E01 The Antidote to "Integrated Chinese" (Language Course)

and if you're learning Chinese in a
university classroom setting you have a limited scope for creativity in how you choose to learn the language when you're not in the classroom in your own time you have to be creative in coming up with ways to make practicing the language interesting rewarding and effective but ultimately the quizzes the tests and the exams will be based on the vocabulary list found in the index to the textbook that the professor has chosen in this series of YouTube videos I am NOT going to present a critique of the integrated Chinese language course I'm going to provide an alternative to that language course but this alternative could be used as a supplement to that language course because I'm going to work with fundamentally the same vocabulary list the same list of words that you must memorize if you're going to do well in a university course that is based on that presumes knowledge of the integrated Chinese textbook series the first word you're taught in this textbook is how and you're taught to memorize that it means good and then when the test comes and the exam comes you should just learn to write the word itself and give the English definition as good I am not entirely convinced that this is the most interesting way to teach a language like Chinese and I'm also not convinced that it's the most efficient or effective way to teach the language isn't it a bit more interesting for you as a student even if this is level one day one in Chinese for you to have some awareness if you have some little bit of warning that the word how means much more than the English word good in fact it's a fascinating example of how the Chinese take a single syllable in their language and manage to get so much use out of it so many different possible meanings of it and look you can't memorize it all there's no doubt when the time comes to write your exam or your test and they ask you what is the meaning of the word how you're gonna have to write how it means good just like everyone else but as soon as you start taking an interest in the real language as it's used in the real world even if you just go to Google and do a google search you're gonna see sentences like this one where how does not mean good at all if you don't know any of the vocabulary don't worry about it for now the sentence reads Chingy will need to show G Hama House Asia yes II think a war neither showed you home ah ha facially and C please give me your cell phone number in order to contact you at any time maybe that should be the first sentence that everyone learns in Chinese maybe that should be maybe we should make that the new standard isn't it interesting here you see how is used to give the sense of in order to do something you can think of this enemy logically like it would be good if but that's not the meaning here please give me your cell phone number so that I can contact you at any time in order to contact you in a time just one more example like this and again I understand if you're a beginner there's a lot of vocabulary here you don't know and that's okay but just appreciate how much you're missing out on if all you learn is that how means good I want to live with a local family in order to practice the spoken language what sound cool Holly Holly in C code you again look at the words circled in red it doesn't say in order to it says how although I said that this series of videos will not be a critique of the integrated Chinese textbook once in a while I'm gonna make the vocabulary more interesting by contrasting what the textbook teaches you to the way people speak Chinese in real life so I've got to tell you I did the course I got an A plus plus I studied this textbook for a level-one in a university and then I got to China and nobody understood the phrase me creasing level 1 chapter 1 you are taught that the polite way to ask someone's name is to say nee Gracie maybe there's some Province in China we're in the local dialect that makes sense but a god I tell you everywhere I've been every Chinese person I ever spoke to did not understand that phrase neither in spoken Chinese nor even in written Chinese when it should be clear there is a what what are you talking so that's a remarkable example and it's in the first page of the first chapter the first lesson where this textbook is really teaching you something that's very misleading if not simply wrong now how did Chinese people actually say that they don't know your name well one effective but not terribly polite way is just to say Nihao neasha che hello you are who Chinese people do you say that that is a normal people have said that to me I've said that Chinese people nobody gets offended but it's true it's not all that polite if you really want to be polite you have to join in the great East Asian custom of carrying with you at all times a business card the normal say in English there a name card and then you can say something like Davichi well Mayo need them in pen you can say this while you give them your own name card you're saying them oh pardon me I'm sorry I don't have your name card so this is a polite way of saying I don't know your name you're giving them a name card that lets lets that person know your name and of course this is very polite in Chinese culture it's also very effective because the truth is just hearing the sound of someone's name is not enough figuring out how to spell it figure out the correct Chinese characters may still be a little bit of a challenge if you don't exchange little pieces of paper this is one of the many words you're expected to memorize for unit 1 one of this level one textbook and you're encouraged to just memorize it with the meaning my name is Jeff yeah you would be tested most likely by your professor to check that you understand that this normally refers to your first name not to your family name the better students in the classroom might look it up in a dictionary you might look it up using digital dictionary software and might notice that it really has several other unrelated meanings but you know if you're working at a fast pace week to week chapter chapter you probably don't have time to even memorize those other meanings some of you may feel comfortable with the ambiguity of that you may think well okay I'm just going to learn this one meaning of the word and then maybe it won't later trip me up so much that there are six or seven other meanings of the word in the dictionary that I'm just going to ignore for the time being I would advise against that attitude learning a language is like going to a tailor if you stitch something up the wrong way later you have to tear out all the stitches and do it all over again relearning something challenging bad habits of mind and it's much more difficult than getting it right the first time so but you might have that attitude well okay I'm gonna live with a certain amount of fog in my appreciation of the Chinese language well how would you handle the two sentences were about to look at right now they would be utterly perplexing and paradoxical to you when you encounter them in Chinese and you will and furthermore I defy you go ahead and check your dictionary I think the use meaning and function of Jiao that I'm about to explain to you it will either not be mentioned in your dictionary at all or it'll be mentioned so briefly and so cryptically that you couldn't possibly figure it out from the dictionary alone here we go so this opens with foo qincha this might seem like very very advanced Chinese but this is all pretty much level 1 vocabulary to pay money Fujin okay sure is one of the first words you learn within the first couple chapters this is sha ho right so at the time of paying money food changsha with aussie yen Chen Bao Chou giotto gay tolls Ola food chain she was fighting tempo turns out okay holla holla at the time of paying that's the first three syllables Fujin Jie I discovered wolf ass yen Chen Bao so if you don't know Chen da no big deal but it's a simple noun you can guess cuz you probably know the word Chen so Chen Bao is wallet or something like that a wallet I think it could also be a purse anything that contains money like that I discovered that my wallet had been stolen what does the word gel mean in the sentence if all you've learned is that the word gel means hi my name is and then it's followed by your first name you would be utterly perplexed and regard this as quite paradoxical and you might want to reassure yourself by saying oh well you know one that's a really advanced usage only encounter at once no no it's not this is standard everyday spoken Chinese this is not literary Chinese this is not reading the ancient text of Confucius this is normal basic Chinese you teach no here's a much simpler sentence with a similar sort of paradox in the meaning of the word Jiao Tyga Fujiyama taught you I'm over pronouncing the tones here Togo puja that you without touching tiger his brother now even if you had learned the Supplemental meaning of Jiao meaning to call out to cry out when a duck quacks that's jowl when a cat makes a meowing or purring sound I believe that's also gel now I forget is it meowing or purring one of them is Jo as a whole bunch these different words different meanings related to calling out jail was also meant to call out an order to a waiter a few things of that you might read this and assume tyga his brother did not tell him to go but know the actual meaning here is his brother did not allow him to go so there's a whole category of meanings with gel that are legally similar to the passive voice in english they have to do with allowing something to happen or in the case of being robbed by a thief the happenstance of something having being the case it expresses something vaguely similar to the passive voice in english but of course technically by definition it is not a passive voice construction in terms of grammar and the science of linguistics if i have two or three people in the audience with PhDs in linguistics they will be angrily banging their four to six fists on the table with rage that i would dare to refer to this as a passive voice but let's just look at two more examples really quickly wouldja Dada what about look this is a great example of a meaning of the word jowl that you will not figure out from your dictionary and you will not even be able to figure out with Google Translate not in the year 2020 maybe in the distant future when the software improves what's holla I by him was beaten or I by him was punched and Google Translate gets there's a hundred percent wrong with I told him to hit so the function of jaw here again Phegley similar to a passive voice in terms of how it structures the sentence tells you the subject of the sentence so on and so forth and then the very bottom of the screen G ow wall didn't you air okay bye my daughter gay Nam doula by my daughter it was lost what is the function of G au in this you can think of it as a passive voice you can make up another explanation your own mind but if you're not aware of this I'm not saying you can memorize everything I'm not saying you can master everything in Lesson one of your level one textbook but if you are not aware of the full range of meanings of the word jowl then when you encounter this your dictionary won't be able to help you Google Translate won't be able to help you you'll be working on the false assumption that you know the meaning of the word jowl because your textbook told you that all it means is hi my name is