Cantonese I ALESN Monday, January 29, 2017 Class Summary, Insights, Homework

Hi Gang,

For those of you who don't know, or who weren't in class this past Monday, I am taking a break from teaching Chinese for the rest of the academic year in favor of working more hours on my online stores and some other business pursuits; applying to full and part time positions in the music industry (my former career field); and singing as much as possible, which some of you know is the reason that I moved to New York in the first place, back in 1998.

I have sincerely enjoyed teaching you all this year, and teaching for ALESN in general, both Cantonese and Mandarin, for at least the past 5 years. Thank you all for the many wonderful opportunities you have given me to help everyone, including myself, become better speakers of Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese.

This will be my final SayItRightChinese blog entry for a while -- for the time being. I will be starting a new blog in the next few weeks called MySingingTeachers at www.mysingingteachers.com, in which I will discuss my vocal journey as I get ready to present various musical and spoken word projects to a larger audience later this year. I am excited to share this with people, and welcome my students and readers of this blog to check that out, if you might be interested.

CLASS SUMMARY AND INSIGHTS:

This past Monday night, we had a very special guest: Kam, the Co-Founder of ALESN and one of my first Cantonese teachers here in NYC. My students are very fortunate that Kam will be taking over my weekly Cantonese I class starting next week and continuing until June. Alas, Kam will NOT be maintaining a weekly blog, so make sure that you all attend her class on a regular basis, pay attention and take copious notes.

Some of the many lessons I learned from Kam still form the foundation of my own ability to carry on random Cantonese conversations with random Chinese people here and in Hong Kong! Kam has a special way about her, and if you all are not careful, you might learn some lasting lessons and some very practical tips for your conversational Cantonese. Most importantly, she is a native speaker ABC and will be able to answer any question you might want to throw at her -- unlike your goofy retiring white teacher Brendan.

In class this past Monday, we covered the following:

• We jumped right into the pronunciation work on page 60. We explored the difference between the single (short) a and double (long) aa vowel sounds. 
• We discussed nasal-sounding consonants like NG and nasal-sounding vowels when they follow these consonants, using the examples in the book. 
• We reviewed the EUNG ending of various words, including our new Lesson 3 vocabulary word, seung2, to want to do another verb. In the past I have used Kam as an example of one of the two main pronunciations of this sound, depending on one's accent. I pointed out how I learned to pronounce this with a sort of nasal "French" sounding vowel, while Kam and her family pronounce eung more as "EARN + G."
• We compared and contrasted the EUI and OI vowel sounds. Remember that these are NOT the same sound; they are 2 different Cantonese vowel sounds and you must not be lazy -- you MUST learn to say each one properly so that they don't sound the same as each other!
• We reviewed that the P, T, and K "stop" final sounds of certain Cantonese words are NOT pronounced loudly and in many cases are not pronounced AT ALL, but rather your mouth simply shapes like a p, a t, or a k at the end of the syllable. When done right, native speakers can tell which one you meant to say, even if you don't actually pronounce the p, the t or the k at the end of the appropriate word. Our example words on page 61 were HOHK6, to study, and GWOK3, country, as in jung1gwok3, China.
• Finally, for pronunciation review, we reminded ourselves that some people pronounce the number 5 as "NG5," and others say it as "MMH5" -- Kam among those who pronounce it as the latter. This is PotAYto PotAHto -- simply a regional accent variation in China and Guangdong Province.
• Next, for Culture notes, we reviewed the names of the Chinese dialects / regional spoken languages mentioned in Dialogue 3.
• We turned next to grammar. We mentioned that verbs in the present tense are not conjugated in Cantonese. THE INFINITIVE IS THE VERB IN ALL OF ITS PRESENT TENSE CONJUGATIONS -- one less thing for you to have to memorize or worry about in your early learning stages!
• We talked about verbs in series -- auxiliary verbs, or as I learned to call them in middle school, "helping verbs." Our main example from this lesson is SEUNG2, to want to do another verb. If you want to say that you "want to say," for example, then you SEUNG2 GONG2 [blah blah blah]. Our lessons have shown us other examples, such as SIK1 GONG2, to know how to speak a certain language.
• We discussed the SENTENCE FINAL PARTICLE ME1, indicating surprise, and again I reminded you all of its wonderful usage in the Cantonese overdubbed version of the Dreamworks animated film, Megamind: "Oh, haih6 me1?!" = "Oh, really?!" said in a sarcastic manner by Megamind early on in the movie.
• The SENTENCE FINAL PARTICLE JE1, meaning "only" or "just" that thing or that quantity, as in someone expected more but you ONLY did or had or were such and such (to a lesser degree or with a lesser quantity than was initially expected).
• The SENTENCE FINAL PARTICLE GA3, indicating "no big deal," expressing something in a matter of fact way because this is just the way it is, nothing to be surprised about...
• Comparing and contrasting this use of GA3 with previous uses we have seen of GE3. Please reread this bit at the top of p. 65, and if anyone is confused, please ask Kam to clarify next week.
• SECTION 6 AND 7 ON PAGES 65 THROUGH 67 ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT PARTS OF THIS PAST WEEK'S LESSON. Please read and reread and re-re-reread these 2 sections and make sure that you understand everything, ESPECIALLY THE CONCEPT OF THE "TOPIC COMMENT SENTENCE" IN CANTONESE. If you are at all unclear about the possible relationships between subject and predicate in the various possible Cantonese sentence structures that the book explains on these 3 crucial pages, NOW is the time for you to ask any and all questions about these points to Kam -- ask over and over again until you are all clear on this stuff. The sooner you can all internalize these structures and THE IDEA of each of the structures explained in the book, the sooner you will have A SET OF ROADMAPS, A SET OF BASIC STRUCTURES that you can use to frame any concepts you want to word in Cantonese for the rest of your life!!!
• TUHNG4 and YAUH6. Tuhng4 is AND FOR 2 NOUNS, whereas YAUH6 is AND FOR 2 VERBS OR VERB PHRASES. Yauh6 verb 1...yauh6 verb 2 is a nice parallel sentence structure to learn in Cantonese at this early point in your learning process, as a way for you to express that someone is both A and B, or does both A action and B action.
• DOU1, being used in Cantonese for BOTH or ALL, but also being used for ALSO (the latter being a different use of this character compared to Mandarin, for my students also taking Mandarin I. DOU1 in Cantonese is more all-encompassing and versatile, and must be a top 5 or top 10 word in the language according to frequency. Anytime someone also is or does the same thing as someone else, DOU1 is used. In addition, anytime both or all members of a multi-person or multi-animal or multi-object group all share some common action or some common characteristic, the DOU1 whatever it is that they have in common -- they BOTH or ALL do, have, or are that, whatever it is that we are talking about to describe what they all are doing.
• Again with AUXILIARY VERBS, and our example new vocabulary word SEUNG2. 
• SIK1 = to know how to do something (such as being able to speak a language), or to know a person, like I KNOW Bob. Ngoh5 SIK1 keuih5, I KNOW him.

We left off mid page 69, so Kam will pick up there, with the various exercises for lesson 3 -- continuing to the end of the chapter.

Remember that I have given Kam the option of switching to a different book if you like, but student Julie Ann said it best when she expressed her strong feelings that this book is perhaps your best possible choice of textbook at this point in your learning process, if only for the sheer number of pages and length of mp3 audio examples for each lesson, allowing the student to do many more substitution and fill in the blank drills on all of the vocabulary and grammar concepts than the other textbook being used in our Saturday Cantonese classes. This is a very important opportunity for all of you to practice variations of the same concept over and over again on your own in between classes, once concept at a time, in a way that the Saturday book simply doesn't teach (at all, folks).

If the Saturday class's textbook (Hugh Baker's excellent beginner to intermediate all in one book, Teach Yourself Cantonese, "bicycle seat edition") has 5 exercises for students to study and repeat for each section, our textbook has 30 or more of the same kinds of exercises, for the same number of lesson pages covered. Big difference, and the main reason why, though slightly outdated in spots, your current textbook is far superior for absolute beginner students.

At this point in your learning, you should all try to do AS MANY drills on your own as possible -- page after page of substitutions and making up your own sentences based on the same concept with different vocabulary words, etc. When I was an absolute beginner student in Tony Parisi's class, one of the books he taught from the second year that I attended his classes was Sidney Lau's justifiably famous BEGINNING CANTONESE I, published in Hong Kong for British and other non-native learners in the 1970s. Each lesson in that book was over 50 pages long with maybe 25 or more pages just of substitution drills and other similar exercises. It w3as actually overwhelming for any student who didn't put in the time to do the exercises at home, because they couldn't really be skipped without missing the most important parts of the lesson.

Unlike all of my classmates at the time, I did ALL of the exercises on my own at home and on the subway every week between classes -- every week, like a man possessed. By the end of that year, I was able to have working, basic conversations on the street in Manhattan's Chinatown solely from what I learned in that book. At that time 7 or 8 years ago, there was no Youtube to watch for Cantonese conversation lessons; I had to read and practice with real live people. And so I did -- via the written drills in my beginner level textbook that Tony taught from, listening to cassettes and CDs in between classes. THIS formed the basis for my first attempts to have Cantonese language conversations with people whom I didn't know and had never met before here in NYC -- and THIS formed the basis of my first micro-successes in the language!

HOMEWORK:

Please review all of the material mentioned above and please come to class next Monday ready to ask Kam any questions you might have about any of these concepts.

I wish you all the best in Kam's class for the rest of the academic year! I look forward to returning to ALESN to teach again, once I have fixed my work situation a bit and once I have set myself up to sing again on a regular basis in and around New York City.

Thanks again to all of my students this year and over the past years at ALESN, and many thanks to anyone who has taken the time to read this blog!

Finally, Kam has asked me to post this link for a free Cantonese conversation class given at Chatham Square Library (the branch of NYPL closest to our school building) on Tuesday mornings:

https://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2018/02/06/basic-cantonese-conversation-ji-ben-yue-yu-dui-hua

She is not sure whether this is run by the library staff or by an outside nonprofit group, but it looks interesting...

Cantonese ALESN Monday, January 22, 2018 -- Class Summary, Notes, Homework

Hi Gang,

Sorry for my delay in typing this blog entry.

SUMMARY AND INSIGHTS...?

This past week was our first class back in 2 weeks because of the holiday. As such, we spent a bit of time, about half of the class, reviewing the vocabulary and repetition of the same dialogue that we covered before the break -- Lesson 3. Because we basically covered the exact same things this past class as we did in our previous class 3 weeks ago, there isn't much for me to add this blog entry...

Same material, same insights as last time...

I think I was able to get to most small groups by the end of this past Monday night's class, but if there were any groups with questions that I wasn't able to address, or which I did not get around to discussing with you, please feel free to bring them up at the beginning of our next class.

One thing I do want to point out that happens often in Cantonese and which happened several times in this lesson's dialogue, but which has not come up as an official "grammar point" yet is the concept of THE TOPIC - COMMENT SENTENCE. 

This usually doesn't happen in English unless the spoken English is inflected by an accent coming from another language and culture. The example I always give, because it is close to my own upbringing, is Yiddish-inflected colloquial English, where the following constructions are common:

"Win the lottery? You should be so lucky!"

"Today, tomorrow -- what's the difference?"

"Bob and Susan...They make a lovely couple."

INSTEAD OF:

"You should be so lucky to win the lottery."

"What is the difference whether it happens today or tomorrow?"

"Bob and Susan make a lovely couple."

So, in our dialogue, we see sentences like, "Seuhng6hoi2wa2 tuhng4 Gwok3yuh5 keuih5 dou1 sik1 gong2 ga3." Shanghainese and Mandarin -- he can speak both" -- as opposed to, "He can speak both Shanghainese and Mandarin Chinese."

Another example is, "Yat1, yih6, saam1, sei3, ngh5 -- Ying1man2 dim2 gong2 a3?" This translates literally with the same word order to, "One, two, three, four, five -- [in] English how is this said?" But, of course, in "native speaker" English, we would be more likely to ask, "How do you say 'one, two, three, four, five' in such and such language?"

This is a very common speech pattern in Cantonese, so start getting used to it -- and if it helps when you are learning to recognize the flow of these questions and sentences and their meanings in real-time speech with conversation partners, translate the word order literally into English and then repeat the English translations back to yourself in your best Yiddish accent -- think Eddie Murphy from the barbershop scene in Coming to America, or Billy Crystal as Miracle Max in The Princess Bride.

HOMEWORK:

Review lesson 3's dialogue and preview the Pronunciation review, Culture Notes, and Grammar points on pages 60-69, which is the meat of what we will cover next Monday.

I am planning to jump right into these pages as soon as the room is opened, AND WE WILL HAVE EITHER ONE OR TWO SPECIAL GUESTS IN CLASS NEXT WEEK, so please be on time.

See you all on Monday!

Mandarin I ALESN Thursday, January 18, 2018: My last Mandarin I posting for the rest of this semester

Hi Gang,

Many thanks to everyone who attended class last night. Last night was my last Mandarin I class of the year -- Jeremy will be taking over for me from now until June. My work schedule has changed and I will no longer be able to get to the school by 6 pm. I have enjoyed teaching this class for the past few years, but I leave you all in excellent hands. Jeremy has been our substitute Thursday night Mandarin 2 teacher this year and his knowledge of Chinese language and culture is extensive.

Let's briefly recap what we covered in class last night:

Summary and Insights:

After a quick repetition and review of Lesson 2 Dialogue 2, we covered the 3 new grammar points on pages 53 and 54.

• YOU3 in the sense of "TO EXIST," as in such and such noun exists either in a certain situation or at a certain location. I touched on this last blog entry. Though the literal word by word translations of these sentences suggest the same meaning of "TO HAVE" for YOU3, we can see that in the Chinese mindset, this really translates more to the idea that something is part of a certain situation or that it exists at a certain location. The literal translation of "My family HA 5 people" would more likely be worded in colloquial English as, "THERE ARE 5 people IN my family." The example that I gave in class of "Does this mall HAVE a foodcourt" would translate to, "IS THERE a foodcourt AT this mall." If it helps with your understanding of the language at this early stage of your studies, simply translate all of these usages of YOU3 literally. There is nothing wrong with the translation of "Xiao3 Gao1's family has 2 college  students" rather than "There are 2 college students in Gao's family," if the former helps you to understand and memorize the Chinese more efficiently. Just be aware of this second usage of YOU3 that we have thus far encountered, as detailed in grammar point 5 on page 53.
• The different uses of ER4 vs. LIANG3 for the number 2. ER4 is the concept of the number 2 when counting from 1 to 10. LIANG3 + MEASURE WORD + NOUN is the correct way to express 2 OF ANY KIND OF NOUN OR THING -- 2 people, 2 chairs, to bridges, 2 dinosaurs. Remember this difference and use the correct word for the number 2, depending on the context.
• The adverb DOU1, BOTH or ALL: Remember, per my last blog entry below, that the Cantonese use of DOU1 is broader and encompasses situations where YE3 (ALSO) is used in Mandarin. Mandarin uses DOU1 pretty much only in situations where it refers to the concept of both or all members of some group of people or things share something common or are doing the same action, etc.

Of very special note is the one exception to the rule that you cannot use BU4 to negate the Mandarin verb YOU3, TO HAVE. Please read and reread AND REREAD example 4 parts a through d at the bottom of page 54. It is important that you understand the subtlety in Mandarin Chinese that helps a speaker differentiate between the concepts of:

1. BOTH/ALL ARE NOT SOMETHING or DO NOT DO SOME ACTION [i.e. none of them are or do...]; and
2. NOT ALL OF THEM ARE SOMETHING or DO SOMETHING

Do your best to understand the differences in meaning and word usage in the 4 sub examples a, b, c, and d at the bottom of page 54. If you cannot understand these differences at this point in time, no worries, but try to remember to revisit this page at a later date.

From here, we broke into pairs and small groups and spent the remainder of class doing the Language Practice exercises on pages 55 through 59. If your pair or group did not finish these exercises, please spend some time on them at home before next week's class.

CONCLUSION:

So, Jeremy will be teaching this class from now on. I do not expect him to write weekly blog entries, though my students may be able to persuade him to send some kind of weekly recap email. I am not sure whether that is a possibility; please ask him and see what he says.

I am not sure when I will return to teaching Mandarin I for ALESN, but it has been my honor and privilege to teach you all over the past several years. I welcome any comments to this or other sections of my blog. Once arrangements are made for my successor for Cantonese I, I will take a break from blogging about Chinese in order to write a weekly blog on my other passion, singing and recording music.

Thanks again for reading, and for attending my classes over the past few years. Very best wishes to All!!!

Mandarin I ALESN Thursday, January 11, 2018 -- sorry for the delay!

First of all, THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to my amazing students who decided to give me a very nice card and money gift at the end of this past Thursday's class!!!

I really appreciated the gesture. I love teaching you guys, so thanks!!!

Also, very sorry for the delay in posting this blog entry -- I had a busy week...

CLASS SUMMARY AND INSIGHTS:

For our first class back after Winter Break, we covered Lesson 2 Dialogue 2. Esther was not with us in class, so you were stuck with your white teacher reading the vocabulary and dialogue materials.

Noteworthy Vocabulary points and insights:

• JI3 can mean either HOW MUCH/HOW MANY or SEVERAL/A FEW. Remember this; I explained in class and gave examples. Memorize.
• KOU3 as the MEASURE WORD FOR FAMILY MEMBERS (and only for family members -- NOT for people in general, which is GE). Think of it as "how many mouths the parents have to feed in the family." Kou3 afterall is a character and radical meaning MOUTH.
• GE1GE and MEI4MEI: we discussed reduplication of characters and how in most cases in Mandarin, the second syllable (second instance of the character) has a neutral tone. I demonstrated in class.
• LIANG3 is USED TO COUNT TWO OF SOMETHING, TWO OF SOME NOUN. It goes: liang3 + measure word + noun. This is different from ER4, the number 2 as in the concept of the number 2 -- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, NOT 2 of any particular noun. Whenever you are counting 2 of any noun, Mandarin uses LIANG3. Think of it as "a couple of..." DO NOT think of it as "a pair," because liang3 bears no implications regarding 2 matched items that go together in any way.
• HE2: AND FOR 2 OR MORE NOUNS. Remember that this is for NOUNS, not for verbs or clauses. We will elaborate on this in future lessons.
• DA4JIE and DA4GE for OLDEST sister and OLDEST brother.
• ER4JIE and ER4GE for second oldest sister and second oldest brother, etc. using other numbers that we will learn to describe the order of siblings in families with multiple male and female children.
• ZUO4 TO DO, not to be confused with the second syllable of GONG1ZUO4, A JOB or TO WORK. Same syllable and tone, different Chinese characters -- and wonderful coincidence that we are learning the phrase "zuo4 gong1zuo4" to do work or to have a job.
• Remember that the word for LAWYER uses the UMLAUT U.
• DOU1 BOTH or ALL. If you are a Cantonese speaker, you also use this character in Cantonese to mean also. Remember that in Mandarin, it is NOT used to mean also, except by Cantonese speakers speaking Mandarin and forgetting that they should use YE3 instead.
• XUE2SHENG STUDENT and DA4XUE2SHENG, "big student" or college/university student.

 In the dialogue, we saw that Li3You3 and Bai2Ying1Ai4 are discussing how many people are in each of their families and what those people do, either for jobs or as students. Both ask each other how many people are in their respective families using the ...YOU3 JI3 + [MEASURE WORD]  + [NOUN] construction. You can use this same construction to ask how much or how many of any noun a subject (any subject) has -- whether you are asking how many books a certain person has or how many floors a certain building has. We will learn in Grammar Point 5 tonight (our next class) that YOU3 in this instance is used to mean that something exists in a certain place or situation. It can be translated 2 ways:

1. That someone's family HAS this number of people, OR
2. That THERE ARE this number of people IN someone's family (or very often that such and such EXISTS at such and such a place, as in, "Does this mall HAVE a restaurant?" = "IS THERE a restaurant LOCATED AT this mall?"

After asking how many people are in each other's families, both girls ask each other what their parents do and what their siblings do. Everyone had a chance to break up into "happy happy" groups at the end of last class and without Esther, I did a pretty good job of making it around the entire room except for one group, I think, and I apologize for that oversight. I owe you ladies next time...

We will review the dialogue briefly tonight and then proceed with the grammar points and examples and then break up into groups so we can do Language Practice on pages 55-59. This is a long Language Practice section, so my guess is that it will take up the rest of class tonight.

HOMEWORK:

Hopefully, you all have reviewed the lesson material. No specific homework other than that, because I am so tardy with this blog entry and our next class is only 7 hours away...

Thanks and see everyone tonight -- and again, many thanks to everyone for your lovely card and gift last week!!!

Cantonese I ALESN Monday, January 8, 2018 Class Summary, Insights, Homework -- sorry for the delay!

Hi Everyone and sorry for my delay in typing your blog entry. Busy with work and some other things over the past 2 weeks. I will try to keep it brief and to the point in the interest of time.

CLASS SUMMARY AND INSIGHTS:

After answering one or two brief questions regarding the "Say It In Cantonese" section at the end of Lesson 2, we jumped right into the vocabulary for Lesson 3, and then the Build Up of Lesson 3's Dialogue, aided by our assistant teacher Allison -- thanks, Allison!

Vocabulary concerns / insights (pages 80-81):

• bin1 go3 WHO. This can also mean WHICH ONE of a noun that has GO3 as its measure word. We discussed this briefly and I mentioned some examples -- which clock, for example. BIN1 by itself means WHICH, and we expect a measure word to follow. The polite way to ask WHO? is BIN1 WAI2, which polite measure word for a person?
• chi3 TIME OR OCCURRENCE, as in "this time" or "next time" or "three times" -- not as in "what time is it" or "I don't have time, I'm in a hurry." This chi3 means how many times something occurs.
• ching2 cho2, CLEAR as in how well you hear or understand something, not as in how clear it is outside on a sunny day and not as in the glass window is clear.
• daahn6 hai6 BUT. Memorize this one -- it is important and you will use it all the time!
• di1 is THE UNIVERSAL PLURAL MEASURE WORD in Cantonese, meaning "SOME." It is used for nouns that cannot be counted without a container or unit of measure, like water, and is also used to mean "some" of any countable noun when the exact number of that noun is not specified.
• dim2 HOW, short for dim2 Yeunhng5, in which manner or fashion? Memorize!
• dou1 in Cantonese can mean BOTH OR ALL, and it can also mean ALSO. This is different from Mandarin, which has this character with basically the same pronunciation. Mandarin tends to use this to only mean both or all, and uses another word (ye3) to mean also. If you are studying both Cantonese and Mandarin remember that dou1 in Cantonese has more uses and is used more often than in Mandarin, where it is mainly/only used to mean both/also.
• ga3 or ge3 as a SENTENCE FINAL PARTICLE SUGGESTING A MATTER OF FACT ASSERTION. I gave some examples in class. We can discuss this more if anyone is confused, though the example in the dialogue should provide some clarity.
• hohk6 TO STUDY OR LEARN SOMETHING. Memorize this verb.
• je1, A SENTENCE FINAL PARTICLE MEANING "THAT'S ALL, OR THAT'S IT -- JUST THAT MANY, NOT MORE." For example, you think I have 27 (of whatever thing we are talking about), but I only have 5 JE1.
• ji1 dou3 TO KNOW A FACT. I explained the different between this and SIK1, to know someone or something or to know how to do something, as in a skill that you have learned or acquired. (see later on in this lesson's vocabulary for sik1).
• joi3 AGAIN, as in joi3 gin3 -- see you again, or goodbye. It goes in a specific place in the sentence and the word order will be different from where it would appear in an English sentence.
• joi3 gong2 yat1 chi3: AGAIN SAY ONE TIME, in other words, please repeat what you just said.. Notice where the joi3 goes in this sentence. To make it more clear for yourself, put a NEIH5 at the beginning of the sentence: "You again say one time." Now you get it.
• me1 SENTENCE FINAL PARTICLE SUGGESTING SURPRISE. I gave an example from the Cantonese dubbed version of the cartoon movie Megamind, when Megamind sarcastically says, "Oh really?!" "Oh, haih6 me1?!"
• mh4 goi1 neih5: PLEASE WILL YOU [DO WHAT I AM ABOUT TO ASK YOU TO DO]. Memorize this and start using it all the time to ask people to do things for you!
• se1 siu2 (or siu2 siu2) A LITTLE BIT -- Pimsleur likes to use yat1 di1 (same plural measure word from earlier in this lesson's vocab).
• seung2 TO WANT TO DO ANOTHER VERB: super important auxiliary verb or "helping verb" as we called them when I was in middle school. By itself, seung2 in Cantonese means to think of someone or something, often nostalgically. We are concerned here with using it to mean that someone wants to do another verb -- wants to go, wants to eat, wants to whatever.
• sik1 TO KNOW SOMEONE OR TO KNOW HOW TO DO SOMETHING [a skill or acquired ability), as in sik1 gong2 such and such language -- NOT ji1 dou3.
• teng1, TO LISTEN OR HEAR. SIK1 TENG1 = TO KNOW HOW TO LISTEN/HEAR = TO UNDERSTAND. Memorize.
•  tuhng4 AND (also means WITH, but we have not seen that meaning or usage yet). For nouns -- noun A tuhng4 noun B. This TUHNG4 that.
• yauh6 "ALSO" or "IS/DOES BOTH THIS AND THAT" FOR VERBS OR VERB PHRASES OR ADJECTIVES, WHICH BASICALLY FUNCTION AS VERBS IN CANTONESE [more on this later] (NOT to be confused with yauh5 with a 5th tone, to have): yauh6 verb/adjective A, yauh6 verb/adjective B. I will explain this more in class.

I am running out of time that I have to type this entry, so let's leave it here, because we will review the vocabulary, the dialogue and then break up into groups to run the dialogue with each other at the beginning of next Monday's class. I don't think we broke up into groups last week -- if we did, someone remind me and we will start next class with questions and then grammar points.

HOMEWORK:

Your homework for next Monday's class is to review lesson 3 vocabulary and dialogue and come to class prepared with any questions or clarifications you may need on any of the terms discussed above.

Please review the dialogue to the best of your ability, so we can jump right in on Monday. See everyone next week.