Cantonese I class summary and review from last Monday night -- see everyone tomorrow night...

Hi Gang,

Sorry for my delay in sending this. Busy week and weekend and I thought I had already typed this last week. Oops.

In the interest of time, I will repaste links for three 2018 blog entries that do a great job of summarizing all of the material from lesson 3 that we have covered so far:

Here are last year's blog entries on Lesson 3's vocabulary, dialogue, and grammar points:

http://www.sayitrightchinese.com/2018/01/cantonese-i-alesn-monday-january-8-2018.html

http://www.sayitrightchinese.com/2018/01/cantonese-alesn-monday-january-22-2018.html

http://www.sayitrightchinese.com/2018/01/cantonese-i-alesn-monday-january-29.html

In addition, here is my very detailed December, 2017 blog entry discussing the basic structure for a Cantonese sentence, which will be crucial for you all to learn, understand, AND INTERNALIZE as you begin to put your thoughts into basic Cantonese sentences during your first from scratch attempts to speak with native speakers without following a dialogue script from your textbook. Of course, you won't be able to do this until you learn more vocabulary...but we need to ingrain good habits and proper thought patterns now, to set the stage for understandable attempts at communication when each of you feels ready:

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

We will pick up tomorrow with the remainder of the grammar points for this chapter and then we will quickly make our way through the exercises beginning on page 69 of your book. This is the exact point where I stopped teaching last year due to work scheduling issues, so beginning next week, you will get new, detailed blog entries for your weekly lessons for the rest of the current academic year. Yay.

See you all tomorrow,

Brendan

Oh -- I forgot to mention that we also discussed --

THE PRINCIPLE OF EQUIVALENCY AND PARALLEL STRUCTURE AND WORD ORDER/USAGE BETWEEN ANY "QUESTION WORD QUESTION" (WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, WHY, HOW, HOW MUCH/HOW MANY) AND ITS MOST LOGICAL ANSWER IN THE FORM OF A COMPLETE STATEMENT CONTAINING ALL OF THE SAME INFORMATION AS THE QUESTION.

 
I went on and on about this, and about how your ability to understand this concept as well as internalize it at the most basic level will allow you to begin to have basic conversations with Chinese speakers without feeling like you are at a loss for words when responding to various questions that your conversation partner might ask you.

 Excerpted from my Cantonese I blog from last year:

...[T]he concept of equivalency and parallel structure/ parallel word order for any Cantonese question and its most logical corresponding answer...

I explained that many beginning students get confused or panic and are at a loss for words when faced with even the most basic [Mandarin] question early on in their studies.  

Oh my god -- how do I answer this?!

Well, there is no reason to be panicked or confused; all you need to do is:

1. Take the exact word order and sentence structure of the question.
2. Make sure you understand the vocabulary of the question, so you know what is being asked of you.
3. Isolate the question word, remove it from the sentence, and replace it with the answer word or words, being sure to keep everything else in the question the same (same exact word order and same exact WORDS).
4. Remove any question sentence final particle and replace it with the appropriate answer sentence final particle, if applicable [more applicable to Cantonese, but occasionally applicable to Mandarin].
5. Change any pronouns as appropriate. (If I ask YOU a question about yourself, you will reply, "I blah blah blah").