Mandarin I ALESN Class Email Summary and Notes from last Monday's class and see you all tomorrow!

Hi Everyone,

Yet again, I am delinquent in sending out my weekly summary and notes email for what we covered in last Monday's class. Hopefully, everyone reviewed the material that we covered in last class and will come to class tomorrow night ready to continue with Lesson 3 Dialogue 2: Inviting Someone to Dinner, which we will begin tomorrow night.

Last Monday, we began class by reviewing the numbers in all of their glory as covered by Lesson 3 Dialogue 1, and then reiterating the first several, very detailed grammar points and their charts on pages 70-75. If you haven't already memorized the following, you need to asap:

• the numbers from 0 to 99
• basic telling of dates and time
• the 3 systems for telling days of the week
• the 12 months
• the syntax (word order) for telling complete dates in Chinese ("Sunday, March 31, 2019" said in the proper Mandarin word order)
• the various vocabulary words and concepts introduced on pages 74 to 75, allowing you to tell time in 15 minute increments or according to the exact time (3:17)

I know this is a lot of new information, but you just need to memorize it.

All of it.

Sorry, not sorry.

Following a review of the numbers and all of the charts mentioned above, I went over the 3 additional non-numerical grammar points on pages 76-77:

• The use of DE as " 's " ("apostrophe s") to suggest possession and when it can be omitted when speaking of close personal and family relationships. We actually covered this briefly way back before Christmas break, when we first saw DE and a few students asked about this exact topic. Please review the way your textbook explains this concept on the top of page 76 and come to class with any questions regarding eliminating or requiring DE for "apostrophe s" for close personal relationships and family members.
• The sentence structure of "I will treat you to dinner." WO3 QING3 NI3 CHI1 FAN4. Please review this and come to class tomorrow with any questions regarding the grammar or syntax (specific word order in Mandarin Chinese) of this sentence.
• Alternative Questions (asking about this OR that). "Is it this OR that?" "Did you do this OR that?" Etc... In this case, we are learning to use HAI2SHI TO ASK THIS OR THAT QUESTIONS. Please note that HAI2SHI is used in questions, but either a spoken pause (a comma is used in written English and Chinese) or HUO4ZHE3 (not covered yet) are used IN STATEMENTS (i.e. in responses to HAI2SHI questions). We will see this again in future lessons when choice questions are asked. Please study the 4 examples, as well as a possible response using a spoken pause (written comma) in example 4 on page 77.

From here, I quickly reviewed Lesson 3 Dialogue 1's vocabulary and dialogue, so we would remember what happened, as you all needed that information for the Language Practice exercises that you did in small groups and pairs on pages 78-82. We finished out the class with me walking around helping everyone with any questions regarding the Language Practice exercises for Lesson 3 Dialogue 1.

Please review this material before tomorrow's class, if you haven't already. Tomorrow night we will jump right into the next Dialogue and its vocabulary on pages 83-85.

See everyone tomorrow night!

ALESN Cantonese I Class Email Summary and Notes -- see everyone tomorrow night!

Hi Everyone,

My apologies for not typing an email this past week. Hopefully everyone reviewed what we covered last Monday. Because we spent all of last class going over drills from Lesson 4, there wasn't really much for me to type, other than to suggest that everyone review Lesson 4, basic numbers and all of that from 2 weeks ago, and please be ready to dive into Lesson 5 tomorrow night.

After doing 3 examples from each of the Lesson 4 drill exercises, we did a few examples of the "Say It In Cantonese" section from Lesson 4. If you haven't been reading and trying to do these sentences on your own over the past 4 lessons, I highly recommend that you review Lesson 1 through 4 "Say It In Cantonese" on the next to last page of each lesson, and that you start studying these sections going forward for the rest of the academic year (another 2 and 1/2 months).

At the end of last Monday's class, we previewed the Lesson 5 vocabulary on pages 125-126 and then I quickly read you all the Recapitulation of Lesson 5's conversation/dialogue on pages 106-107. We briefly discussed that this lesson features obsequious politeness phrases for welcoming guests into your home as well as offering things; accepting things offered to you; and politely declining things that are offered to you when you don't want those things. We mentioned that this lesson's dialogue spends a lot of time with one person offering a cigarette to their guest, a bit of political incorrectness in today's world.

See you all tomorrow. Please come to class ready to jump right into Lesson 5's vocabulary and dialogue.

Best,

Brendan

Mandarin I ALESN Class summary and notes from this past Monday, March 18, 2019

Hi Gang,

Another late email. It happens.

This past Monday, we covered:

• a quick mention of Lesson 3 Dialogue 1's premise and its use of numbers, dates, days of the week, etc.
• the chart for the numbers from 1 to 99, plus a brief mention of the words for zero and 100 -- on page 70
• Dates and Time on pages 71-75

We covered a lot with various uses of numbers this past Monday, but at this point, the MOST important thing is that you take the chart on page 70 of your book and mark it in your mind. Memorize it, make sure that you understand the system for using the words for the numbers 1 through 9 and the word for 10 to create all of the rest of the numbers from 11 through 99. I cannot do the work for you. I have presented you with the table and you simply need to memorize it.

How to memorize and work on your progressively faster recall of the numbers so that you can eventually use them comfortably, in real time, when telling time or handling money or counting objects or whatever?

There are all kinds of exercises you can do for yourself, but the 3 that I mentioned in class which worked the best for me when I was first learning my Chinese numbers and telling time were:

1. Simply telling time -- lots of different times throughout the day -- in Mandarin. Every few minutes, pause and recite the time back to yourself in Mandarin to practice the system that we have learned;
2. Looking at every license plate as you walk down the street, anytime you walk down any street until you have learned your numbers well, and say to yourself the numbers component of that license place. Be careful to make sure you get it right, check your answers the first few times to make sure you are remembering the vocabulary words, and then go nuts, challenging yourself to say the number portions of as many license plates as possible to yourself while walking down the street from your home to the subway or from your job to lunch or whatever; AND
3. Grab a page from your company's phone directory, or from any phone book for that matter, and just start reciting phone numbers in Mandarin.  You already "know" the numbers from 0 to 9. Go nuts and try to read as many phone numbers as possible in Chinese before your brain cramps. Seriously, feel your brain start to cramp and then say maybe 3 or 4 more full phone numbers. This is like cranking out extra reps at the gym with a spotter. You are cranking out extra brain reps. Good for your language learning brain -- I promise you -- and good for general cognition, regardless of the subject matter.

If you haven't already, take some time this weekend and work on your numbers using any or a combination of the above 3 suggested methods. Or make up your own fun study routine with the numbers. If you come up with something good that works for you, please share in class this coming Monday.

After discussing the numbers in general during our last class, we took a look at dates, beginning with DAYS OF THE WEEK. Please memorize the first 2 systems on page 72 and be aware of system 3 using the word ZHOU1. This system is mainly for written Chinese, whereas the other 2 systems at the top of this table are for spoken Mandarin.

Next, we covered MONTHS. Remember that in Chinese, the months are named by simply taking the numbers 1 through 12 and adding the word month afterwards. This is similar to the naming of the first six days of the Chinese week (in principle, but with the word order reversed). If you don't understand what I just said, reread it until you do, because this statement will help you to memorize and remember your days of the week and months in Mandarin Chinese.

From here, we briefly discussed the principle of naming things in Chinese in a progression from most general to most specific, and we showed how the word order for Saturday, March 23, 2019 in Mandarin is:

TWO ZERO ONE NINE YEAR, THREE MONTH, TWENTY THREE DAY, SATURDAY

Live it. Love it. Learn It.

We talked about the use of the word LIANG3 for 2 o'clock -- WE DON'T USE THE WORD ER4 FOR TWO WHEN TELLING TIME! We talked about telling exact times using FEN1. Our visitor, native speaker Qian Qian from Taiwan, confirmed various uses of FEN1 when telling time. We talked about the use of KE4 and BAN4 to tell time in 15 minute increments: a quarter after, half past, and three quarters after such and such hour.

PLEASE REVIEW THE TELLING TIME EXPLANATIONS ON PAGES 74-75 OF YOUR TEXTBOOK.

We will pick up on Monday with the several non-numbers grammar points on pages 76-77, and then you will break up into pairs or small groups to do the Language Practice exercises on pages 78-82. This will put us in position to begin Lesson 3 Dialogue 2 the following class.

See everyone on Monday.

Best to All,

Brendan

Cantonese I ALESN Class summary and notes from this past Monday, March 18, 2019

Hi Gang,

Another late email. It happens.

This past Monday, we covered:

• a review of the pronunciation and grammar points up to page 94
• the chart for the numbers from 1 to 99, plus a brief mention of the words for zero and 100

Since I spent most of the time last class going over the numbers with you, there is not much for me to write in this week's email summary. It is important that you take the chart that I drew on the whiteboard and mark it in your mind, memorize it, make sure that you understand the system for using the words for the numbers 1 through 9 and the word for 10 to create all of the rest of the numbers from 11 through 99. I cannot do the work for you. I have presented you with the table and you simply need to memorize it.

How to memorize and work on your progressively faster recall of the numbers so that you can eventually use them comfortably, in real time, when telling time or handling money or counting objects or whatever?

There are all kinds of exercises you can do for yourself, but the 3 that I mentioned in class which worked the best for me when I was first learning my Cantonese numbers and telling time were:

1. Simply telling time -- lots of different times throughout the day, in Cantonese. Every few minutes, pause and recite the time back to yourself in Cantonese practice using the 3 systems that we have learned: the fan1 jung1 system for precise times to the minute; the daahp6 #1 through 11 system for telling time in 5 minute increments; and the go3 jih6 system for telling time the same way as with the daahp6 system;
2. Looking at every license plate as you walk down the street, anytime you walk down any street until you have learned your numbers well, and say to yourself the numbers component of that license place. Be careful to make sure you get it right, check your answers the first few times to make sure you are remembering the vocabulary words, and then go nuts, challenging yourself to say the number portions of as many license plates as possible to yourself while walking down the street from your home to the subway or from your job to lunch or whatever; AND
3. Grab a page from your company's phone directory, or from any phone book for that matter, and just start reciting phone numbers in Cantonese. Remember that the word for zero, not covered in this lesson, is LIHNG4. You already "know" the numbers from 1 to 9. Go nuts and try to read as many phone numbers as possible in Cantonese before your brain cramps. Seriously, feel your brain start to cramp and then say maybe 3 or 4 more full phone numbers. This is like cranking out extra reps at the gym with a spotter. You are cranking out extra brain reps. Good for your language learning brain -- I promise you -- and good for general cognition, regardless of the subject matter.

If you haven't already, take some time this weekend and work on your numbers using any or a combination of the above 3 suggested methods. Or make up your own fun study routine with the numbers. If you come up with something good that works for you, please share in class this coming Monday.

See everyone in class. We will quickly go through the Drills on pages 95-101, putting us in a position to begin Lesson 5 either at the end of this Monday's class or, more likely, the following week.

Best to All,

Brendan

ALESN Cantonese Class Summary and Notes Monday night 3/11/19 -- sorry for delay...

Hi Everyone,

Sorry for my delay in sending this. Please review this material over the weekend and be ready to pick up where we left off.

This past Monday, we again reviewed Lesson 4's Vocabulary and Dialogue, this time proceeding from the Recapitulation instead of the Build-Up. In the vocabulary section, we saw the following, repeated from the last email I sent you 2 weeks ago. Please remember that you can chunk your knowledge for the 43 vocabulary words of Lesson 4 so that in reality, especially once we go over the numbers more in depth on Monday, it will be FEWER items that you actually have to separately memorize:

1. First of all, though it appears that we have 43 new vocabulary words, we actually have only 34 new concepts, some of them using multiple possible pronunciations or uses of old or new vocabulary items. If you group this new information properly during your home study time, you will only need to memorize at most 34 new concepts, not 43. You can further group these new vocabulary items into a very limited number of CATEGORIES, as I will try my best to explain below.
2. Remember that 1 and 33 are the same word, same usage, but that 33 is with the initial "ng" sound and 1 is after dropping that sound due to "the ng phenomenon" that I have explained multiple times in class.
3. 2, 7, 16, 28, 29, 35, 36, and 37 are all numbers that you will need to eventually know, but it will make more sense after next Monday's class, when I will draw a chart of the numbers on the board: first zero, then 1 through 10, and then using the words for 1 to 10, we will construct the Cantonese terms for 11 through 99.
4. 4, 25, 26, 27, 38, and 39 are all sentence final particles that we will see in action in various places in the dialogue.
5. 5, 21, 34 and 41 are terms related to telling time in 15 minute intervals or on the half hour.
6. 8, 9, 10, 13, 19, and 24 are related to 3 different methods of telling time, which we discussed in class this past Monday. These 3 methods are the DAAHP6 + number 1 through 11 SYSTEM, letting us tell time in 5 minute increments (10 after the hour, 25 after the hour, etc.); the GO3 JIH6 SYSTEM (allowing us to do exactly the same thing as the DAAHP6 SYSTEM); and the FAN1 JUNG1 SYSTEM, allowing us to tell the exact time (9:17, etc.).
7. The rest of the vocabulary words are related in this lesson to the concept of telling time: watches running fast, slow, ready yet, not ready yet, this kind of stuff. PLEASE MEMORIZE THESE WORDS, AS THEY ARE VERY BASIC TO CANTONESE AND YOU WILL EVENTUALLY NEED TO KNOW ALL OF THESE ITEMS.

Once we reviewed the vocabulary and recapitulation, we broke into Happy Happy Groups and everyone had a chance to run the dialogue with partners. Finally, we briefly went over some pronunciation points on pages 86-87, which is where we will pick up on Monday.

Though I had promised to cover a chart/table of the Cantonese number system from 1 to 99, I did not get to that, so THIS will be the first thing that I write on the whiteboard this coming Monday. Please review the vocabulary, dialogue, and scan forward to pages 92-93 for the condensed explanation that the textbook gives regarding numbers.

Don't worry -- I will make it much more visual for you with a chart that will be very clear and very tidy for you all to memorize. It will be up to YOU to actually memorize the numbers, but I will show you a very clear system to do so using only 11 different words to construct all of the numbers from 1 to 99. We briefly touched on this concept this past Monday, but we will spend more time with it next class.

For your homework, please review work on memorizing the vocabulary from this lesson, and please also review the textbook's explanations of the various pronunciation issues and concerns detailed on pages 86-88.

As I have said before quite a few times, Cantonese is a new language for most of you, and for those of you who did not grow up in a Cantonese speaking household, THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT THING FOR YOU THIS ENTIRE ACADEMIC YEAR IS SIMPLY THAT YOU START MAKING SOUNDS THAT ACTUALLY SOUND LIKE CANTONESE.

This may seem self-evident, but it is the single most important concept that I can possibly communicate to all of my Chinese students this year -- whether Cantonese or Mandarin students:

Most beginner students of Chinese anywhere in the world quit once they realize that it is very challenging to produce accurate sounds and tones that actually sound like real, spoken, comprehensible Chinese -- especially when coming from English or another Western language as the first language. It is even difficult for Cantonese speakers to make accurate Mandarin sounds and for Mandarin speakers to make accurate Cantonese sounds -- and they are coming from another Chinese dialect as their first language!

At a certain point during all beginner level Chinese studies, the student needs to decide once and for all that he or she WILL open their mouth and produce accurate sounds and tones of spoken [Cantonese, Mandarin, whatever] -- or that THEY WILL DO WHATEVER THEY NEED TO DO in order to make that happen as quickly as possible over the course of the first year or two of study. If the student is not able to get over this initial hump, then no matter how many vocabulary words are memorized and no matter how many hours are spent pouring over textbooks or mp3s or videos or whatever, the student might as well quit and take a cooking class.

IF THE BEGINNER STUDENT CANNOT GET TO A POINT IN 1 TO 2 YEARS WHERE THEY ARE PRODUCING ACCURATE CHINESE SOUNDS AND TONES WHEN THEY OPEN THEIR MOUTHS TO SPEAK, THEN THEY ARE WASTING THEIR OWN TIME AND EVERYONE ELSE'S. THE SOLE PURPOSE OF LANGUAGE IS TO COMMUNICATE, AND IF THE BEGINNING STUDENT CANNOT EVENTUALLY LEARN TO COMMUNICATE WITH NATIVE SPEAKERS IN THE NEW LANGUAGE -- NATIVE SPEAKERS WHO DO NOT ALREADY KNOW THE STUDENT AND WHO DO NOT NECESSARILY CARE ABOUT THE STUDENT OR WHAT HE OR SHE IS SAYING, THEN THIS IS FAILED COMMUNICATION. THE STUDENT MIGHT AS WELL BE BARKING LIKE A DOG OR MAKING CHICKEN CLUCKS, BECAUSE NO EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION CAN TAKE PLACE UNLESS AND UNTIL BEGINNER LEVEL STUDENTS ARE ABLE TO REPLICATE THE MOST BASIC SOUNDS OF THE NEW LANGUAGE AT THE MOST BASIC LEVEL OF COMPREHENSIBILITY.

This has been my "Brendan is an asshole" guiding principle of learning and teaching Chinese since first studying at ALESN so many years ago.

Please tell yourself everyday that you need to keep making your sounds more and more accurate until they are within a window of comprehensibility that a native speaker would understand without knowing you in advance. To go back to something I said during your very first class last fall, you want to eventually be able to ask someone where the bathroom is and be understood the first or second time, before you pee and poop in your pants.

Thanks again to all of my dedicated students and see you on Monday,

Brendan

ALESN Mandarin I Class summary and notes from Monday night, 3/11/19 Class -- sorry for delay

Hi Gang,

Sorry for my delay in sending this. Luckily for me, we covered some material that I taught last year, so I will once again paste a blog entry from last year for you all to reference this weekend before next Monday night's class.

This past Monday, we backtracked a bit and covered the Lesson 2 Dialogue 2 grammar point DOU1 (both or all) on pages 53 and 54. These were very important points that we did not cover the previous week before moving onto Lesson 3 Dialogue 1. Here, again, is a blog entry covering this grammar point:

http://www.sayitrightchinese.com/2018/01/mandarin-i-alesn-thursday-january-18.html

Following this, we went over the vocabulary and dialogue for Lesson 3 Dialogue 1, covered by this blog entry from last year. You guys broke up into small groups and ran the dialogue and I think that everyone did ok with it -- there were some questions, but everyone seemed comfortable with the new material:

• Remember that in Chinese, the names of the 12 months are simply the word for the number 1 through 12 plus the word for "month." Thus, the word for September, the 9th month out of the year, is JIU3YUE4, literally "9 month."
• Though not discussed yet, please remember that when we mention any quantity of any noun in Chinese, we need to insert a measure word between the quantity and the noun. This will hold true when speaking about "9 months" as in, "9 months ago" or "he has studied Chinese for 9 months," which would be JIU3 GE YUE4: 4 measure word month. We will cover this eventually, but I am mentioning it now so you can keep in in mind.
• We will learn all of the numbers from zero to 99 or 100 starting next week, which will create a system for you to memorize many of the new vocabulary words from Lesson 3 Dialogue 1.
• The weekly calendar in Chinese begins with Monday, which is considered the first day of each week. Monday through Saturday are simply called, "WEEK [day] ONE," etc. up to "WEEK [day] SIX." There will be a separate term for Sunday, which we will learn next week.
• Obviously, when discussing when someone's birthday is, we need to be able to say the terms for various days, dates, days of the week, etc. That covers some of the new vocabulary words from this lesson.
• Talking about age using SUI4. We will discuss more of this and see more examples next week.
• Various vocabulary terms for telling time, which we will see more of next week in the grammar points for this lesson and dialogue. Please review what we have covered so far and be ready to continue with our discussion of telling time next Monday.
• Finally, we covered the table on page 70 for the numbers from 1 through 99. PLEASE REVIEW THIS TABLE AND BE READY TO TALK ABOUT IT ON MONDAY.

We will pick up on Monday with this table/chart. Remember that there is a whole system with a chart/table and once you memorize the system (and once you PRACTICE...), you will be able to easily say any number from 1 to 99!

See you all on Monday. Again, sorry for the delay in sending this out.

ALL ALESN CLASSES ARE CANCELLED FOR TOMORROW -- MONDAY, MARCH 4, 2019

Hi Gang,

Per the ALESN website email that was just sent out:

There will be NO classes Monday 3/4. The school is closed Monday 3/4 due to the winter storm.

As I have mentioned many, MANY times, please make sure that all of you are subscribed to and are receiving weekly website email updates from www.alesn.org. They look like this:

Though I was able to double up on the communications this time and send an email to all of my currently registered students for my 2 Monday night classes, I have no way of getting in touch with any drop-ins or any former students who might decide to stop by and rejoin my class at any given time. However, if you've signed up for the website email updates, which are usually sent once a week (except in the case of inclement weather school closings or other schedule changes), you will always know about any ALESN schedule changes as they happen -- in case I am not able to get in touch with you all last minute one day, etc.

Sorry that we will miss another Monday night. See you all the following Monday. Be safe in the snow tomorrow, and when you have time this coming week, please review the appropriate vocabulary and dialogue for your class so that we can pick up where we left off a week from tomorrow.

Best,

Brendan