lesson 2 material, with another Cecilie CantoCourse video at the end:

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

And finally, the 2017 blog entry covering the end of the Lesson 2 material:

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

See everyone on Monday, with a synopsis of [WHEN] WHO [WHEN] WHERE [WHAT action happens in the sentence] WHY/HOW Cantonese sentence structure and syntax, and then the beginning of lesson 3.

Best,

Brendan