Lesson 3: Please tell me what you are doing

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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!
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First, the sentence pattern of this lesson:

??(? ?) …
cing2man6 …
Please tell me so and so..

So for “Please tell me what you are going.” in Cantonese, we’d say
?? ? ?? ? ???
cing2man6 nei5 hoeng2dou6 zou6 me1je5
nei5 = you/your
hoeng2dou6 = be here(doing something)
zou6 = do/did/doing; make
e.g. zou6 ngoi3 (??? = make love.
zou6 dei6caang2 (????= do real estate (be a realtor)
zou6 si6jau4gai1 ????? = make/making soy sauce chicken
zou6 saang1ji3 (????= do business
zou6 gai1/ngaap3-2 ??/?? = 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:
? ?? ? ????
ngo2 hoeng2dou6 zou6 si6jau4gai1
? ?? ???
ngo2 hoeng2dou6 teng1jam1ngo6 = listen/listening to music
haang4gaai1 ?? = walk/walking (around) the street i.e. shopping
Note that after the verbs (zou6, haang4), we can always put gan2(??to emphasize the present tense “doing”.
For example.
ngo2 hoeng2dou6 cung1gan2loeng4 (???) = 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??” instead of hoeng2dou6 interchageably.
The verb hai2? is a special word for Cantonese, is the same as the word “?” 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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