Hi Everyone,
FIRST OF ALL, NO CLASS NEXT MONDAY DUE TO VETERAN'S DAY. REMEMBER: ANYTIME THERE IS AN NYC PUBLIC SCHOOL CLOSING, WE DO NOT HAVE CLASS.
This
past Monday, we went over more tones stuff and then started with the
initial consonant sounds of Cantonese Chinese. We covered pages 5-11. I
know it was dry, but I was pleased with the amount of information we
covered this week.
I started class by teaching you all one very practical sentence -- asking where the bathroom is located in Cantonese:
sai2 sau2 gaan1 hai1 bin1 douh6 a3?
I
am not going to go over this other than to quickly translate it word
for word, because we really don't know enough about the basics of
pronunciation, or grammar, or sentence structures for anything I say to
make sense.
The exact translation for this question is as follows:
sai2 = to wash
sau2 = hand
gaan1 = measure word for room, being used to mean room in this situation
hai2 = to be located at
bin1 = which
douh6 = location
[bin1 douh6 = which location = where, a very common question word in Cantonese]
a3
[should be spelled aa3 but this is an exception with Yale romanization,
as I explained in class] = sentence final particle, in this case
suggesting a question
I will bring a phrasebook
with me to class from now on and will try to teach one or more
practical phrases at the beginning of each class, time and knowledge
level permitting. I mentioned the Tuttle Essential Cantonese Phrasebook and Dictionary with New Manga Illustrations as my current choice for a fun, interesting, beginner level phrasebook in Yale romanized Cantonese.
From
here, I mentioned that I have decided to reactivate my Cantonese and
Mandarin language learning blog, dedicated to the proper pronunciation
of syllables and tones for each dialect [spoken language]. My blog can
be found at:
I
will be pasting each weekly email into a blog entry from now on as soon
as I click send, which means that going forward, if anyone misses a
class or wants to review everything we covered during a certain period
of time or for a certain lesson, whatever, you can reference my blog
instead of searching for past emails. Of course, your class's section is
the Cantonese I menu tab at the top of the screen.
I
also mentioned that I am starting to offer in person and Skype private
tutoring specifically focusing on pronunciation and tones for both
beginner level Cantonese and beginner level Mandarin. If you are
interested, please see the Tutoring tab on my blog and shoot me an email
so we can discuss.
This past Monday, we
covered the tones explanations and examples on pages 5 through 11.
Please review this material in your book and come to next class [in 2
weeks] prepared with any questions about this material. We discussed
that while English doesn't have tones per se, we do have differences in
intonation, often on the same word or phrase, which can signify changes
in emotion, mood, attitude, or other connotation. As an example not in
the book, I said the word, "Hello" with multiple different intonations
from neutral to happy/enthusiastic to sarcastic/angry. Same word,
different intonation [tone], different meaning.
Finally,
at the end of class, we covered the equivalent of the Mandarin BO PO MO
FO table of initial consonant sounds in Cantonese, also presented in
your textbook on page 11 as a bo po mo fo table (but very different from
Mandarin, for those of you with Mandarin experience). We noted that the
J, the CH, the NG, as well as the GW and KW initial consonants DO NOT
appear as such in English, though I gave multiple examples of these same
exact or similar sounds appearing at the end of certain words, or in
between certain English language words in the case of NG. Please
remember that J and CH may be problematic for some of you. They are NOT
exactly like their respective English language sounds, and we will
continue to go over the subtleties of both as the weeks progress.
We will pick up next time with the vowel/finals table at the top of page 12. YOUR
HOMEWORK IS TO PREVIEW THE MATERIAL FROM PAGES 12 THROUGH 22 IN YOUR
TEXTBOOK, LISTEN TO THE APPROPRIATE MP3 FOR LESSON 1 THAT YOU DOWNLOADED
WITH THE PDF, AND ALSO TO SEARCH YOUTUBE FOR ONE OR MORE VIDEOS ON HOW
TO PRONOUNCE YALE CANTONESE, OR HOW TO PRONOUNCE THE INITIAL CONSONANTS
AND VOWELS OR "FINALS" OF CANTONESE. Be creative, try different
searches on Youtube, find some videos, and spend a little time with
these sounds before we reconvene in 2 weeks.
Also,
you should check out the DVD store that I recommended near school and
try to get a $1 - $6.99 Cantonese language kids' movie DVD of your
choice, making sure with the people behind the counter that they read
the packaging and verify for you that it has a Cantonese language SPOKEN
language track and English language SUBTITLES. $1 to $6.99 is not a lot
for me to ask you to spend, especially since this is a free class, so I
want some stories next time, people, from at least a few of you,
telling the class what movie you decided to purchase, if you had any
issues configuring the language and subtitles on your screen, and if you
watched any of the movie, what your experience was like. PLEASE DO THIS.
A HINT FOR FIRST TIME BUYERS OF CANTONESE LANGUAGE DUBBED KIDS' MOVIES ON DVD:
DO
NOT USE THE ONSCREEN LANGUAGE OPTIONS MENU TO SELECT THE SPOKEN
LANGUAGE. INSTEAD, START THE MOVIE AND DURING THE FIRST FEW SECONDS
WHILE IT IS SHOWING THE DISNEY LOGO OR THE PIXAR LOGO OR WHATEVER, USE
YOUR REMOTE CONTROL TO CHANGE THE SPOKEN LANGUAGE AND SUBTITLE TRACKS.
MOST OF THE MOVIES YOU BUY WILL HAVE 2 OR 3 CHINESE LANGUAGE TRACKS:
EITHER 1 OR 2 MANDARIN TRACKS AND 1 CANTONESE TRACK. THEY WILL ALL BE
LABELED SIMPLY "CHINESE." USUALLY THE FINAL ONE (THE SECOND OR THIRD) IS
THE CANTONESE TRACK, BUT NOT ALWAYS.
Cantonese
and Mandarin sound very different from each other. Make sure you are
listening to the correct track! If you are unsure, email me, because I
own hundreds of these DVDs and if I have the one you purchased, I will
pop mine into my DVD player and tell you which is the Cantonese track.
Thanks, and SEE YOU ALL IN 2 WEEKS.
Brendan
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