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Without forward ado, here’s our weekly lesson:

Lesson Three: Please tell me, what you are doing.

Hi, everyone, did you miss us? I’ve been missing you! Seriously!
Welcome to CantonesePod.com.
Today we are going to focus on some useful verbs.
Let’s get actions!

First, the sentence pattern of this lesson:

请问(請 問) …
cing2man6 …
Please tell me so and so..

So for “Please tell me what you are going.” in Cantonese, we’d say
请问 你 响度 做 乜嘢。
cing2man6 nei5 hoeng2dou6 zou6 me1je5
nei5 = you/your
hoeng2dou6 = be here(doing something)
zou6 = do/did/doing; make
e.g. zou6 ngoi3 (做爱） = make love.
zou6 dei6caang2 (做地产）= do real estate (be a realtor)
zou6 si6jau4gai1 （豉油鸡） = make/making soy sauce chicken
zou6 saang1ji3 (做生意）= do business
zou6 gai1/ngaap3-2 做鸡/做鸭 = be a female/male prostitute

me1je5 = what (also can be prounced as mat1je5)
Note: The “j” in JyutPing is like “y” in English word “yes”.

Now repeat after me:
我 响度 做 豉油鸡。
ngo2 hoeng2dou6 zou6 si6jau4gai1
我 响度 听音乐
ngo2 hoeng2dou6 teng1jam1ngo6 = listen/listening to music
haang4gaai1 行街 = walk/walking (around) the street i.e. shopping
Note that after the verbs (zou6, haang4), we can always put gan2(紧）to emphasize the present tense “doing”.
For example.
ngo2 hoeng2dou6 cung1gan2loeng4 (冲紧凉) = I’m taking a bath.
Here cung1loeng4 means “take a bath”.
cung1 = pour water over
loeng4 = cool, cold
In Canton or Hong Kong, when people take a bath, they really want to get cool by pouring water over themselves.

Actually, we have been learning the 2nd important sentence pattern:
ngo2/nei5 hoeng2dou6…
I am / you are (doing sth.)
We can also use “hai2dou6喺度” instead of hoeng2dou6 interchageably.
The verb hai2喺 is a special word for Cantonese, is the same as the word “在” in Mandarin. Unlike Mandarin, when we say “am/is/are doing”, we need say hai2dou6, not just hai2 in Cantonese.

Please replay this lesson until you get fimiliar with all the new stuff here.
Until next time. Zoi3 gin3.
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Here’s the mp3 for Lesson Two. We continue to talk about food since it is important and useful.

pdf files will be available soon. We are looking for some volunteers for scripting work.

Thank you very much.

Have a great weekend!
Click this for the simple script:

Lesson Two: Food (2)

Today, we are going to continue to talk about food.

First we should learn a useful sentence pattern:
I want …
ngo5 jiu3
我 要 …

How do you say “I want a bowl of soup of the day.”?
ngo5 jiu3 jat1 wun2 lai6 tong1
我 要 一 碗 例 汤。
I want/need a bowl sample soup.
Sample soup actually means the soup that they cook in a very big pot so that many people can get a portion from the same pot.

Now words that you can put into this sentence pattern:

两碗白饭

two bowl white rice = two bowls of steamed rice.

jat1 dip6 haa1 jan4 caau2 gai1 daan2
一碟虾仁炒鸡蛋
one plate of shrimp meat stir fried with chicken egg.

煎牛扒
炒饭
半只北京鸭 half Peking duck
一只豉油鸡 one whole soy source chicken
麻婆豆腐 Mapo doufu (Mapo tofu) is a popular Chinese dish from the Sichuan (Szechuan) province. It is a combination of tofu (bean curd) and minced meat, usually beef, in a spicy chili- and bean-based sauce, typically a thin, oily, and bright red suspension. See Wikipedia

姜葱蒸龙虾 ginger and green scallion steamed lobster
清炒蒜苗
辣 = spicy
唔辣 = not spicy
咸 = salty
淡 = plain
甜 = sweet

热 = hot
冷 = cold
皮蛋 = preserved egg (a thousand year old egg?)

In this lesson, we’ll learn about food, which is considered “heaven” by us human being.

(Updated 6/28/2008:  weekly new Cantonese Lesson update will be available from July, 2008)
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