Beyond yoUrself In Language Development

Hello all! 大家好！ Our first class was on Thursday February 23 at 1pm in A200. Do you want to learn more about Chinese cuisine? Then swing by next week – same place, same time!

In our lesson, we covered how to ask questions regarding food. For example, can you answer the questions below? If you don’t know what they’re saying, hover over them to read a translation. Post your answers in the comments!

1. 你有没有吃过狗肉？
2. 你喜不喜欢吃辣？
3. 你最喜欢的饮料是什么？

Then, we discovered the properties of regional cuisine and why they are like that! For example, in Hong Kong, they love to drink milk tea. But did you ever consider that the reason for that is because Hong Kong used to be an English colony? After all, dairy is not a popular product in China – in fact, many Chinese are lactose intolerant. However, because the English brought their tea traditions (adding milk and sugar) with them to Hong Kong, the natives now love milk tea! They have expanded on the idea by making milk tea in different flavors and by adding boba. In class, we manually sorted strips of paper into categories, but here is a simple table instead.

地方特点

I hope you found this blog post interesting! If you want to learn more about Chinese cuisine, feel free to stop by class on Thursday in A200 at 1pm.

This week, we learned about restaurants! We went to a 餐馆, looked at a 菜单, and ordered 两盘素菜, 一盘荤菜, 和一盘炒饭。 We also had 一壶茶 and 四碗酸辣汤.

We also learned about tableware! Do you remember what these are? Try to remember what they’re called, then hover over the images to see the Chinese characters and pinyin!

Here are some sentence patterns that we learned. Your homefun is to use these sentences to tell about your restaurant experience!

我点了 (一盘豆腐、 一碗饭)。
Wǒ diǎn le (yī pán dòufu, yī wǎn fàn).

(菜)很好吃！ / (菜)有很好的味道！
(Cài) hěn hào chī! / (cài) yǒu hěn hǎo de wèidào!

同学们好！

This week, we went over classifiers in Chinese! In English, we have measure words, e.g. a cup of water, a flock of sheep, a school of fish. Chinese has measure words too, but the usage is often required when it wouldn’t be in English. The ones we learned in class are below, with example vocabulary next to each measure word.

Don’t forget, the measure word can sometimes change depending on context! Just like how people don’t usually drink a keg of beer in one go, but rather a bottle, you don’t usually eat a bunch of bananas 一串香蕉 but just one banana 一根香蕉.

同学们好！

This week, we learned a song called “老鼠爱大米.” It is a touching song about a person’s professions of love to his partner! From the lyrics, we learned some new vocabulary as well as grammar structures. The handout we gave out has all the lyrics, vocabulary, and grammar, but here’s a quick review!

Key Vocabulary

Grammar

1. Doubling an adjective turns it into an adverb. For example:
   我会加倍努力好好对你
   Wǒ huì jiābèi nǔlì hǎohǎo duì nǐ
   我会轻轻在你耳边对你说…
   Wǒ huì qīng qīng zài nǐ ěr biān duì nǐ shuō…
2. The progressive (-ing) is formed by adding 着 zhe to a verb. For example:
   爱着 你~
   Àizhe nǐ ~
   想着你~
   Xiǎngzhe nǐ ~
3. Similes are formed using the word 像 xiàng between the two clauses being compared. For example:
   我爱你就像老鼠爱大米
   Wǒ ài nǐ jiù xiàng lǎoshǔ ài dàmǐ

Class blog to share with you.

http://mandarinsisi.wordpress.com/

同学们好！

This week, we had a lot of fun learning about the history and formation of Chinese characters!

Chinese characters first appeared in oracle bone script. In the early days, words closely resembled the concepts they were supposed to represent. For instance, the character for “sun” was a circle with a dot inside, and the character for “water” was three rows of flowing lines. As time went on, the characters became more standardized and square in shape. However, Chinese characters are still beautiful and evoke a sense of aestheticism, as seen in this video:

十二生肖 12 Chinese Zodiac Animals

Then, we learned about the principles of Chinese calligraphy 书画! There is a specific way to write each character, but you don’t have to memorize each one individually! Just remember: top to bottom, left to right, and outside to inside. Traditionally, when Chinese people do calligraphy, they should have the Four Treasures of the Study: brush, ink, paper, and seal. We managed to get by with just the first three. When writing calligraphy, sit with an upright posture, the paper square in front of you, and hold the brush upright too. Breathe deeply and steadily. Use varying pressure to change the width of your strokes. We practiced writing 永 (permanence) and our names. Why 永? Because it has eight of the basic strokes in Chinese calligraphy!

Our presentation

Vocabulary

你好 （Nǐ hǎo）

Today’s Presentation: Mandarin 1A: Week 3

同学们好！

Today in class, we went over how to describe a person’s appearance. We focused especially on the facial features. Here is the presentation we used. To review, why don’t you go through it and describe each person’s face? For the last slide, compare the two people. Remember the sentence structures we went over!

他的 (noun) 很 (adjective) / 他有 (adjective) 的 (noun).

(person 1) 的 (noun) 比 (person 2) 的 (adjective).

他们都 (adjective) / 他们都有 (adjective) 的 (noun).

If you need a review of the nouns and adjectives we learned, visit our vocabulary list!

And now, our homefun for the week! Match the pictures with the descriptions below.

1. 她是女的。
   她的皮肤是白的。
   她有点胖。
   她有咖啡色的眼睛。
2. 她很矮。
   她的皮肤颜色很深。
   她有长头发。
   她的鼻子很大。
3. 他很高。
   他有黑头发。
   他有大耳朵。
   他很性感。

漢語學生好! Hello Mandarin learners!

Today in class, we reviewed classroom vocabulary. To give you a taste, here are some examples:

After that, we watched the music video for “對不起我的中文不好.” We used the lyrics to learn some new words and expressions, and also to discuss homophones in Chinese!

Here is the song:

Transition 前進樂團 Dui Bu Qi 對不起我的中文不好

What are some ways to say “Sorry” in Mandarin?

Now, do you remember how the man in the video mixed up 睡覺 and 水餃? How can you mix up sleep and dumplings?! Please comment with why they can be confused, and tell us about any homophonic pairs that you have come across!

I’ll lead by example: 四 sounds like 死 but with a different tone, which is why many buildings in Asia do not have a fourth or fourteenth floor!

Thanks for reading, we hope you come attend our class next week. It is every Tuesday at 6pm in B208!

Today’s Presentation: Mandarin 1A: Week 1 – Click me!

For homework:

• Listen to the following video (as many times as you like!) and practice.  Take note of what these letters sound like to you and bring to class next week–we will discuss.  Also, pay attention to the shape of her mouth while she is speaking!

Chinese Pronunciation (Click me!)

• Download and review the ChinesePod Pinyin Chart:

ChinesePod Pinyin Chart (Click me!)

• Begin to review the material before Chapter 1 in Integrated Chinese!

Here’s the pinyin in next weeks lesson.  If you want, you can make flashcards with the pinyin and English so we can begin our first conversation starter next week, but we will also go over character writing basics next week, too!

Greetings Vocabulary:

nǐ – pronoun – you

hǎo -adj – fine, good

qǐng – verb- please (polite form of request); to treat or to invite

wèn – verb – to ask (a question)

guì – adj – honorable or expensive

wǒ – pronoun – I; me

ne – question particle – makes a statement into a question (no tone)

xiǎojiě – noun – Miis; young lady

jiào – verb – to be called; to call

shénme – question particle – “what”

míngzi – noun – name

xiānsheng – noun – Mister

As we talked about in class, try not to concern yourself too much with the strange grammar points like “question particle”.  We’ll cover all of that in due time.

Thanks for a great class tonight!

Liu Laoshi (Sara)