Hi Gang,
This
past week, we quickly reviewed the recapitulation of our mistaken
identity dialogue on page 3, and then we covered the basics of our 6
tones that I am going to be teaching of standard Cantonese Chinese. I
briefly explained the additional 7th tone, the high falling tone, and
when and how that is used, as well as how I intend to work it into our
course, pronouncing each high falling tone as a high level tone to make
your lives easier. It is easier for you to learn and begin to use 6
tones than 7, right? I explained how Hung, our Saturday teacher, who was
snoozing in the back of the classroom during your lesson, regularly
speaks with 8 tones, because he often adds a falling mid tone inflection
to certain words that, if I were to look them up in a Cantonese
dictionary or phrasebook, would be notated with a straight, flat mid
level tone or 3 tone.
As an aside, some of
you may have heard outlandish claims that Cantonese is the hardest
language to speak because it has 11 tones or 13 tones or whatever
bullshit these people are spouting. I didn't want to confuse anyone, but
we are going to cover what is called stop tones by some scholars, which
occur when certain Cantonese syllables ending in a p, t or k consonant
are cut short. Some scholars and others have referred to syllables
ending in p, t, and k on any of the 6 Cantonese tones as being up to 6
separate tones, because the syllables are shorter and sound slightly
differently inflected. In actuality, they have the same pitch material
as any longer syllable voiced on any of the 6 tones I am going to teach
you -- so 6 tones is indeed enough for all of us to speak perfectly
understandable and accurate modern Cantonese, just like your favorite
TVB actor or actress.
We didn't cover many
pages in the book last class, but we did go over and over AND OVER the 6
tones, with much drawing on the board as I voiced examples and you all
repeated after me. This is where recording your lessons would come in
handy. I am not sure how many people were recording their lessons on
cellphones, etc., but shame on you for any of the students who didn't
record your lessons and yet who are struggling with tones. I am giving
you everything you need to succeed with this language. What you choose
to do with what I give you...well, that is another story.
We
will continue covering this material tomorrow in class, moving on to
the basic syllables of Cantonese either at the end of class tomorrow or
the following Monday. I know this is slow going. The beginning stages of
every language are slow and tedious, but never boring if your heart is
in the right place and your motivations are true enough to carry you
through. Please remember this if you get discouraged at any time. I
wasn't able to email earlier last week with any homework, but I
assume you all realize that if I don't tell you, it simply means that
your homework is to review the material we covered during our last class, right?
Cool...
Finally,
I will be copying and pasting all of the emails I have sent you all so
far this fall AND GOING FORWARD for the rest of the year, into my blog
that I maintained for my ALESN classes last year. I will redo the home
page accordingly, so people will know that the blog is back on. I don't
know that I will be adding new audio or video content or links this year
like I did last year, but soon all of the information will be there for
my current students in a logical, searchable, reverse chronological
order standard to most blogs. The website address for the blog is
www.sayitrightchinese.com
. It is an active blog and you can click on the link right now. I hope
to upload all of your recent class emails sometime today or tomorrow.
They will show up as blog entries for whatever day I upload them, which
is why I will reference the original email date in the title of the blog
entry.
Beginning in the next few weeks, I
will be offering private tutoring for beginning Cantonese and Mandarin
students specifically focusing on proper pronunciation and tones while
reading from either Yale Romanization or Jyut Ping Romanization for
Cantonese, or from Pinyin for Mandarin. If anyone is interested, please
let me know. I am in the process of determining my rates and lesson
location logistics. I will also be offering Skype lessons if commuting
is an issue for anyone. I had one private student via Skype and email
last year who lived in Cleveland, who found me via my blog, which was
pretty cool. I corresponded with him and had 3 or 4 marathon email/web
lessons over a period of maybe 4-5 months. It was a rewarding experience
for both of us. I got to help him with some research I did for him on
specific uses of certain Cantonese final particles (which we have not
covered yet) and I benefited not only because he paid me for the
lessons, but because I learned almost as much as my student from the
research that I did for him. It was this experience that made me want to
offer private tutoring as an option for my ALESN students and for
anyone else going forward.
All lessons will
be 1-2 hours long and will of course focus on any relevant chapter
lesson material and dialogues, vocabulary from the textbook, etc. -- if I
am tutoring an ALESN student. The niche focus of my tutoring
services will be accurate pronunciation of the syllables and tones of
basic Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese within a window of what is
acceptable and comprehensible to a native speaker who doesn't know you,
who is in a hurry, who doesn't care about you at all, and yet will be
able to understand you the first or second time you say something, so
that the student can communicate effectively whatever you are trying to
communicate.
I want to be clear that I am not fluent in either Cantonese or Mandarin, and I have never claimed to be.
I pronounce both dialects with a thick white person accent, and I still
have A LOT to learn vocabulary-wise...BUT, when I go to Hong Kong and
China and I open my mouth, real, understandable, functional basic
Cantonese and Mandarin sounds come out. There is no need for charades,
and if I don't know how to say something, I am able to ask in Cantonese or Mandarin
how to say the thing that I don't know the words for...and then the
conversation continues. I am usually understood the very first time I
speak, by people who don't know me, who are in a hurry, who don't give a
shit about my life or what I am trying to ask them or talk about.
I
would like to help each and everyone of you get to that point -- either
in class, or with some private help if one hour a week isn't cutting it
for you. Some of you will get there on your own because you have a
great ear, a lot of time, a solid study ethic, and a deep, emotionalized
motivation -- as we have mentioned several times now. Other students
will need more help or even hand holding. I am not very good at hand holding in class at ALESN, which is why some current and former students think I am an asshole.
Hand holding at ALESN is not something I have time or patience for,
given the very limited windows of time we have together once a week for a
limited number of weeks each academic year. THIS is why I am starting
to do private tutoring for students who genuinely want to be able to
speak Chinese but whose current pronunciation is, for lack of a better
word, "bad." One on one tutoring allows for a lot of hand holding, if
that is what a given student needs.
As the
weeks or months go by, if any of you feel like you need extra help with
pronouncing the fundamental syllabic and tonal building blocks of basic
Cantonese or Mandarin -- the legos of Chinese -- please consider hiring
me as your tutor. Thanks in advance.
See you all tomorrow,
Brendan
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