😒
Our final class...
Instead of continuing with the exercises in Lesson 16 (the first lesson in Volume 2 of the FSI Cantonese textbook), we reviewed the vocabulary for Lesson 17 and then covered the dialogue and a few quick Culture Notes before wrapping up this workshop.
I was hoping to continue this as a year-long class, but I can't do that with a 4 student enrollment, because once the weather starts getting bad, weekly attendance will drop to 1 or 2 people, and that is no good. Sorry, everyone!
Depending on interest and classroom availability, I may hold additional 4 week Cantonese 2 workshops later in the year, teaching additional lessons from this same book.
Rather than type a long blog entry summarizing our class, I will leave off here, since we will not be returning next week and there is no homework. I encourage everyone who took this class for the 4 weeks that I held it to continue reading and learning from this book on your own. There are some excellent vocabulary words, sentence structures, and grammar points discussed in Volume 2 of the FSI Cantonese textbook, and even though it was published in 1970, it remains an excellent resource for learning Yale romanized conversational Cantonese.
See you all on the flip side.
In the interest of saving space at the top of the home screen, I may remove this class from the menu bar and substitute a new category: INTERVIEWS WITH ALESN TEACHERS ABOUT LEARNING CANTONESE AND MANDARIN IN OUR PROGRAM OR ON YOUR OWN THROUGH INTENSIVE SELF-STUDY.
Most likely, I will simply refer to this new content as "Interviews" in the menu at the top of the screen. The Cantonese 2 blog entries will still be available at the right side of your screen under categories.
Thanks again, and best wishes to everyone!
Sunday, November 12, 2017
Mandarin I Class Summary, Insights, Homework Thursday, November 9, 2017
Hi Everyone,
Another productive class. We were in a different room on the first floor by the men's room this past Thursday; nice, large classroom, but a very small white board, so I apologize for that if anyone had a tough time reading the things I wrote on the board when we reviewed the pronunciation and tones.
CLASS SUMMARY:
We spent the first half of class reviewing all of the pronunciation and tones material from start to finish. I wrote each row of each initial consonant and each final (simple and compound) from our familiar tables that we have been studying, and everyone repeated everything fairly accurately. I was pleased to hear this. I am sure that some of you are still having issues with pronouncing some of the initial or final sounds, or with any or all of the tones, but have no fear -- we will be reviewing all of the same pronunciation and tones issues from now on, but within the context of actual Mandarin Chinese vocabulary in our lessons' dialogues that we will be covering going forward.
We spent the second half of class covering Lesson 1 Dialogue 1: Greetings.
We discussed that Di4 yi1 ke4 means "the FIRST lesson." I mentioned that we will begin learning numbers in a subsequent lesson, but I pointed out that if you add di4 before a CARDINAL NUMBER (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.), it becomes an ORDINAL NUMBER (first, second, third, fourth, fifth, etc.).
Dialogue 1 is called "Exchanging Greetings," and it is about -- surprise, surprise: exchanging greetings...
We previewed the vocabulary -- 15 new words, including 2 proper names of 2 of the characters that we will meet in our book. Esther read the vocabulary out loud and everyone repeated after her several times for each word. I then explained a few things about some of the words:
We saw and heard that the dialogue is very short. Esther read it 3 times -- fast, faster, and fastest, lol. I had asked her to read it super slow, medium slow and slightly slow, but I don't think she understood what I was going for. I reread the dialogue at a slower speed, and then we went over it word by word and phrase by phrase to make sure that everyone understood the meaning of what was happening. Finally, you all repeated the dialogue once or twice, and then class was over.
INSIGHTS:
This was our first foray into attempting to speak actual conversational Mandarin Chinese, as opposed to ga ga goo goo baby syllables and tone exercises, with a few sample words thrown in to illustrate pronunciation examples. Everyone did well for being dumped into the deep end, so to speak, even though this was a very short dialogue -- so maybe more like the deeper part of the shallow end?
We will pick up next time with the same dialogue, repeating it a few times after me and Esther, and then we will go around the room and everyone will have a chance to read one or two lines from the dialogue out loud in front of the class. Following this, my intention is to have you all split into small groups and practice running the dialogue back and forth for 10 minutes or so -- and then we will cover some basic grammar points -- all during our next class.
HOMEWORK:
Your homework for next week is to watch THE VIDEO that you all should have downloaded to accompany this dialogue from the link that I posted 3-4 weeks ago. Please scan below in this blog category for the download link if you are a new student, or if you are a lazy student who hasn't bothered to download the videos yet.
Please watch the video for lesson 1 dialogue 1 multiple times. I am not sure if the videos ripped from the DVD are encoded with an option to select subtitles, as with the DVD itself. If they are, please select the pinyin subtitles, so you can watch and read along at the same time. If not (or even so), please also have your book in front of you while watching the video and please follow the pinyin text of the dialogue while the actors in the video are performing the dialogue.
Please also listen to the mp3 recording of the dialogue, downloadable from one of the links provided at the same time as the video links in a previous blog entry. The book's mp3s are also readily available via a Google search. For any of you still struggling with your pronunciation, this is an excellent tool to help you work out the kinks and also to help you start to feel comfortable pronouncing accurate, basic Mandarin Chinese.
See you all next Thursday.
Another productive class. We were in a different room on the first floor by the men's room this past Thursday; nice, large classroom, but a very small white board, so I apologize for that if anyone had a tough time reading the things I wrote on the board when we reviewed the pronunciation and tones.
CLASS SUMMARY:
We spent the first half of class reviewing all of the pronunciation and tones material from start to finish. I wrote each row of each initial consonant and each final (simple and compound) from our familiar tables that we have been studying, and everyone repeated everything fairly accurately. I was pleased to hear this. I am sure that some of you are still having issues with pronouncing some of the initial or final sounds, or with any or all of the tones, but have no fear -- we will be reviewing all of the same pronunciation and tones issues from now on, but within the context of actual Mandarin Chinese vocabulary in our lessons' dialogues that we will be covering going forward.
We spent the second half of class covering Lesson 1 Dialogue 1: Greetings.
We discussed that Di4 yi1 ke4 means "the FIRST lesson." I mentioned that we will begin learning numbers in a subsequent lesson, but I pointed out that if you add di4 before a CARDINAL NUMBER (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.), it becomes an ORDINAL NUMBER (first, second, third, fourth, fifth, etc.).
Dialogue 1 is called "Exchanging Greetings," and it is about -- surprise, surprise: exchanging greetings...
We previewed the vocabulary -- 15 new words, including 2 proper names of 2 of the characters that we will meet in our book. Esther read the vocabulary out loud and everyone repeated after her several times for each word. I then explained a few things about some of the words:
- Ni3 hao3, even though it is technically two 3 tones in a row and is written this way in pinyin, is actually pronounced "ni2 hao3," which we discussed as a tone sandhi rule during our previous classes.
- Qing3 wen4 (please, may I ask [you a question]) illustrates the importance of getting your tones right. We discussed that qing3 wen3 means "please may I kiss [you]" and qing3 wen2 means "please may I smell [you]." Yet another example of the importance of learning the proper tones as you learn new vocabulary words.
- Ni3 gui4 xing4? (your honorable last name?) we discussed as a question that Chinese people are likely to ask when meeting a new person, because it is more important to Chinese people what your last name is than your first name. We discussed a bit of the cultural background for this concept.
- We discussed that Wo3 rhymes with "law" and will NEVER EVER sound like "whoa." Do NOT pronounce it this way, or I will blow a gasket when I hear you in class...
- We discussed jiao4 as an example of how it is important to pronounce all of the aspects of the sounds of compound finals. This is not "jow" as it would be pronounced in English. It is pronounced (with a wide smile to get the proper pronunciation of the JI initial consonant) JEE-AAAH-OH-OO. Said properly in super slow-mo, this compound final is a quadrathong -- 4 separate back to back simple vowel sounds strung together in this specific order. I will remind you all of this and of other similar elongated compound finals as the year progresses.
- We discussed shen2ME and ming2ZI as perfect examples for you all to practice the neutral tone.
- Finally, we discussed Li3 You3 (pronounced "Li2 You3" because of tone sandhi) and Wang2 Peng2 as the names of our 2 characters. Remember that Li3 is her last name and You3 is her first name; Wang2 is his last name and Peng2 is his first name.
We saw and heard that the dialogue is very short. Esther read it 3 times -- fast, faster, and fastest, lol. I had asked her to read it super slow, medium slow and slightly slow, but I don't think she understood what I was going for. I reread the dialogue at a slower speed, and then we went over it word by word and phrase by phrase to make sure that everyone understood the meaning of what was happening. Finally, you all repeated the dialogue once or twice, and then class was over.
INSIGHTS:
This was our first foray into attempting to speak actual conversational Mandarin Chinese, as opposed to ga ga goo goo baby syllables and tone exercises, with a few sample words thrown in to illustrate pronunciation examples. Everyone did well for being dumped into the deep end, so to speak, even though this was a very short dialogue -- so maybe more like the deeper part of the shallow end?
We will pick up next time with the same dialogue, repeating it a few times after me and Esther, and then we will go around the room and everyone will have a chance to read one or two lines from the dialogue out loud in front of the class. Following this, my intention is to have you all split into small groups and practice running the dialogue back and forth for 10 minutes or so -- and then we will cover some basic grammar points -- all during our next class.
HOMEWORK:
Your homework for next week is to watch THE VIDEO that you all should have downloaded to accompany this dialogue from the link that I posted 3-4 weeks ago. Please scan below in this blog category for the download link if you are a new student, or if you are a lazy student who hasn't bothered to download the videos yet.
Please watch the video for lesson 1 dialogue 1 multiple times. I am not sure if the videos ripped from the DVD are encoded with an option to select subtitles, as with the DVD itself. If they are, please select the pinyin subtitles, so you can watch and read along at the same time. If not (or even so), please also have your book in front of you while watching the video and please follow the pinyin text of the dialogue while the actors in the video are performing the dialogue.
Please also listen to the mp3 recording of the dialogue, downloadable from one of the links provided at the same time as the video links in a previous blog entry. The book's mp3s are also readily available via a Google search. For any of you still struggling with your pronunciation, this is an excellent tool to help you work out the kinks and also to help you start to feel comfortable pronouncing accurate, basic Mandarin Chinese.
See you all next Thursday.
Tuesday, November 7, 2017
Cantonese I Class Summary, Insights, Homework for November 6, 2017
Hi Gang,
A smaller but successful class last night, and I am happy to report that it was our last pronunciation and tones class. We are right on schedule compared to what I envisioned for the amount of time I wanted to spend covering these two most important beginning aspects of Cantonese this year. Thanks to everyone for bearing with this material and for doing your best to pronounce everything accurately and with proper tones. Yay.
CLASS SUMMARY:
We began class last night with a review of the table of initials at the bottom of page 11 in your textbook. Remember that lines 1 and 2 all sound like English language initial consonants. We discussed that the j sound in Yale romanized Cantonese is sort of like a cross between the sound of "jam jelly Jimmy George" and the "dz" or ds" sound at the end of "the creature with 2 heaDS." I mentioned that to be safe and to go for the most accurate pronunciation possible for me as a white outsider second language learner, I split the difference. I mentioned that along the potAYto potAHto tomAYto tomAHto pronunciation continuum for the j sound, one end has it sounding purely like "Jimmy jelly jolly" and the other end like "heaDS."
We saw some other potential accent variations in the next entry on line 3: the ch sound of Yale romanized Cantonese. On one end of the spectrum, we have an almost English language "ch" sound, like "church Charlie Chaplin" but with a slightly wider "smile" to the mouth when pronouncing the sound. On the other end of the pronunciation spectrum, we have the "ts" sound at the end of the word "caTS," as in, "Brendan has 2 caTS." To be safe, again, your white teacher splits the difference. I pointed out that KETCHUP, perhaps the only famous mainstream English language word to come from Cantonese, historically has had 2 different spellings on bottles here in the US, based on 2 different romanization systems' spellings of the ch sound of Yale romanized Cantonese: ketCHup, based on the "ch" spelling of this sound as in Yale; and caTSup, based on an earlier romanization of the same exact Cantonese sound as "ts." Remember that I touched on this last time giving the example of choi3 (vegetable or food/cuisine in Yale) vs. tsoi3, an alternate romanized spelling of the same Cantonese word.
Line 4 presents one issue: the ng initial consonant, which I touched on last time as well, so I will only mention here that all of my students need to choose one of the three possible ways to pronounce this initial consonant and then stick with it and get really confident at saying it so that this sometimes difficult initial sound is not difficult for you. My recommendation is that you simply learn to pronounce ng as "ng" and that you do NOT do one of the other 2 shortcuts that I mentioned. If you can pronounce the initial ng properly when you want to, you can always drop it and say oh5 for I or me if you want to adopt a hip Hong Kong accent.
Line 5 presented no issues to students.
From here, we turned the page and spent a good amount of time reviewing the table of final syllables at the top of page 12. We spent more time on column 1, the "a" related vowel-finals of Cantonese as spelled in Yale romanization. I spent a fair amount of time clarifying the differences between the single a short vowel finals in this column and the double aa long vowel finals. The one exception in the column is actually the first final, the single a by itself without any other final sounds attached. To simplify spelling, though this should be written as "aa" in Yale to preserve consistency, it is shortened to a for appearance purposes on the printed page -- so says our book. Personally, I feel that Yale should have kept this sound as "aa" -- as it is spelled in jyutping, another romanization system that we have used in the past at ALESN.
Thus, "Neih5 hou2 ma3?", where the "ma3" is an aa sound like in the English word fAther, not a single a sound as in the English word "Above."
Please practice and review the sounds of the long versus short aa and a finals in column 1, listening to the mp3 from lesson 1 of your book as many times as necessary until you are clear on the differences between these sounds. Remember: Sesame STREET vs. Sesame CHICKEN...
Column 2, the "e" related vowel finals, did not present any issues for students. Remember that kek features a slightly different e sound than the sound of the e in je, gei, and geng.
The third column, EU is the most challenging set of vowel finals for new students. Because I discussed this last time, I just want to mention 2 key points: First, please remember that eui is NOT the same as oi. If you pay attention to nothing else from this one class I have taught, let it be that eui when pronounced properly DOES NOT SOUND LIKE oi. You must learn to make these 2 vowels sound different -- either now or eventually as the year progresses. You must, so do it.
Secondly, remember that the eung and the euk sounds have a spectrum of accents ranging from the French sounding "eu" vowel that we discussed in class on one end to the "er" sound of the English word "her" on the other end of spectrum. I also discussed this in my last Cantonese I blog post.
The 4th i vowel column basically sounds like the "ee" sound of the English word "free," except for the last example: syllables ending in ik. Example words sik1 (to know a skill or to know a person, place or thing) and sihk6 (to eat) were discussed. Both of these words sound like the English "sick."
Remember for the o vowel column that a single o final vowel by itself in Cantonese sounds like the English "on" or "off. We discussed the various other o finals that can be created by combining with additional final sounds mentioned in column 5.
Column 6, the u vowel final sounds, all sound like "oo" as in "food," except for ut and uk, as in fut and guk, both of which sound like the vowel in the English language word "foot." I pointed out that, counterintuitively, the sound of cheut1, to go out, though it uses the eut vowel, is pronounced by some native speakers in our class on one of of the patAYto potAHto accent continuum to sound almost identical to the ut final in column 6. Don't get hung up on this -- just be aware that some native speakers will pronounce eut and ut as almost identical sounds.
Finally, the yu pucker sound as in jyu, gyun, and kyut, was explained. This is the same sound as the umlaut u of Mandarin and it can be a tough sound for beginner students, so make sure you pay attention to it and get it right if it is hard for you.
From here, we touched on the more salient points of the English language text elaborations on all of the sounds just mentioned. I suggested that any students in class who learn more kinesthetically should pay special attention to the exact alignments and placements of the lips, tongue, and other parts of the vocal apparatus mentioned in these detailed descriptions, because they may help you. For other students who learn by listening and imitating the teacher or mp3s, I recommend that you still read these portions of the text, but maybe skim them and then forget about the text from pages 12 through 22 -- unless you need help making any one particular initial consonant or final sound.
Following our review of these notes as well as a few that we did not cover last time, we moved through some Culture Notes from pages 22 through the top of 24. The book does an excellent job, in English, of explaining some basic Cantonese Chinese cultural considerations that will affect your understanding of the language from the start -- foremost among them word order when giving someone's title and last name in Chinese. Remember that Mr. Jones, Ms. Lee, Doctor Wong in English all translate to the Cantonese word order of Jones Mr., Lee Ms., and Wong Doctor.
We don't really know enough of the language yet to put the [Sentence] Structure Notes into proper perspective yet, which we covered on pages 24 through 26. Instead of me recapping them here, please just reread this material on your own and keep it in the back of your mind as we start to learn the dialogues and move forward with new vocabulary and grammar concepts in future classes.
Finally, we finished last night's class with a quick review of the vocabulary list on page 30 and a repetition of the Recapitulation of Lesson 1's dialogue on page 3. We will repeat Lesson 1's dialogue again at the beginning of next class and then go around the room and have everyone read lines from the dialogue. Because this is a short one, we may or may not break into small groups for you all to practice while I go around and correct folks. We will spend most of next class beginning lesson 2.
INSIGHTS:
In the interest of time, just one insight this week, which is the same one I gave my Mandarin I class last Thursday, as we just finished the pronunciation and tones intro stuff in that class as well:
Each of you needs to do whatever is necessary FOR YOU to learn consistent proper pronunciation and tones of these Cantonese syllables within a window of what is acceptable and understandable when a native speaker is listening to you speak, in order for this person to understand what you are trying to communicate in Cantonese.
For some of you, no further pronunciation work will ever be needed because you have already been speaking and listening to basic Cantonese for your entire life as a result of your family and upbringing. If this is you, great! Now you can focus on learning vocabulary, grammar, sentence patterns, etc. and you will be on your way towards speaking progressively more and more interesting and useful Mandarin.
For others, you will need to put in more time, a lot of time, ALL OF YOUR SPARE TIME, if you really want to be able to communicate with speakers of this language in a way that they will understand you instead of scratching their heads and shrugging their shoulders, or having to revert to English during your conversations.
This is ok, if you fit into the second category.
If you do fit into the second category, don't whine about it. Just make a deal with yourself that you will keep working on your Cantonese pronunciation and tones until you no longer need to work on your Cantonese pronunciation and tones. Pronunciation and tones are the two most important initial aspects of your Chinese studies, and you MUST MUST MUST eventually get them right, at any cost.
It is only after you no longer have to worry about pronunciation and tones that REAL LEARNING can begin. Only then can you confidently begin to acquire vocabulary, sentence patterns, grammar, syntax (word order and related concepts) -- and only then can you begin to speak accurate Cantonese with your friends, relatives, in-laws, etc.
HOMEWORK:
For homework this week, please review all of this pronunciation and tones stuff. We are now officially done with the pronunciation and tones intro part of the class. We will review Lesson 1's dialogue next week and then move on to lesson 2!
If you have not and you need to, please review the tones videos further down in this section of the blog. I have added many additional videos, sent by students days and weeks after the assignment was due. They are all good videos and have something to teach you about the 6 tones of Cantonese Chinese. In addition, I have posted other videos in the previous postings in this category that will help with pronunciation and with providing a general overview/context for your Cantonese studies this year.
Your main homework for next week is to review all of this pronunciation and tones stuff for as long as you need to, and then to preview the vocabulary and dialogue for Lesson 2 on pages 54-55 and pages 32-34.
See you all next week.
A smaller but successful class last night, and I am happy to report that it was our last pronunciation and tones class. We are right on schedule compared to what I envisioned for the amount of time I wanted to spend covering these two most important beginning aspects of Cantonese this year. Thanks to everyone for bearing with this material and for doing your best to pronounce everything accurately and with proper tones. Yay.
CLASS SUMMARY:
We began class last night with a review of the table of initials at the bottom of page 11 in your textbook. Remember that lines 1 and 2 all sound like English language initial consonants. We discussed that the j sound in Yale romanized Cantonese is sort of like a cross between the sound of "jam jelly Jimmy George" and the "dz" or ds" sound at the end of "the creature with 2 heaDS." I mentioned that to be safe and to go for the most accurate pronunciation possible for me as a white outsider second language learner, I split the difference. I mentioned that along the potAYto potAHto tomAYto tomAHto pronunciation continuum for the j sound, one end has it sounding purely like "Jimmy jelly jolly" and the other end like "heaDS."
We saw some other potential accent variations in the next entry on line 3: the ch sound of Yale romanized Cantonese. On one end of the spectrum, we have an almost English language "ch" sound, like "church Charlie Chaplin" but with a slightly wider "smile" to the mouth when pronouncing the sound. On the other end of the pronunciation spectrum, we have the "ts" sound at the end of the word "caTS," as in, "Brendan has 2 caTS." To be safe, again, your white teacher splits the difference. I pointed out that KETCHUP, perhaps the only famous mainstream English language word to come from Cantonese, historically has had 2 different spellings on bottles here in the US, based on 2 different romanization systems' spellings of the ch sound of Yale romanized Cantonese: ketCHup, based on the "ch" spelling of this sound as in Yale; and caTSup, based on an earlier romanization of the same exact Cantonese sound as "ts." Remember that I touched on this last time giving the example of choi3 (vegetable or food/cuisine in Yale) vs. tsoi3, an alternate romanized spelling of the same Cantonese word.
Line 4 presents one issue: the ng initial consonant, which I touched on last time as well, so I will only mention here that all of my students need to choose one of the three possible ways to pronounce this initial consonant and then stick with it and get really confident at saying it so that this sometimes difficult initial sound is not difficult for you. My recommendation is that you simply learn to pronounce ng as "ng" and that you do NOT do one of the other 2 shortcuts that I mentioned. If you can pronounce the initial ng properly when you want to, you can always drop it and say oh5 for I or me if you want to adopt a hip Hong Kong accent.
Line 5 presented no issues to students.
From here, we turned the page and spent a good amount of time reviewing the table of final syllables at the top of page 12. We spent more time on column 1, the "a" related vowel-finals of Cantonese as spelled in Yale romanization. I spent a fair amount of time clarifying the differences between the single a short vowel finals in this column and the double aa long vowel finals. The one exception in the column is actually the first final, the single a by itself without any other final sounds attached. To simplify spelling, though this should be written as "aa" in Yale to preserve consistency, it is shortened to a for appearance purposes on the printed page -- so says our book. Personally, I feel that Yale should have kept this sound as "aa" -- as it is spelled in jyutping, another romanization system that we have used in the past at ALESN.
Thus, "Neih5 hou2 ma3?", where the "ma3" is an aa sound like in the English word fAther, not a single a sound as in the English word "Above."
Please practice and review the sounds of the long versus short aa and a finals in column 1, listening to the mp3 from lesson 1 of your book as many times as necessary until you are clear on the differences between these sounds. Remember: Sesame STREET vs. Sesame CHICKEN...
Column 2, the "e" related vowel finals, did not present any issues for students. Remember that kek features a slightly different e sound than the sound of the e in je, gei, and geng.
The third column, EU is the most challenging set of vowel finals for new students. Because I discussed this last time, I just want to mention 2 key points: First, please remember that eui is NOT the same as oi. If you pay attention to nothing else from this one class I have taught, let it be that eui when pronounced properly DOES NOT SOUND LIKE oi. You must learn to make these 2 vowels sound different -- either now or eventually as the year progresses. You must, so do it.
Secondly, remember that the eung and the euk sounds have a spectrum of accents ranging from the French sounding "eu" vowel that we discussed in class on one end to the "er" sound of the English word "her" on the other end of spectrum. I also discussed this in my last Cantonese I blog post.
The 4th i vowel column basically sounds like the "ee" sound of the English word "free," except for the last example: syllables ending in ik. Example words sik1 (to know a skill or to know a person, place or thing) and sihk6 (to eat) were discussed. Both of these words sound like the English "sick."
Remember for the o vowel column that a single o final vowel by itself in Cantonese sounds like the English "on" or "off. We discussed the various other o finals that can be created by combining with additional final sounds mentioned in column 5.
Column 6, the u vowel final sounds, all sound like "oo" as in "food," except for ut and uk, as in fut and guk, both of which sound like the vowel in the English language word "foot." I pointed out that, counterintuitively, the sound of cheut1, to go out, though it uses the eut vowel, is pronounced by some native speakers in our class on one of of the patAYto potAHto accent continuum to sound almost identical to the ut final in column 6. Don't get hung up on this -- just be aware that some native speakers will pronounce eut and ut as almost identical sounds.
Finally, the yu pucker sound as in jyu, gyun, and kyut, was explained. This is the same sound as the umlaut u of Mandarin and it can be a tough sound for beginner students, so make sure you pay attention to it and get it right if it is hard for you.
From here, we touched on the more salient points of the English language text elaborations on all of the sounds just mentioned. I suggested that any students in class who learn more kinesthetically should pay special attention to the exact alignments and placements of the lips, tongue, and other parts of the vocal apparatus mentioned in these detailed descriptions, because they may help you. For other students who learn by listening and imitating the teacher or mp3s, I recommend that you still read these portions of the text, but maybe skim them and then forget about the text from pages 12 through 22 -- unless you need help making any one particular initial consonant or final sound.
Following our review of these notes as well as a few that we did not cover last time, we moved through some Culture Notes from pages 22 through the top of 24. The book does an excellent job, in English, of explaining some basic Cantonese Chinese cultural considerations that will affect your understanding of the language from the start -- foremost among them word order when giving someone's title and last name in Chinese. Remember that Mr. Jones, Ms. Lee, Doctor Wong in English all translate to the Cantonese word order of Jones Mr., Lee Ms., and Wong Doctor.
We don't really know enough of the language yet to put the [Sentence] Structure Notes into proper perspective yet, which we covered on pages 24 through 26. Instead of me recapping them here, please just reread this material on your own and keep it in the back of your mind as we start to learn the dialogues and move forward with new vocabulary and grammar concepts in future classes.
Finally, we finished last night's class with a quick review of the vocabulary list on page 30 and a repetition of the Recapitulation of Lesson 1's dialogue on page 3. We will repeat Lesson 1's dialogue again at the beginning of next class and then go around the room and have everyone read lines from the dialogue. Because this is a short one, we may or may not break into small groups for you all to practice while I go around and correct folks. We will spend most of next class beginning lesson 2.
INSIGHTS:
In the interest of time, just one insight this week, which is the same one I gave my Mandarin I class last Thursday, as we just finished the pronunciation and tones intro stuff in that class as well:
Each of you needs to do whatever is necessary FOR YOU to learn consistent proper pronunciation and tones of these Cantonese syllables within a window of what is acceptable and understandable when a native speaker is listening to you speak, in order for this person to understand what you are trying to communicate in Cantonese.
For some of you, no further pronunciation work will ever be needed because you have already been speaking and listening to basic Cantonese for your entire life as a result of your family and upbringing. If this is you, great! Now you can focus on learning vocabulary, grammar, sentence patterns, etc. and you will be on your way towards speaking progressively more and more interesting and useful Mandarin.
For others, you will need to put in more time, a lot of time, ALL OF YOUR SPARE TIME, if you really want to be able to communicate with speakers of this language in a way that they will understand you instead of scratching their heads and shrugging their shoulders, or having to revert to English during your conversations.
This is ok, if you fit into the second category.
If you do fit into the second category, don't whine about it. Just make a deal with yourself that you will keep working on your Cantonese pronunciation and tones until you no longer need to work on your Cantonese pronunciation and tones. Pronunciation and tones are the two most important initial aspects of your Chinese studies, and you MUST MUST MUST eventually get them right, at any cost.
It is only after you no longer have to worry about pronunciation and tones that REAL LEARNING can begin. Only then can you confidently begin to acquire vocabulary, sentence patterns, grammar, syntax (word order and related concepts) -- and only then can you begin to speak accurate Cantonese with your friends, relatives, in-laws, etc.
HOMEWORK:
For homework this week, please review all of this pronunciation and tones stuff. We are now officially done with the pronunciation and tones intro part of the class. We will review Lesson 1's dialogue next week and then move on to lesson 2!
If you have not and you need to, please review the tones videos further down in this section of the blog. I have added many additional videos, sent by students days and weeks after the assignment was due. They are all good videos and have something to teach you about the 6 tones of Cantonese Chinese. In addition, I have posted other videos in the previous postings in this category that will help with pronunciation and with providing a general overview/context for your Cantonese studies this year.
Your main homework for next week is to review all of this pronunciation and tones stuff for as long as you need to, and then to preview the vocabulary and dialogue for Lesson 2 on pages 54-55 and pages 32-34.
See you all next week.
Mandarin Class Summary, Insights, Homework for Thursday, Nov 2, 2017 Mando I -- sorry for delay...
Hi Gang,
It was a busy end of last week and weekend for me. I am limited for time to type this entry, so let me get right to it:
CLASS SUMMARY:
Last Thursday, we first reviewed the simple finals, the bo po mo fo table (focusing on lines 4, 5, and 6) , and then we spend the rest of class covering the rest of the compound final exercises on pages 6 and 7, as well as WITH TONES added in on pages 8 and 9. We covered the table of all possible tone combinations in two syllable combinations on pages 9 and 10 at the very end of class. This table puts everything together for you, because in real spoken Chinese, no one tone exists by itself. All sentences and conversations are made up of multi-syllable words and phrases, combining any number of possible tones in real time, as quickly as you or your conversation partner can speak the words you are trying to communicate.
In order of what we covered, here are some points to keep in mind, starting with our review of the simple finals and bo po mo fo stuff at the beginning of class:
SIMPLE FINALS:
Remember that o always sounds like "on" or "off" and that the u with the umlaut is a specific pinched / puckered sound that MUST sound different from the regular u sound.
BO PO MO FO TABLE:
Remember that you MUST get the correct pronunciations of lines 4, 5, and 6 (with 2 different simple final i vowel sounds), and that your ability to accurately produce the sounds of 5 and 6 as well as to differentiate them from each other will determine how well a Chinese person will understand you when you speak. These sounds (lines 4, 5, and 6) appear in almost every single Chinese sentence in our book and you MUST get their pronunciations correct at any cost -- whatever it takes, however many hours of practice and study and listening to and imitating mp3s it might take you.
Bottom line: if you do not put in the time now to fix any errors you might have in pronouncing lines 4, 5, and 6, you WILL speak shitty sounding Mandarin for the rest of your life. Depending on how bad your mispronunciations of these consonants might be, Mandarin speakers will range from being very tolerant and eager to understand what you are trying to say to cringing, shrugging their shoulders and walking away from you with a perplexed look on their faces. So, fix any issues with these consonants NOW.
PRACTICES B.1.A THROUGH B.3.E., PAGES 2-3:
Our review of these consonant - simple final combination syllables verged on ga ga goo goo baby talk at times, but you all did very well here. Pages 2 and 3 are the easy ones. Make sure to study these if you had any issues during our review. These are the most basic syllable sounds of Mandarin.
PRACTICES B.4.A THROUGH B.6.J., PAGES 4-5:
Ahhhh -- now came the hard stuff: comparing and contrasting the initial consonants in lines 4, 5, and 6 of the bo po mo fo table, but this time with all kinds of various simple final vowel sounds. Make sure that you guys remember that the i vowel after a j, q, or x sounds like "ee" in the English word "see," whereas the i after line 5 consonants (z, c, s) sounds like a grunt/place holder and after line 6 consonants (zh ch sh r) sounds like a variation of the same grunt -- slightly different, but definitely NOT an "ee" sound.
Remember that the z sound in Mandarin is NOT "zoo" but rather the sound of "dz" or "ds" in "the creature with two heaDS." Remember that you need to pretend you are scraping peanut butter or something sticky off the roof of your mouth with your tongue in order to have the correct tongue placement for zh ch sh r, and that the r sound in Mandarin is NOT "red rover" but rather the very beginning of the English word "red" said in super slo-mo and stopping right before the turn-over from the initial "r" sound to the "ed" vowel and final consonant. The Mandarin r is one of the hardest sounds for new learners to make. Please see previous blog entries for elaboration on how to make this sound. You have several choices, which I touched on previously in the Mandarin I section of this blog.
PAGES 6 AND 7: REVIEW OF THE COMPOUND FINALS WITH VARIOUS INITIAL CONSONANTS:
We reviewed all 6 lines of the compound finals, which I discussed in detail during my last Mandarin I blog entry. Remember that line 3 in effect starts with a "y" sound and line 4 in effect starts with a "w" sound. The subtle differences between some of the finals within each line as well as comparing from one line to the next mean that you all need to really study and practice these -- at least those of you who may be having pronunciation issues with any of these sounds. Remember some of the pinyin spelling "conventions" or shortcuts for some of the finals such as iu, ui, and uei. If you are not sure what I am talking about, check out the explanations and footnotes to the table at the top of page 6 in your textbook.
There is no real way for me to type up "how" to pronounce exercises C.1 through C.6 on pages 6-7, so my suggestion to all of you is to go back, practice these until you consistently get them right when you pronounce them aloud AND WHEN YOU HEAR THEM INSIDE YOUR HEAD WHEN READING ALONG WITH THE TEXT.
The second skill is even more important than the first; once you get to the point where you can hear the sounds of the syllables and eventually the tones inside your head before you even speak, THEN you will be able to anticipate the proper pronunciation and tones when your own voice actually makes these sounds, AND THEN you will be speaking accurate Mandarin when you go to have a conversation with a native speaker of the language.
In order to get to this point, you may need a lot of mp3 listening practice, a lot of repetition, a lot of study time, and a lot of practice time with a classmate, friend, family member, or other person familiar with the sounds of Mandarin -- preferably a native speaker.
From here, we quickly reviewed the tones chart on page 8. By this time, you should all be very familiar with the 4 tones of spoken Mandarin as well as the concept of the neutral tone. On pages 8 and 9 (exercises D.1.A through D.1.M), we repeated the same exact consonant + simple final sounds found on pages 4 and 5, but this time with tones. Everyone did well when repeating after me. The question begins to be: how accurate will your tones be when you are not repeating after anyone -- when you must hear the tone in your head and then make the correct sound of the tone on the correct syllable in real time while reading aloud the text from the book? We will begin to explore this during our next class when we begin Lesson 1 Dialogue 1.
At the bottom of page 9 onto page 10, we explored all of the possible 2-tone combinations starting with the possibilities for the 1 tone plus another tone and ending with the possibilities for two syllables where the first is a 4 tone plus a second syllable with the same or a different tone. Everyone did well when repeating after me, but again, we will see how well you all begin to do next week when we break up into small groups and you begin to run the first dialogue of the first lesson with your conversation partners.
We discussed words with the Beijing accent er sound, which I will leave for now until we see them in the text of future lessons. We explored the basics of tone sandhi: when one or more of the tones in a multi-syllable word or phrase change(s) according to common speech practice and usually according to certain patterns or "rules." I will also leave this discussion for a later date, once we begin to see examples in the text.
Finally, we talked about the neutral tone and then repeated some tone combination exercises on various syllables from various real Mandarin Chinese words. Everyone did well repeating these in class.
INSIGHTS:
In the interest of time, just one insight this week:
Each of you needs to do whatever is necessary FOR YOU to learn consistent proper pronunciation and tones of these Mandarin syllables within a window of what is acceptable and understandable when a native speaker is listening to you speak, in order for this person to understand what you are trying to communicate in Mandarin Chinese.
For some of you, no further pronunciation work will ever be needed because you have already been speaking and listening to basic Mandarin for your entire life as a result of your family and upbringing. If this is you, great! Now you can focus on learning vocabulary, grammar, sentence patterns, etc. and you will be on your way towards speaking progressively more and more interesting and useful Mandarin.
For others, you will need to put in more time, a lot of time, ALL OF YOUR SPARE TIME, if you really want to be able to communicate with speakers of this language in a way that they will understand you instead of scratching their heads and shrugging their shoulders, or having to revert to English during your conversations.
This is ok, if you fit into the second category.
If you do fit into the second category, don't whine about it. Just make a deal with yourself that you will keep working on your Mandarin pronunciation and tones until you no longer need to work on your Mandarin pronunciation and tones. Pronunciation and tones are the two most important initial aspects of your Chinese studies, and you MUST MUST MUST eventually get them right, at any cost.
It is only after you no longer have to worry about pronunciation and tones that REAL LEARNING can begin. Only then can you confidently begin to acquire vocabulary, sentence patterns, grammar, syntax (word order and related concepts) -- and only then can you begin to speak accurate Chinese with your friends, relatives, in-laws, etc.
HOMEWORK:
For homework this week, please review all of this pronunciation and tones stuff. We are now officially done with the pronunciation and tones intro part of the class. We will start Lesson 1 Dialogue 1 on Thursday, later this week.
Please preview Lesson 1 Dialogue 1 and its related vocabulary on pages 20-22 of your text.
Even if you can already read Chinese characters in another dialect, you MUST MUST MUST read from the pinyin during class until you no longer have any pronunciation or tones issues. Please don't make me single any of you out in class this year, my returning students -- and you know who you are. If your pronunciation of Mandarin is not completely accurate at this point, save reading the characters for your studies at home. During class, read from the pinyin and fix your pronunciation problems -- period. Thanks in advance to returning students for your cooperation.
Also for homework, and this will be part of the homework from now on -- every week from now on:
Starting now with Lesson 1 Dialogue 1, please start watching the videos from the DVD that I asked you all to download from Rhode Island University's website 3 weeks ago. We will be using the video for each dialogue from now on as an aid to help you all understand, memorize, and learn the proper pronunciation of all of the words and concepts in each dialogue -- starting now and for the rest of the year.
So, watch the video for Lesson 1 Dialogue 1 a few times before next class. It is short -- like 3 minutes long. Watch it 4 or 5 times if you can. Seeing live action actors perform the short dialogues that we are going to start learning will help to reinforce the concepts in a way that everyone will be able to visualize during your home studies between classes.
See you all on Thursday.
It was a busy end of last week and weekend for me. I am limited for time to type this entry, so let me get right to it:
CLASS SUMMARY:
Last Thursday, we first reviewed the simple finals, the bo po mo fo table (focusing on lines 4, 5, and 6) , and then we spend the rest of class covering the rest of the compound final exercises on pages 6 and 7, as well as WITH TONES added in on pages 8 and 9. We covered the table of all possible tone combinations in two syllable combinations on pages 9 and 10 at the very end of class. This table puts everything together for you, because in real spoken Chinese, no one tone exists by itself. All sentences and conversations are made up of multi-syllable words and phrases, combining any number of possible tones in real time, as quickly as you or your conversation partner can speak the words you are trying to communicate.
In order of what we covered, here are some points to keep in mind, starting with our review of the simple finals and bo po mo fo stuff at the beginning of class:
SIMPLE FINALS:
Remember that o always sounds like "on" or "off" and that the u with the umlaut is a specific pinched / puckered sound that MUST sound different from the regular u sound.
BO PO MO FO TABLE:
Remember that you MUST get the correct pronunciations of lines 4, 5, and 6 (with 2 different simple final i vowel sounds), and that your ability to accurately produce the sounds of 5 and 6 as well as to differentiate them from each other will determine how well a Chinese person will understand you when you speak. These sounds (lines 4, 5, and 6) appear in almost every single Chinese sentence in our book and you MUST get their pronunciations correct at any cost -- whatever it takes, however many hours of practice and study and listening to and imitating mp3s it might take you.
Bottom line: if you do not put in the time now to fix any errors you might have in pronouncing lines 4, 5, and 6, you WILL speak shitty sounding Mandarin for the rest of your life. Depending on how bad your mispronunciations of these consonants might be, Mandarin speakers will range from being very tolerant and eager to understand what you are trying to say to cringing, shrugging their shoulders and walking away from you with a perplexed look on their faces. So, fix any issues with these consonants NOW.
PRACTICES B.1.A THROUGH B.3.E., PAGES 2-3:
Our review of these consonant - simple final combination syllables verged on ga ga goo goo baby talk at times, but you all did very well here. Pages 2 and 3 are the easy ones. Make sure to study these if you had any issues during our review. These are the most basic syllable sounds of Mandarin.
PRACTICES B.4.A THROUGH B.6.J., PAGES 4-5:
Ahhhh -- now came the hard stuff: comparing and contrasting the initial consonants in lines 4, 5, and 6 of the bo po mo fo table, but this time with all kinds of various simple final vowel sounds. Make sure that you guys remember that the i vowel after a j, q, or x sounds like "ee" in the English word "see," whereas the i after line 5 consonants (z, c, s) sounds like a grunt/place holder and after line 6 consonants (zh ch sh r) sounds like a variation of the same grunt -- slightly different, but definitely NOT an "ee" sound.
Remember that the z sound in Mandarin is NOT "zoo" but rather the sound of "dz" or "ds" in "the creature with two heaDS." Remember that you need to pretend you are scraping peanut butter or something sticky off the roof of your mouth with your tongue in order to have the correct tongue placement for zh ch sh r, and that the r sound in Mandarin is NOT "red rover" but rather the very beginning of the English word "red" said in super slo-mo and stopping right before the turn-over from the initial "r" sound to the "ed" vowel and final consonant. The Mandarin r is one of the hardest sounds for new learners to make. Please see previous blog entries for elaboration on how to make this sound. You have several choices, which I touched on previously in the Mandarin I section of this blog.
PAGES 6 AND 7: REVIEW OF THE COMPOUND FINALS WITH VARIOUS INITIAL CONSONANTS:
We reviewed all 6 lines of the compound finals, which I discussed in detail during my last Mandarin I blog entry. Remember that line 3 in effect starts with a "y" sound and line 4 in effect starts with a "w" sound. The subtle differences between some of the finals within each line as well as comparing from one line to the next mean that you all need to really study and practice these -- at least those of you who may be having pronunciation issues with any of these sounds. Remember some of the pinyin spelling "conventions" or shortcuts for some of the finals such as iu, ui, and uei. If you are not sure what I am talking about, check out the explanations and footnotes to the table at the top of page 6 in your textbook.
There is no real way for me to type up "how" to pronounce exercises C.1 through C.6 on pages 6-7, so my suggestion to all of you is to go back, practice these until you consistently get them right when you pronounce them aloud AND WHEN YOU HEAR THEM INSIDE YOUR HEAD WHEN READING ALONG WITH THE TEXT.
The second skill is even more important than the first; once you get to the point where you can hear the sounds of the syllables and eventually the tones inside your head before you even speak, THEN you will be able to anticipate the proper pronunciation and tones when your own voice actually makes these sounds, AND THEN you will be speaking accurate Mandarin when you go to have a conversation with a native speaker of the language.
In order to get to this point, you may need a lot of mp3 listening practice, a lot of repetition, a lot of study time, and a lot of practice time with a classmate, friend, family member, or other person familiar with the sounds of Mandarin -- preferably a native speaker.
From here, we quickly reviewed the tones chart on page 8. By this time, you should all be very familiar with the 4 tones of spoken Mandarin as well as the concept of the neutral tone. On pages 8 and 9 (exercises D.1.A through D.1.M), we repeated the same exact consonant + simple final sounds found on pages 4 and 5, but this time with tones. Everyone did well when repeating after me. The question begins to be: how accurate will your tones be when you are not repeating after anyone -- when you must hear the tone in your head and then make the correct sound of the tone on the correct syllable in real time while reading aloud the text from the book? We will begin to explore this during our next class when we begin Lesson 1 Dialogue 1.
At the bottom of page 9 onto page 10, we explored all of the possible 2-tone combinations starting with the possibilities for the 1 tone plus another tone and ending with the possibilities for two syllables where the first is a 4 tone plus a second syllable with the same or a different tone. Everyone did well when repeating after me, but again, we will see how well you all begin to do next week when we break up into small groups and you begin to run the first dialogue of the first lesson with your conversation partners.
We discussed words with the Beijing accent er sound, which I will leave for now until we see them in the text of future lessons. We explored the basics of tone sandhi: when one or more of the tones in a multi-syllable word or phrase change(s) according to common speech practice and usually according to certain patterns or "rules." I will also leave this discussion for a later date, once we begin to see examples in the text.
Finally, we talked about the neutral tone and then repeated some tone combination exercises on various syllables from various real Mandarin Chinese words. Everyone did well repeating these in class.
INSIGHTS:
In the interest of time, just one insight this week:
Each of you needs to do whatever is necessary FOR YOU to learn consistent proper pronunciation and tones of these Mandarin syllables within a window of what is acceptable and understandable when a native speaker is listening to you speak, in order for this person to understand what you are trying to communicate in Mandarin Chinese.
For some of you, no further pronunciation work will ever be needed because you have already been speaking and listening to basic Mandarin for your entire life as a result of your family and upbringing. If this is you, great! Now you can focus on learning vocabulary, grammar, sentence patterns, etc. and you will be on your way towards speaking progressively more and more interesting and useful Mandarin.
For others, you will need to put in more time, a lot of time, ALL OF YOUR SPARE TIME, if you really want to be able to communicate with speakers of this language in a way that they will understand you instead of scratching their heads and shrugging their shoulders, or having to revert to English during your conversations.
This is ok, if you fit into the second category.
If you do fit into the second category, don't whine about it. Just make a deal with yourself that you will keep working on your Mandarin pronunciation and tones until you no longer need to work on your Mandarin pronunciation and tones. Pronunciation and tones are the two most important initial aspects of your Chinese studies, and you MUST MUST MUST eventually get them right, at any cost.
It is only after you no longer have to worry about pronunciation and tones that REAL LEARNING can begin. Only then can you confidently begin to acquire vocabulary, sentence patterns, grammar, syntax (word order and related concepts) -- and only then can you begin to speak accurate Chinese with your friends, relatives, in-laws, etc.
HOMEWORK:
For homework this week, please review all of this pronunciation and tones stuff. We are now officially done with the pronunciation and tones intro part of the class. We will start Lesson 1 Dialogue 1 on Thursday, later this week.
Please preview Lesson 1 Dialogue 1 and its related vocabulary on pages 20-22 of your text.
Even if you can already read Chinese characters in another dialect, you MUST MUST MUST read from the pinyin during class until you no longer have any pronunciation or tones issues. Please don't make me single any of you out in class this year, my returning students -- and you know who you are. If your pronunciation of Mandarin is not completely accurate at this point, save reading the characters for your studies at home. During class, read from the pinyin and fix your pronunciation problems -- period. Thanks in advance to returning students for your cooperation.
Also for homework, and this will be part of the homework from now on -- every week from now on:
Starting now with Lesson 1 Dialogue 1, please start watching the videos from the DVD that I asked you all to download from Rhode Island University's website 3 weeks ago. We will be using the video for each dialogue from now on as an aid to help you all understand, memorize, and learn the proper pronunciation of all of the words and concepts in each dialogue -- starting now and for the rest of the year.
So, watch the video for Lesson 1 Dialogue 1 a few times before next class. It is short -- like 3 minutes long. Watch it 4 or 5 times if you can. Seeing live action actors perform the short dialogues that we are going to start learning will help to reinforce the concepts in a way that everyone will be able to visualize during your home studies between classes.
See you all on Thursday.
Tuesday, October 31, 2017
Cantonese II Class Summary, Insights, Homework for Saturday, October 28, 2017
Hi Everyone (all 4 of you who attended class this past Saturday 😐),
Alas, I don't think this is going to become a permanent class. Based on our 4 student attendance last Saturday, most likely our next class will be our last.
PLEASE REMEMBER THAT I WILL NOT BE TEACHING NEXT SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 4, BECAUSE I WILL BE OUT OF TOWN.
OUR FOLLOWING AND PROBABLY FINAL CLASS WILL BE SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2017 AT 5:30 PM.
CLASS SUMMARY:
This past weekend, we finished reviewing the grammar points for lesson 16, the first lesson in our book, and then we spent most of the class doing the drills beginning on page 12. After trying several repetition methods, we settled on each student reading both the left and right examples for each item, one at a time, going around the room for each drill exercise. We covered a fair amount of material, each student having a chance to read and then read/respond to several examples of each of the grammar points discussed in the drills.
We saw that some students were better than others at reading the Yale romanization. It takes a bit of time to learn, but once you learn it, you will have it going forward, to be used with whatever book Hung decides to teach from for the rest of the year, as well as in any other class at ALESN going forward that might use Yale romanization to teach Cantonese.
INSIGHTS:
Not many this week.
Just that certain students are able to pronounce the Yale syllables and tones with relative ease while others are getting really stuck, in spite of the fact that their Cantonese is actually much better than mine. My suggestion to any student struggling with Yale pronunciation and tones would be to go to the same website link that I provided earlier in this section of the blog and download BOOK 1 and its mp3s from this same FSI Cantonese Basic Course textbook series.
Once you have downloaded the PDF and audio files for book one, read the entire introduction and lesson 1 to that book AND LISTEN TO THE MP3 FOR LESSON 1 WHILE READING ALONG IN THE BOOK. This will teach you everything you could possibly need to know about how to read and pronounce Yale romanization, as long as you pay attention and listen critically as you read along in the text while the speakers on the mp3 read from the book. This should fix anyone's inability to read and pronounce Yale romanized Chinese -- especially for words that you guys already know!
In addition to this, I would go on Youtube and search for tutorial videos teaching how to pronounce Yale romanized Cantonese. They must be out there. If you find any good ones, please email me the links.
HOMEWORK:
Since this is most likely going to be a 4-week workshop instead of a year-long course, I am not going to assign anymore homework, other than this:
LEARN TO READ AND PRONOUNCE YALE ROMANIZED CANTONESE BY FOLLOWING MY 2 SUGGESTIONS ABOVE IF YOU CANNOT ALREADY READ YALE.
You will need to be able to read and pronounce Yale romanized Cantonese in Hung's Saturday class as well -- especially if you want to learn at home on your own between classes by reading all of the many, many pages that Hung skips when teaching from the book that he uses!
If a miracle happens and we suddenly have 15 students in our Cantonese 2 class on November 11, you will definitely need to be able to read Yale going forward if this class continues for the rest of the year -- though as I mentioned above, that seems unlikely at this point.
Many thanks to everyone who has been taking this new class, and see you all in 2 weeks on November 11.
Alas, I don't think this is going to become a permanent class. Based on our 4 student attendance last Saturday, most likely our next class will be our last.
PLEASE REMEMBER THAT I WILL NOT BE TEACHING NEXT SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 4, BECAUSE I WILL BE OUT OF TOWN.
OUR FOLLOWING AND PROBABLY FINAL CLASS WILL BE SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2017 AT 5:30 PM.
CLASS SUMMARY:
This past weekend, we finished reviewing the grammar points for lesson 16, the first lesson in our book, and then we spent most of the class doing the drills beginning on page 12. After trying several repetition methods, we settled on each student reading both the left and right examples for each item, one at a time, going around the room for each drill exercise. We covered a fair amount of material, each student having a chance to read and then read/respond to several examples of each of the grammar points discussed in the drills.
We saw that some students were better than others at reading the Yale romanization. It takes a bit of time to learn, but once you learn it, you will have it going forward, to be used with whatever book Hung decides to teach from for the rest of the year, as well as in any other class at ALESN going forward that might use Yale romanization to teach Cantonese.
INSIGHTS:
Not many this week.
Just that certain students are able to pronounce the Yale syllables and tones with relative ease while others are getting really stuck, in spite of the fact that their Cantonese is actually much better than mine. My suggestion to any student struggling with Yale pronunciation and tones would be to go to the same website link that I provided earlier in this section of the blog and download BOOK 1 and its mp3s from this same FSI Cantonese Basic Course textbook series.
Once you have downloaded the PDF and audio files for book one, read the entire introduction and lesson 1 to that book AND LISTEN TO THE MP3 FOR LESSON 1 WHILE READING ALONG IN THE BOOK. This will teach you everything you could possibly need to know about how to read and pronounce Yale romanization, as long as you pay attention and listen critically as you read along in the text while the speakers on the mp3 read from the book. This should fix anyone's inability to read and pronounce Yale romanized Chinese -- especially for words that you guys already know!
In addition to this, I would go on Youtube and search for tutorial videos teaching how to pronounce Yale romanized Cantonese. They must be out there. If you find any good ones, please email me the links.
HOMEWORK:
Since this is most likely going to be a 4-week workshop instead of a year-long course, I am not going to assign anymore homework, other than this:
LEARN TO READ AND PRONOUNCE YALE ROMANIZED CANTONESE BY FOLLOWING MY 2 SUGGESTIONS ABOVE IF YOU CANNOT ALREADY READ YALE.
You will need to be able to read and pronounce Yale romanized Cantonese in Hung's Saturday class as well -- especially if you want to learn at home on your own between classes by reading all of the many, many pages that Hung skips when teaching from the book that he uses!
If a miracle happens and we suddenly have 15 students in our Cantonese 2 class on November 11, you will definitely need to be able to read Yale going forward if this class continues for the rest of the year -- though as I mentioned above, that seems unlikely at this point.
Many thanks to everyone who has been taking this new class, and see you all in 2 weeks on November 11.
Cantonese I Monday, Oct 30, 2017 Class Summary, Insights, Homework
Hi Everyone,
Thanks to the miracle of technology and my fairly limited tome this week, I am typing most of this entry in the Blogger app on my phone while sitting in Li's Monday night Mandarin I class. Yay for technology...
Today was a tedious, but important class, in which we covered the material on pages 11 through 18 of our book. Fortunately, pages 19 through 22 (the remaining pronunciation material that we need to cover) is simply a reiteration of and elaboration on the initial sounds and finals on pages 11 and 12, which we spent most of tonight covering.
CLASS SUMMARY:
I began class with a brief review of the 6 tones of Cantonese, reminding everyone that we are combining the high falling and high level tones into one high level tone for simplicity's sake; better 6 rather than 7 tones to start, right? I again drew the tones diagram on the board and this time wrote out the 6 tones in Yale romanization on the syllable BO. The class repeated after me and I made sure that everyone voiced a solid 1 tone on bo (high level tone) before turning to the table of initial consonant sounds on page 11.
We noticed that everything in the first 2 lines sounds exactly like English. Line 3 presented some consonants that are similar to English but which, when pronounced properly in Cantonese, in effect sound like they are halfway between 2 different English language consonant sounds.
We saw (heard) that the J intial consonant in Cantonese, which we voiced with the sample syllable JA (pronounced like the English syllable "jah") is pronounced halfway between the sound of an English language "Jolly Jimmy Jelly George" and the final "ds" (dz) sound in "The Creature with Two HEADS." So, somewhere between a "j" sound and a "dz" sound. I explained that there will be some accent variation of poTAYto poTAHto going on with different speakers and that we will see this play out better once we start learning vocabulary.
Similarly, the CH sound in Cantonese is sort of halfway between an English language "ch" and the sound of the end of the word "caTS" -- as in "Brendan has two cats," which i do. Perhaps even more than with the J sound, the accent variations at either end of the TS vs. CH spectrum may be noticeable to students; in fact, many older Cantonese textbooks spell Yale's CH sound as "ts." This same variation in pronunciation is also reflected in different spellings of common food items on (Cantonese) Chinese restaurant menus, and may be seen in the choy / choi / tsoy / tsoi spelling variations of the Cantonese word for vegetable or dish/cuisine (as in "bok choy").
The rest of line 3 as well as most of line 4 is also pronounced just like the corresponding English language consonants. The exception, we saw, is NG, which does not appear in English as an initial consonant. It does, however, appear in between the words "sittiNG_On the desk" and "gettiNG_Off the desk."
I pointed out that you have 3 choices for pronouncing the initial ng sound in Cantonese:
- (The choice I recommend) Learn to pronounce this initial consonant properly from the start. It's not that hard -- particularly since EVERYONE in the class was able to say "sittiNG_On the desk" / "gettiNG_Off the desk." There really is no need to cut a corner with this one. You can all say it already by slurring these English language words together, so why make excuses? Don't be lazy; just learn it!
- Your second option is to pronounce the NG as a regular N initial consonant in English, but hold it out slightly too long and really "dig into it," so to speak. In this way, I showed how my former student Francis was able to get away with saying in effect, "NNNNNoh5" for "I" or "me" in Cantonese. His use of this trick was subtle and eventually unnoticeable.
- I mentioned that most younger generation Hong Kong accent Cantonese speakers drop the NG entirely on many or even most words with an ng initial consonant, for example saying "oh5" for "I" or "me" instead of ngoh5. Our Saturday Cantonese teacher Hung is from Hong Kong and he (almost) never says the initial NG sound on any Cantonese words featuring this consonant. This is a 100% viable option for those of you struggling to make the NG initial consonant sound.
We saw that GW sounds like the beginning of the word "guava" (the fruit) and KW sounds like the beginning of the English word "quiver" (to shake, or a holder for archery arrows). And, finally, W sounds just like an English w.
From here, we moved to the table of finals on page 12, tackling them one column at a time. We began with variations of A vowels in Cantonese.
I explained that a single A not followed by any other vowel or consonant should be spelled "aa" in order to be consistent with the rest of Yale romanization. As a convention of the Yale system (so just accept it and move on), single A final sound in a Cantonese syllable is written with one "a" but pronounced like the English word "fAther." This same sound when combined with other vowels or consonants is spelled in Yale with two As (AA). So, GA is pronounced like in the English word "God." It should be written as "gaa" if Yale were 100% consistent with itself, but it is instead written "ga." Get over it.
The next 8 pairs of LONG and SHORT A-BASED VOWEL FINALS in Cantonese compare and contrast the differences in pronunciation of syllables involving one or two As:
- AAI vs. AI
- AAU vs AU
- AAM vs. AM
- AAN vs. AN
- AANG vs. ANG
- AAP vs. AP
- AAT vs. AT
- AAK vs. AK
In the first 2 cases, these A-based final vowel sounds are diphthongs. For the AA versions, you pronounce the first half of the diphthong as AA (like the English word "fAther"), in effect holding it out slightly longer before moving to the second sound in the dyphthong (either I or U). In the single A versions, the first half is pronounced as "uh" as in the English word "above," which in effect makes the first half of the diphthong go by faster and the second half appear to sound as if it lasts slightly longer.
As a example of why it is so important to be aware of and to pronounce the long AA vs. short A final forms correctly, I gave ji1 maah4 GAAI1 (Sesame Street) vs. ji1 maah4 GAI1 (Sesame Chicken). We will review these finals in column A again at the beginning of our next class.
The second column of our finals table includes variations of vowel sounds based on E. We saw that a single E in Yale sounds like the English word "yeah." EI sounds like the vowel in the English word "gay." ENG sounds like somewhere halfway between "ang" in the English word "sang" and "eng" in "Englewoood, NJ." It is probably closer to "ang" in English, depending on the accent of the Cantonese speaker EK is like the end of the word "check" in English.
The third column involves a sounds foreign to English, EU -- which, depending on the accent of the Cantonese speaker, either sounds like a "French" "eu" sound (how I originally learned it from my first Cantonese teacher), OR sounds like "er" in the English word "her." I explained that while Tony Parisi, one of the two founders of ALESN, learned this as a French "eu" vowel from his teacher, Kam Yau, our other co-founder and an ABC (American Born Chinese) Cantonese speaker with her family in Brooklyn, pronounces this syllable as well as the variations in column 3 of this table as "er" like the English word "her."
EUI is the one Cantonese vowel that absolutely does not exist in English, no matter how hard I look for an example. It is NOT the sound of "boy toy joy Roy," even though most beginning students make this error and pronounce this vowel that way. "Boy toy joy Roy" is actually a separate Cantonese vowel sound, spelled OI and shown in the O finals column of our chart.
EUI is formed by starting with the "French" sounding "eu" pronunciation of EU and at the end of the syllable,you shape your mouth like you are about to whistle. I asked the students to repeat after me and then we got some of the native speakers in the class to also say this vowel, and the students repeated after them as well. Though there were some subtle variations in pronunciation, it is important to note that neither I nor the Cantonese speakers in class sounded like "boy toy joy Roy" when saying this vowel.
EUN, EUT, and EUK were repeated by the class, and I explained the differences, while pointing out that EUN and EUK can show either the "French" "eu" sound or the "er" sound from the English word "her." EUT kind of sounds like the English word "foot." Not exactly the same, but close.
The book does a good job of explaining all of the EU based final vowel sounds of Cantonese in the long English language text portion on pages 19-21, which we will review during our next class. For now, please listen to the accompanying mp3 for lesson 1 and practice making these particular vowel sounds. Make sure that you do NOT sound like "boy toy joy Roy" when making the EUI sound!!! THIS IS SUPER DUPER IMPORTANT!!!
Column 4 features the I vowel finals: I by itself sounds like the English words "he" or "she." IU sounds like the English word "few." IM sounds like the English word "seem." IN sounds like "lean." IP sounds like a cross between "hip" and "heap" in English, closer to "heap" IT sounds like a cross between "hit" and "heat," closer to"heat." IK sounds like "sick" in English. This last one is subtly different than IP and IT.
Column 5 involves the O based vowel finals. Remember that O by itself in Yale romanized Cantonese sounds like "on" or "off" in English. OI sounds like "boy toy joy Roy." OU sounds like the English words "no" or "go." ON sounds like the English "on." ONG sounds like the English words "song" or "long." OT sounds like the English word "thought." OK sounds like English word "hawk."
The U column starts with the U sound, like the English words "food" or "mood." UI is oo-ee, like "chewy" chocolate chip cookies in English. UN is "oon" in English, like the sound of the word "rune." UNG is not the sound of "hunger" in English, but is rather like the sound of the vowel in the English words "could should would" with an "ng" at the end of the syllable. UT is kind of like a cross between the English words "foot," and "flute." I will help clarify the difference between the EUT and the UT sounds during our next class. UK is very close to the sound of the English words "look" and "book." Not quite, but almost.
Finally, the YU column in the table, similar / almost identical to the "German" umlaut U sound in Mandarin. This is a "pucker face" or "kissy face" "y" sound that follows certain initial consonants in Cantonese. This sound will make much more sense once we see actual words involving this pronunciation, and then we will have something to practice and learn. I will review this sound next time instead of describing it here. Please read the English language explanation of how to produce this sound in your book on page 19.
Following our discussion and repetition of the sounds of the Cantonese finals table, we reviewed the book's explanations of these various consonants, vowels, and vowel combinations from pages 12 through 18. Remember that pages 12 through 22 simply elaborate on the final vowel sounds presented in the table on page 12. We will cover the summaries of sounds on pages 19 through 22 next time, then review all of the Cantonese vowel sounds, and then move on to some drills at the end of our next class.
INSIGHTS:
There are many insights that I could give at this point, but I will only give you one this week:
You MUST (whatever it takes -- and that will be very different for each student in the class) take the time to accurately learn all of the basic initial consonant and final vowel sounds of spoken Cantonese NOW -- starting this week and continuing for the next however many days or weeks until you simply get them. If you get them right away, then good for you and you won't need to spend much time on this phase of your learning. If any of these sounds are difficult for you, you must FOCUS ON THOSE SPECIFIC SOUNDS -- the sounds that you are the worst at pronouncing.
Whatever you are the worst at right now, THAT is absolutely what you need to study and work on. THAT is THE ONLY THING that you need to study and work on right now.
I was mentioning to the Mandarin 1 workshop that I taught last Saturday that my main observation about our beginning Cantonese and Mandarin students at ALESN is that most of them never solidify their pronunciation and tones early on, so most of them have some degree of uncertainty every single time they speak, even when advancing to our higher level Cantonese and Mandarin classes.
You MUST solidify the accuracy of your syllables and tones NOW, at this early stage, so that you won't be distracted for the rest of your time that you try to speak Cantonese with some kind of doubt, wondering "if you said that right."
The successful students in our program get to a point fairly early on during their learning process where pronunciation and tones are NO LONGER AN ISSUE. Some sense of confidence is achieved where the learner knows that if he or she reads from the romanized Cantonese on paper or on a computer screen in front of them, a real native speaker Chinese person will absolutely understand what was said by the student, because the student will have pronounced every syllable and tone accurately. Eventually this happens during real-time conversations between the student and native speakers, but it must first happen when the student reads romanized Cantonese aloud or to him- or herself.
There MUST be some sense of certainty and confidence that the rules of pronunciation and tones for this language have been learned and internalized, OWNED by the student before any real learning can take place.
Once the student has internalized and OWNED the pronunciation and tones, THEN he or she can begin to learn grammar and sentence structures and word order and vocabulary -- and THEN real communication can begin to take place. This is true when learning any new language.
HOMEWORK:
Your homework for this week is to review the pronunciation of the initial consonants and final vowel-based sounds of Cantonese as described in the 2 tables on pages 11 and 12 of your book. Spend a good amount of time with this until you feel like you are making progress and beginning to understand how each consonant or vowel sound is produced, AND HOW IT IS SIMILAR TO OR DIFFERENT FROM ENGLISH (or from your first language if not English).
Once you have spent some time with these 2 tables, please read or reread the English language elaborations on pages 12 through 22. We will finish covering this material next time.
The nerdier among you are also encouraged to preview pages 22 through 26 for some background and cultural information that we will mention, but gloss over, next time in class.
Finally, please take a look at the drills on pages 26 through the top of page 30, which we will hopefully spend a bit of time exploring towards the end of next Monday's class.
Thanks for reading and good luck with your studies this week!
Friday, October 27, 2017
ALESN Mandarin I Class Summary, Insights, Homework for October 26, 2017
Hi Everyone,
We had a very productive class last night. In fact, I think it was the most productive, jammed full of information, Mandarin class I have ever taught at ALESN. Thanks to everyone for paying attention and for doing your best with the syllables and tones during yet again another tedious (but important) pronunciation lesson!
CLASS SUMMARY:
After reviewing the top of page 4, we continued with new material from the bottom half of page 4 through the bottom of page 7. Remember that I explained that while ji qi xi demands a wide smile to voice the consonants properly, the addition of the umlaut u vowel (spelled without an umlaut as a convention of pinyin -- sorry, guys!) transforms the smile into a sort of tightly pursed-lips kiss. I asked you all to imitate me and then to watch our assistant teacher Esther voice the ju qu xu syllables at the top of page 4. We discussed the importance of proper lip / mouth / tongue alignment/placement when producing the different sounds that we are learning, and especially when DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN the different consonant sounds when you are producing them yourselves -- eventually within the context of words, within the context of "real Chinese."
The practice exercises at the bottom of page 4 compared and contrasted the vowels a, e, i, and u with the z, c, and s initial consonants. This mix and match approach, continued with different consonant and vowel combinations in the other sections on pages 5, 6, and 7, kept us all on our toes and forced everyone to listen and pay close attention as we moved from one sound to another, from one lip alignment to another, from one tongue placement to another.
Very tedious but very important, as I pointed out.
Page 5 compared and contrasted zh, ch,. sh, and r with vowels a, e, i, and u (but the regular u, not the umlaut one). We discussed how important mouth and tongue placement/alignment is when distinguishing between j and zh, q and ch, x and sh.
I showed everyone how one consonant sound can become the other and vice versa simply by changing the mouth and tongue alignment. I demonstrated morphing j to zh back to j; q to ch back to q; and x to sh back to x. Mandarin Chinese speakers really DO distinguish between these sounds. YOU NEED TO AS WELL, STARTING NOW AND CONTINUING UNTIL YOU STOP TRYING TO LEARN MANDARIN.
Even if you have not taken the time to accurately AND CRISPLY distinguish these sounds in your own pronunciation up to this point (I am talking to you, many of my former students and other students who have taken our ALESN Mandarin classes before), you NEED to learn to make very clear distinctions in your own voice, each of you from now on, when pronouncing these consonant and vowel combinations. Otherwise, to quote my dirty joke that I told during our first or second class, you will go through your Mandarin learning process pronouncing SHEET as SHIT. If you don't know what I am talking about, (re)read the earlier blog entries for your class, as well as the section of this blog entitled, "Mispronouncing Mandarin."
On page 6, we reviewed the chart of COMPOUND FINALS. First I pronounced each line and then I had everyone repeat each final in each line several times, one line at a time. We had Esther then say the same lines and you all repeated each final in each line after her as well. When Esther's pronunciation varied from my "white person" pronunciation, I explained the differences either as my own foreign accent speaking Mandarin, or as a potential regional variation or accent within Mandarin Chinese itself.
For example, I cited the two different pronunciations of IU that I am aware of: Some Mandarin speakers with standard north/central China pronunciation voice this final as "IOU," much like in slangy English if I were to say, "YO, what's up?" However, my Fuzhounese Chinese Mandarin 2 teacher at ALESN several years ago, who spoke Mandarin as a second language with his Fuzhou regional accent from that specific region of China, pronounced this syllable as "IU," similar to vowel sound in the English word "few," if you were to exaggerate a bit.
We finished class by speeding through the combined mix and match consonant and compound final pronunciation exercises on pages 6 and 7. Please review these exercises over the coming week and come to class next Thursday prepared with any questions you might have. If you ask questions, Esther and I will take however much time is needed to help any or all of you to fix or fine tune any of these pronunciation combinations. If you don't come to class with any questions, I will assume that you have studied and practiced these on your own as much or as little as necessary so that next week when we repeat the pronunciations on page 7, everyone will get them all correct.
Ahem...
INSIGHTS:
Please make sure to read any of the English language pronunciation explanations in the textbook that I may have skipped during class. These may prove helpful, especially with any problematic sounds that some of you might be struggling with. Remember that no two students are the same and that you may be having difficulty with a consonant or vowel that the person next to you finds easy -- or vice versa.
The trick to navigating this introductory phase to our course involves each of you honestly assessing what you are good at and what you suck at -- if there is something you are unable to do as we go along with this pronunciation and tone stuff -- and then without attitude, without emotional considerations, and with as little frustration as possible, you just need to make a deal with yourself that you will simply shut up and take the time to fix these issues (any and all issues) so that pronunciation and tones concerns go away and you can focus on vocabulary and grammar for the rest of your time learning this language.
This is actually the main problem for most of our beginner Chinese students in both Cantonese and Mandarin at ALESN: they simply don't take the time to fix ALL pronunciation and tones errors or issues early on, right away -- no matter what it takes, no matter how many hours of independent study and Youtube video watching and mp3 listening and asking friends, neighbors, relatives to correct them over and over again -- and because of this, they are distracted by fundamental pronunciation errors for the entire duration of their Chinese studies (whether lasting months or years).
Do yourself a favor: be ruthless with yourself RIGHT NOW. Honestly assess what you are currently good at and what sounds like crap, and just fix it. Just shut up and fix it. No matter what it takes, no matter how many hours it takes of mp3 listening and repeating Mandarin syllables or tones to yourself at home or on the subway or wherever. Just do it, so you can all learn this stuff NOW -- and then all you will need to do once we progress through the lessons and dialogues in our book will be to learn new vocabulary and grammar, without worrying about whether you are pronouncing it correctly. You will thank me and you will thank yourselves later on -- I promise you.
Also, at this point, I want to express that I am not surprised but nevertheless am incredibly disappointed that few to none of you are recording my classes.
HOW THE HELL ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO FIX YOUR PRONUNCIATION ERRORS IF YOU CAN'T REMEMBER OR DON'T KNOW WHAT THE PROBLEM SYLLABLES ARE IN THE FIRST PLACE -- AND IF YOU DON'T HAVE ACCURATE AUDIO OF YOU MISPRONOUNCING THE SYLLABLES FOLLOWED BY A TEACHER PRONOUNCING THEM CORRECTLY?
I mean, come on, people -- I heard for myself in class this past Thursday that not everyone has perfect pronunciation, and to be honest, some of your pronunciations are pretty atrocious. It's ok -- I am not making a value judgment here; I am just being honest. Some of you have really crappy pronunciation at this point early on during the semester. That is ok -- OF COURSE IT IS OK! No problem. You have to start somewhere and this is a learning process.
BUT WHY AREN'T YOU GUYS HELPING YOURSELVES BY RECORDING THESE FREE LESSONS ON YOUR OWN RECORDER FROM YOUR OWN DESK SO THAT YOU CAN HEAR YOUR OWN VOICE MAKING MISTAKES -- AND THEN YOU CAN HEAR ESTHER AND I PRONOUNCING THE SAME THINGS CORRECTLY?!
Why aren't you making your lives easier by allowing yourselves to listen back to your own mistakes at home with no pressure from a teacher or from your classmates, with no issues of embarrassment in front of other people, so you can learn from your mistakes and fix them?!
I don't know why I even need to type this. I have already said, twice now, that EVERY YEAR WITHOUT FAIL, THE STUDENTS WHO MAKE THE MOST PROGRESS WITH THEIR PRONUNCIATION AND TONES RECORD THEIR LESSONS AND THEN STUDY THESE RECORDINGS IN BETWEEN CLASSES.
I can only tell you guys what works. If no one wants to follow my advice, fine, no problem. But 6 months from now when your Mandarin sounds like shit, don't get upset with me. Get upset with yourself for wasting your own time. Given the choice, I personally would rather MAXIMIZE my study time with this language -- not MINIMIZE it. By recording and then really listening back to your lessons each week, you will be able to isolate AND REMEMBER exactly what you personally need to work on -- and then you can work on these specific things. No textbook or downloaded mp3s or videos can give you this.
So, I have again told you all this. And next week, we will see that 1 or 2 or perhaps none of the 10 or more students in class with pronunciation issues will have made any effort to record their lessons.
Oh well. Your loss. Doesn't matter to me; my pronunciation when reading pinyin aloud is frighteningly accurate -- because I have spent hundreds of hours working on it...
HOMEWORK:
For homework, please download the mp3s and videos for our book from the links previously given in this section of the blog if you haven't already done so. When I start assigning the videos for homework, everyone needs to have them, so do this now if you haven't already.
Also, for homework, please review all pronunciation examples and exercises from pages 2 through 7. You MUST study this stuff on your own. It is non-negotiable. We have hundreds of people on the waitlist for our Mandarin classes. Please make time to study this stuff as much or as little as is necessary for each of you to come to class having absorbed the previous week's lesson and ready to begin the new material each week. If you cannot commit to yourself and to our class to study and practice making these sounds over the next few weeks in between classes, PLEASE QUIT NOW, so I can invite someone else from the waitlist to take your place. Thanks in advance!
Finally, for homework, I want each of you to make a list of the pronunciation and tone aspects or issues that you personally have trouble with or need to work on. Assuming I remember, I am going to ask for a show of hands next week as to who will have written down a list of the aspects of Mandarin that they currently suck at.
This is very important.
You can't go through your language learning journey like a zombie with drool dripping from the corner of your mouth as we repeat bo po mo fo syllables for these first however many weeks of classes. You need to honestly AND EMOTIONLESSLY assess what you are good at so far AND WHAT YOU SUCK AT SO FAR -- and just accept it and make a pact with yourself that you will do whatever it takes over the coming weeks or months to fix these issues so that the syllables coming out of your mouths sound like Mandarin Chinese and not some made up language that only you will understand.
Cool?
Cool.
See you all next week.
We had a very productive class last night. In fact, I think it was the most productive, jammed full of information, Mandarin class I have ever taught at ALESN. Thanks to everyone for paying attention and for doing your best with the syllables and tones during yet again another tedious (but important) pronunciation lesson!
CLASS SUMMARY:
After reviewing the top of page 4, we continued with new material from the bottom half of page 4 through the bottom of page 7. Remember that I explained that while ji qi xi demands a wide smile to voice the consonants properly, the addition of the umlaut u vowel (spelled without an umlaut as a convention of pinyin -- sorry, guys!) transforms the smile into a sort of tightly pursed-lips kiss. I asked you all to imitate me and then to watch our assistant teacher Esther voice the ju qu xu syllables at the top of page 4. We discussed the importance of proper lip / mouth / tongue alignment/placement when producing the different sounds that we are learning, and especially when DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN the different consonant sounds when you are producing them yourselves -- eventually within the context of words, within the context of "real Chinese."
The practice exercises at the bottom of page 4 compared and contrasted the vowels a, e, i, and u with the z, c, and s initial consonants. This mix and match approach, continued with different consonant and vowel combinations in the other sections on pages 5, 6, and 7, kept us all on our toes and forced everyone to listen and pay close attention as we moved from one sound to another, from one lip alignment to another, from one tongue placement to another.
Very tedious but very important, as I pointed out.
Page 5 compared and contrasted zh, ch,. sh, and r with vowels a, e, i, and u (but the regular u, not the umlaut one). We discussed how important mouth and tongue placement/alignment is when distinguishing between j and zh, q and ch, x and sh.
I showed everyone how one consonant sound can become the other and vice versa simply by changing the mouth and tongue alignment. I demonstrated morphing j to zh back to j; q to ch back to q; and x to sh back to x. Mandarin Chinese speakers really DO distinguish between these sounds. YOU NEED TO AS WELL, STARTING NOW AND CONTINUING UNTIL YOU STOP TRYING TO LEARN MANDARIN.
Even if you have not taken the time to accurately AND CRISPLY distinguish these sounds in your own pronunciation up to this point (I am talking to you, many of my former students and other students who have taken our ALESN Mandarin classes before), you NEED to learn to make very clear distinctions in your own voice, each of you from now on, when pronouncing these consonant and vowel combinations. Otherwise, to quote my dirty joke that I told during our first or second class, you will go through your Mandarin learning process pronouncing SHEET as SHIT. If you don't know what I am talking about, (re)read the earlier blog entries for your class, as well as the section of this blog entitled, "Mispronouncing Mandarin."
On page 6, we reviewed the chart of COMPOUND FINALS. First I pronounced each line and then I had everyone repeat each final in each line several times, one line at a time. We had Esther then say the same lines and you all repeated each final in each line after her as well. When Esther's pronunciation varied from my "white person" pronunciation, I explained the differences either as my own foreign accent speaking Mandarin, or as a potential regional variation or accent within Mandarin Chinese itself.
For example, I cited the two different pronunciations of IU that I am aware of: Some Mandarin speakers with standard north/central China pronunciation voice this final as "IOU," much like in slangy English if I were to say, "YO, what's up?" However, my Fuzhounese Chinese Mandarin 2 teacher at ALESN several years ago, who spoke Mandarin as a second language with his Fuzhou regional accent from that specific region of China, pronounced this syllable as "IU," similar to vowel sound in the English word "few," if you were to exaggerate a bit.
We finished class by speeding through the combined mix and match consonant and compound final pronunciation exercises on pages 6 and 7. Please review these exercises over the coming week and come to class next Thursday prepared with any questions you might have. If you ask questions, Esther and I will take however much time is needed to help any or all of you to fix or fine tune any of these pronunciation combinations. If you don't come to class with any questions, I will assume that you have studied and practiced these on your own as much or as little as necessary so that next week when we repeat the pronunciations on page 7, everyone will get them all correct.
Ahem...
INSIGHTS:
Please make sure to read any of the English language pronunciation explanations in the textbook that I may have skipped during class. These may prove helpful, especially with any problematic sounds that some of you might be struggling with. Remember that no two students are the same and that you may be having difficulty with a consonant or vowel that the person next to you finds easy -- or vice versa.
The trick to navigating this introductory phase to our course involves each of you honestly assessing what you are good at and what you suck at -- if there is something you are unable to do as we go along with this pronunciation and tone stuff -- and then without attitude, without emotional considerations, and with as little frustration as possible, you just need to make a deal with yourself that you will simply shut up and take the time to fix these issues (any and all issues) so that pronunciation and tones concerns go away and you can focus on vocabulary and grammar for the rest of your time learning this language.
This is actually the main problem for most of our beginner Chinese students in both Cantonese and Mandarin at ALESN: they simply don't take the time to fix ALL pronunciation and tones errors or issues early on, right away -- no matter what it takes, no matter how many hours of independent study and Youtube video watching and mp3 listening and asking friends, neighbors, relatives to correct them over and over again -- and because of this, they are distracted by fundamental pronunciation errors for the entire duration of their Chinese studies (whether lasting months or years).
Do yourself a favor: be ruthless with yourself RIGHT NOW. Honestly assess what you are currently good at and what sounds like crap, and just fix it. Just shut up and fix it. No matter what it takes, no matter how many hours it takes of mp3 listening and repeating Mandarin syllables or tones to yourself at home or on the subway or wherever. Just do it, so you can all learn this stuff NOW -- and then all you will need to do once we progress through the lessons and dialogues in our book will be to learn new vocabulary and grammar, without worrying about whether you are pronouncing it correctly. You will thank me and you will thank yourselves later on -- I promise you.
Also, at this point, I want to express that I am not surprised but nevertheless am incredibly disappointed that few to none of you are recording my classes.
HOW THE HELL ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO FIX YOUR PRONUNCIATION ERRORS IF YOU CAN'T REMEMBER OR DON'T KNOW WHAT THE PROBLEM SYLLABLES ARE IN THE FIRST PLACE -- AND IF YOU DON'T HAVE ACCURATE AUDIO OF YOU MISPRONOUNCING THE SYLLABLES FOLLOWED BY A TEACHER PRONOUNCING THEM CORRECTLY?
I mean, come on, people -- I heard for myself in class this past Thursday that not everyone has perfect pronunciation, and to be honest, some of your pronunciations are pretty atrocious. It's ok -- I am not making a value judgment here; I am just being honest. Some of you have really crappy pronunciation at this point early on during the semester. That is ok -- OF COURSE IT IS OK! No problem. You have to start somewhere and this is a learning process.
BUT WHY AREN'T YOU GUYS HELPING YOURSELVES BY RECORDING THESE FREE LESSONS ON YOUR OWN RECORDER FROM YOUR OWN DESK SO THAT YOU CAN HEAR YOUR OWN VOICE MAKING MISTAKES -- AND THEN YOU CAN HEAR ESTHER AND I PRONOUNCING THE SAME THINGS CORRECTLY?!
Why aren't you making your lives easier by allowing yourselves to listen back to your own mistakes at home with no pressure from a teacher or from your classmates, with no issues of embarrassment in front of other people, so you can learn from your mistakes and fix them?!
I don't know why I even need to type this. I have already said, twice now, that EVERY YEAR WITHOUT FAIL, THE STUDENTS WHO MAKE THE MOST PROGRESS WITH THEIR PRONUNCIATION AND TONES RECORD THEIR LESSONS AND THEN STUDY THESE RECORDINGS IN BETWEEN CLASSES.
I can only tell you guys what works. If no one wants to follow my advice, fine, no problem. But 6 months from now when your Mandarin sounds like shit, don't get upset with me. Get upset with yourself for wasting your own time. Given the choice, I personally would rather MAXIMIZE my study time with this language -- not MINIMIZE it. By recording and then really listening back to your lessons each week, you will be able to isolate AND REMEMBER exactly what you personally need to work on -- and then you can work on these specific things. No textbook or downloaded mp3s or videos can give you this.
So, I have again told you all this. And next week, we will see that 1 or 2 or perhaps none of the 10 or more students in class with pronunciation issues will have made any effort to record their lessons.
Oh well. Your loss. Doesn't matter to me; my pronunciation when reading pinyin aloud is frighteningly accurate -- because I have spent hundreds of hours working on it...
HOMEWORK:
For homework, please download the mp3s and videos for our book from the links previously given in this section of the blog if you haven't already done so. When I start assigning the videos for homework, everyone needs to have them, so do this now if you haven't already.
Also, for homework, please review all pronunciation examples and exercises from pages 2 through 7. You MUST study this stuff on your own. It is non-negotiable. We have hundreds of people on the waitlist for our Mandarin classes. Please make time to study this stuff as much or as little as is necessary for each of you to come to class having absorbed the previous week's lesson and ready to begin the new material each week. If you cannot commit to yourself and to our class to study and practice making these sounds over the next few weeks in between classes, PLEASE QUIT NOW, so I can invite someone else from the waitlist to take your place. Thanks in advance!
Finally, for homework, I want each of you to make a list of the pronunciation and tone aspects or issues that you personally have trouble with or need to work on. Assuming I remember, I am going to ask for a show of hands next week as to who will have written down a list of the aspects of Mandarin that they currently suck at.
This is very important.
You can't go through your language learning journey like a zombie with drool dripping from the corner of your mouth as we repeat bo po mo fo syllables for these first however many weeks of classes. You need to honestly AND EMOTIONLESSLY assess what you are good at so far AND WHAT YOU SUCK AT SO FAR -- and just accept it and make a pact with yourself that you will do whatever it takes over the coming weeks or months to fix these issues so that the syllables coming out of your mouths sound like Mandarin Chinese and not some made up language that only you will understand.
Cool?
Cool.
See you all next week.
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