five-verb-frameworks - source

Full transcript of five-verb-frameworks. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I07Z30Wq85w

If you understand these five frameworks that I’m going to teach you today that govern the five main ways that Chinese verbs work, you’ll be able to express yourself in any situation by building verb forms that you’ve never studied and unlock 83% of all Chinese verbs. My team and I have helped over 600 Cantonese heritage speakers learn Mandarin and improve their Cantonese. And for them, the biggest unlock wasn’t vocabulary, it wasn’t tones, it was specifically understanding how Chinese verbs are built so that they can better express themselves in everyday scenarios. Because the first question we have to ask is, do Chinese verbs work the same way as English ones? Which leads us into our very first framework, which is called simple singles. So, some Chinese verbs actually do work like English. And these are going to be the easiest ones for basically any beginner. So, let’s first understand, okay, how do English verbs actually work? English verbs, I consider are very smart. For example, I opened it. You might not have ever thought about this way, but this one verb, I opened it, has actually two implications. One, that the action of opening, for example, opening the door, happened. And two, that the door opened successfully. The current state of the door is open. Right? Let’s say, for example, I broke it. The action of breaking that it happened. And two, it’s currently in a broken state. Three, I killed it. Okay, this implies that the action of killing happened. And two, it’s currently killed. If we use the verb [clears throat] as is in English, it always comes with the result. Action and result. If we want to change the result, we need to add more words to modify it. For instance, I failed to open. The door wouldn’t open. So, we see that English verbs inherently describe the action that’s done and the result in one shot. And I want you to hold onto that thought because Chinese verbs don’t exactly work the same way. But first off, they do have verbs that do the same thing. So, let’s look at those verbs first cuz they’re easy. For example, the verb for open. If you look into a dictionary, we see kai and da. Kai or in Cantonese, hoi and da. Hoi. This example, let’s focus on the first one. Okay, the single verb. We’ll look into the second one later. So, hoi or kai means open. One verb carries the action and the result. The door is now open. Same as English. Guan means close or san in Cantonese. For example, hoi mun, open the door. Kai mun, open the door. It implies the action of opening the door was done and that the door is now open. San mun means close the door or guan mun means close the door. It implies that the action of the door being open or closed was done and that the door is now closed. This is the simplest form of verbs in Chinese. Let’s look at three quick sentence examples before we move on. And oh, by the way, on this channel we always look at both Cantonese and Mandarin as examples. So, here’s an example. Hom hoi bong ngo hoi mun. Ke bu ke yi bong ngo kai mun. Do you see between English, Chinese, Cantonese and Mandarin, it looks a little bit different, but overall it’s structurally quite similar. So, hom hoi or ke bu ke yi means can or cannot. Okay, it’s a way that we ask questions in Chinese. We don’t really do it in English that much, but basically it’s saying like, “Can you or can you not?” Bong means to help in Cantonese and bong in Mandarin. Ngo means I, wo in Mandarin, and then hoi mun or kai mun in Mandarin means open the door. Can you help me open the door? Okay, this is a very straightforward one. Just, “Can you help me open the door?” or technically, “Can you or can you not help me open the door?” Next example, bong ngo san mun. Bong ngo guan mun. So, help me close the door. Bong means to help. Ngo is I. San is close, guan in Mandarin, and then mun or mun means door. So, bong ngo guan mun. Bong ngo san mun. Help me close the door. Okay, this is a very straightforward sentence. You see it’s literally the same structurally in both English and [music] Chinese, which makes it very easy. Another example, ta da ngo. Ke yi da ngo. Ke yi da ngo. He hit me. So, he is ta or ke yi Cantonese. Da or da is to hit, and then ngo or wo is I. So, he hit me. Ta da ngo. Very straightforward. And so, these are the simplest ones. Simple singles is literally just singular Chinese verbs. And knowing this matters because it’s literally your baseline, right? Whenever you see a single character verb acting on something, it works the exact same way as English, okay? No extra pieces, no assembly required, okay? This is the simplest that Chinese gets. But, if this was all there was, I mean, Chinese verbs would be just like English, right? It’d be a super easy language, but it’s not, right? It’s a hard language. And so, remember earlier when we talked about open, there was kai and da. Kai. What’s going on here? Same door here, but different result. Why would Chinese also have da kai for open? Why are there multiple options for the verb open in Chinese? Which leads us into framework number two. Why does da kai exist when kai already works? So, framework number two is called the result recipe. Kai men or hoi mun in Cantonese works, but it doesn’t tell you how the door was opened. Did you push it, pull it, kick it? Kai doesn’t say. Da kai men says how you how, which is you you hit it open. Tui kai men says you pushed it open. Ti kai men says you kicked it open. And so, in this case, the compound is more specific, okay? That’s reason number one why there’s two verbs for open, okay? But, there’s a bigger reason. See, some outcomes in Chinese can’t stand alone as verbs at all. Let’s say for example in English, the verb you shattered it, okay? Shattered is a verb, but right away it stands alone in English. And like we said, it implies the action of shattering it, and then it also being shattered. So, in Mandarin, the word for shatter is sui. So, ni sui le ta or nei sui jo kui. That sounds wrong. See, sui describes a state, shattered. You can say bei zi sui le, okay? The cup shattered on its own. Bui sui jo, but if you did the shattering, if I did this, you need to say how it did it, how that happened. And so, in Chinese, the way we would say it is ni da sui le ta, nei da sui jo kui, okay? You hit it and it shattered. And so, Chinese has a class of verbs that only describe the action, the manner, and all these verbs on their own, they don’t carry the result. They just imply the action happened, and then we pair it with a result word describe what happened. And so, you snap them together, and that’s our second framework, which is result recipe. So, let me show you kind of like an example of how deep this really goes. Okay, so let’s look at one manner verb, da or da in Cantonese, to hit. Six different result style. Okay, we have da hoi, okay, which is basically da kai, which means to hit it open. So, see, you know, opening a door, like opening a door, you know, like that. Okay, da sui, da sui, to smash and it shatters into pieces, this thing over here. Da dou, da dou, to kind of hit and it falls. Da sei, da si, okay, to kill by striking. Da to hit and the result is it died. Da po, da po, okay, to break, to hit it and it breaks. Not shatters, breaks, different. Sui is like breaks [music] and shatters into how much pieces. Da po is basically it just breaks. Da yun, hit and you finished hitting. Da wan, hit and we finished hitting. So, we see here we have same verb, six different outcomes. In English, those are six separate words you memorize independently, to open, to smash, to knock down, to kill, to break, to finish. In Chinese, it’s one manner verb and six results that tell you what actually happened. So, what actually happened once you hit it. So, let’s look at some example sentences now before [music] we get on to framework three. So, ta da kai la mun, koi da hoi zo mun. So, we have koi, ta, he, she, da is to hit or da in Mandarin, and then hoi or kai means to open, hit open. And basically hit open means like like just like boom, open up, you know what I mean? It’s like imagine that I’m like I’m like opening the door to enter a room, you know? And then la is basically a complete action marker, which we cover a bit later. And then mun is mun is door. The key thing here is da kai versus just kai. Okay, the difference is specificity. Da hoi or da kai implies force, you you really opened it. But if we just said whole or chi by itself, the listener wouldn’t know, okay, was it like we opened it like crack? Do we open it like an inch? [music] Do we slam it open? And so da whole or da chi tells you. Let’s take an example. He da so long a boy. He da so long. He shattered two cups. Thing is when you look in the dictionary, da so or da so and da will both be hit. But the thing is here, if I just say he da so long a boy, that would just be like I I hit it. You know what I mean? I hit it. It doesn’t imply that it it shattered and actually broke into a bunch of pieces. You know what I mean? So that’s the key differentiator here. And so that second word tells you what actually happened. But if you look in the dictionary, they both just say hit. But you have to understand that one has a result attached. Whole da say go jet Chong. We all da say na jet Chong. Don’t kill that bug. So in this case, whole basically means don’t. In Mandarin, we use bu yao, okay? Da say means to hit and kill. Okay, hit and kill. Okay, then go jet Chong or na jet Chong means like that bug. So go jet means like that or na jet in Mandarin. And then Chong or Chong means bug basically, okay? So we all da say na jet Chong. Whole da say go jet Chong. And then same thing here, right? Without that result, let’s say for example it was we all da na jet Chong. It would just mean, you know, don’t hit it. You know, don’t hit it and don’t kill have a huge difference. Okay, in a torture chamber, if for example the torturer said we all da ta instead of we all da say ta. We all da ta just means like don’t hit him. But we all da say ta whole da say means don’t kill him. Don’t hit him to death. And so it’s a very key difference there. One more before we go to the next framework. But you or one means finish. So da you or da one means finished hitting. For example, me da one la ma. We all you go la. May da you may ah. We all you go. Okay, so may or me [music] is you. Da or da means to hit. Yun or wan means to finish, right? So, hit and finish the action of hitting. La ma is basically asking a question. Okay, let’s go to the video. Or mei in Cantonese. And then ngo dei is we, women in Mandarin. You is want, you is have to, and then yao in Mandarin and zou or zou means to leave. So, remember, keep in mind, okay? Da yun or da wan means hit plus finish. The action is done. We looked at one manner verb here with different results. Now, let’s flip it. Okay? Same result, but different manner verbs. Okay, so let’s keep the result, for example, opened or kai or hoi and swap the manner verbs now. Let’s see how this works. So, let’s look at different examples. We have, for instance, I think we went went over, right? Da hoi, da kai. Okay, to hit it open. Most commonly used for, you know, a door. Okay, or a window. Tui hoi, tui hoi. Push it open. Lai hoi, la kai. Pull it open. Tek hoi, tek kai. To kick it open. Si hoi, si kai. To rip it open. Same result. Okay, five different actions. So, the hoi, the second part, doesn’t care how you got there. Okay, hitting, pushing, killing, kicking, tearing, whatever. It just means and it open. Okay, so let’s look at it in a couple sentence examples and then we can move on. Che dou mun, tui bu kai. Yao la kai. Ni dou mun, tui bu hoi. You lai hoi. This door won’t push open, you have to pull it open. So, ni is basically the measure word. Ni is means this, uh che in Mandarin. Dou mun is basically dou is the measure word for a door, dou mun in Mandarin. Mun, mun is door. Tui, tui means to push, tui in Mandarin. Bu or um in Cantonese means like no, won’t. Kai or hoi means open, so won’t push open. We’re going to that a bit later. Um you means have to or yao in Mandarin and then lai hoi means la kai or to pull, lai hoi pull it open. Now, key thing here is notice that bu sitting between toy and chi. Okay, that’s going to matter later. But for now, let’s move on. That’s another verb format. Now quick note before we move forward, you’ll see a lot in some of these sentences and so we call a completed action marker. It basically indicates that the action was completed. In Cantonese we use jaw for this. Now this is beyond the scope of this video. We have a whole video on it, but the general idea is what chi chi what chi chi I kick open. Doesn’t say it’s done. What chi chi la what chi chi jaw I kicked it open and the action is completed. That la or jaw indicates that the action was completed. You don’t need to know fully how this thing works. Just know that it basically marks completion. One more example, juk fung sun si bu kai in Cantonese [music] ni fung sun si m hoi. Okay, what that basically means is basically this letter that is letter. You know, can’t rip it open. Okay, I can’t rip it open. So ni fung sun si m hoi a juk fung sun si bu kai. So in this case ni or juk basically means this. Okay, fung or fung in Cantonese basically means like the measure word for like a letter. Sun or seen basically means like a a letter. Okay, si basically means to rip or si in Mandarin. Okay, and then m hoi bu kai means bu or m means won’t. Okay, and then kai means open. So we can’t rip it open. So we try to rip it but it no open. We’ll get deeper into how that bu works later on but just that’s basically what this how how is it here. Yeah, so overall for this one, the manner is one Lego brick the manner verb. The result is nothing. You sub together, swap either piece and that is the entire framework. Okay, and so you can use it to build a bunch of different verbs. And this is why the result recipe is probably the most important framework for verbs in Chinese [music] because once you understand the manner and result idea, [music] the important thing is you stop memorizing compound verbs as individual vocabulary words. Okay, you see any new compound word and you already know what it means. You read the pieces. You don’t memorize it as a single verb, but you know both ones and that’s how native speakers actually process these verbs. Now, one more thing before the next framework. Now, if you watched our three times on that Chinese video, you know what Chinese describes actions like a sports commentator, you know, calling out every single thing in order. That works with compound verbs, too. So, the way it works is you stack them in sequence, simple verbs and compound verbs together like a play-by-play. So, for example, you know, it goes like, he went, he hit the door, it opened. Every single action in Chinese is called out. English would just say, he went to open the door. Chinese breaks it down frame by frame. And that means compound verbs just slot right into the sequence. To lock this in, let’s look at one more sentence before the next framework, [music] which is going to be this one. Okay, means he, she, okay? Da sui means to shatter. Means two cups. And how means and then in Mandarin. Went and complete the action. Basically went to go eat. And so, if we apply that action director sequence here, we have he hit the glass, it shattered, then he went to eat. [music] So, we have one simple verb, then two compound verbs in one sentence. All strung together using the sports commentator. Da sui, da sui, we just learned that one, right? Hit and it shattered, manner plus result. Look at the other one here. We have chi fan or sik fan, eat rice. That’s also two characters, but fan isn’t a result, it’s rice. And so, in this case, this compound is doing something completely different. It’s not a manner plus the result, it’s a different thing. And that brings us into framework number three. What kind of compound is chi fan? Framework number three is called separable sandwich. Fan isn’t a result, like we said, it’s rice. It’s what gets eaten. That’s not manner plus result, that’s actually action plus object. [music] And this is a completely different kind of compound. Now, your first instinct might be like, okay, you mean there’s two characters. I mean, why don’t we just group them all as compound verbs, you know, why do we need to differentiate and give these, you know, stupid names? [music] Okay, hold on to that question cuz you’ll see why shortly. But anyway, so sik fan or chih fan, okay, in Mandarin, eat rice, chih or sik is the verb and fan or fan is the object, what the eating acts on. Quick kind of grammar lesson, but to determine the object in any language, we just add what after the verb. So, for example, she ate an apple, she ate what? An apple. Therefore, the apple is the object. Wo chih fan, wo chih what? Fan. Therefore, fan is the object. The difference between English and Chinese though is that in Chinese, they’re viewed as an action-object pair. So, it’s almost like it is the verb itself. Whereas in English, the verb and object are viewed as separate things. And that’s why you might see, for example, if you look up eat in a dictionary, you’ll see chih by itself and you’ll see chih fan as well. Now you know the difference. By the way, technically, the fan in chih fan means rice, but we actually use that for just eating general to denote a meal. So, going back to it, wo yao chih fan is normally interpreted as I want to eat, not specifically I want to eat rice. Now you’re probably wondering, you know, why can’t we just say wo yao chih wo yao sik? And it’s because Chinese verbs like chih feel incomplete without their object. It’s like saying I want to eat and trailing off. Chih fan, eat a meal, is the complete thought. And Chinese is full of these pairs. For example, sik fan or chih fan is just one of them, right? Another example is fan gao or shui jiao, which means to sleep. We have pao bu, pao bu, which means to run. shuo hua or gong ye, to speak. Bi ye or bi ye, which means to graduate. These are very common action-object pairs. Now, quick note by the way, you You really easily see the object slot in action by inserting that a guh between them. So, guh is basically a a uh in Chinese. It’s like a word counter. So, you can say like chī ge fàn, which means eat a meal. pǎo ge bù, which means go for a run. shuì ge jiào, which means take a nap. Or fān go gaau. The fact that that guh fits between them proves the verb and object are two separate pieces. Anyway, quick note on that shuì ge jiào. If you study characters before, you might notice that jiào is the same character as jyuh dak, which means to feel or to perceive. Okay, ngóh jyuh dak, ngóh got dat in Cantonese. Yeah, I feel that. So, how can a verb be an object? Well, in Chinese, some characters can act as different things depending on the context. So, jyuh dak can mean to perceive, or got in Cantonese, but here in shuì ge jiào, or fān go gaau, it’s not acting as a verb, it’s acting as an object. It’s saying asleep. So, shuì ge jiào literally means to to sleep asleep, right? Same way English has to dream a dream, or to sing a song. The second character is what the action acts on, not what the action achieves. And so, these are action-object pairs. Each one is a verb glued to its natural object, the thing naturally associated with that action. And so, eating is always eating something. Speaking is always speaking words. And so, Chinese makes it very explicit. And so, the key thing here is just in English, I eat is a complete sentence. In [music] Chinese, ngóh chī, ngóh sik, makes sense, but it sounds unfinished. Eat what? That’s why these pairs exist. And so, here’s what makes these different from the manner-result pair, and why we need to identify them as a separate framework, rather than just calling everything just compound verbs. Remember the manner and result examples. The manner and result describe two phases of one event. The hitting and the opening happen together. They’re one action with a result. So, the completion marker goes after the whole compound. So, for example, tā dǎ kāi le mén, okay, dǎ hoi zo mùhn. He opened the door. Okay, that le or zo in Cantonese, which indicates the action completed, sits after dǎ hoi dǎ kāi, not between. You can’t say da le kai because hitting open is one [music] event, and that thing indicates that the event is completed. You can’t split it in half. This why it’s very important is because this

[music] is one type of compound verb, and that’s the manner result. And so, the completed action marker always goes after that manner result compound verb. But for an action-object compound verb, in an action-object pair, we have two separate things, the action and what it acts upon. And because they’re separate things, you can put something in between them. Okay? So, for example, wo chi le fan, wo chi le fan. In this case, you see that le, the completed action marker goes in between the action and the object. Whereas in the previous one, it went after. And that’s because one is a manner and results, whereas one is just action and object. So, wo chi le fan, ngo sik jo fan. The le, completed, sits between the verb and the object. Ngo sik yun fan, wo chi wan fan. Once again, that yun or wan sits in between. And so, the cute thing about this is that in a manner plus result type compound verb, right, what happens is the manner and the results is it’s all one action as a whole, right? You you hit the door and it opened, right? It’s all an action, right? So, that’s why the completed action marker goes after the verb. But in a action-object case, the action is just I ate, right? Wo chi, and then I ate what? I ate the rice, right? And so, that’s why the completed action marker goes after the verb, but not necessarily after the object. Very important to make this differentiation, okay? By the way, notice for this one, that wan, we saw it in the result recipe, da wan, hit plus finished. That’s a result complement, but here it’s sitting between the action and the object, chi wan fan, eat finished rice. Okay, so, the key thing here is you’re stacking the result recipe inside the separable sandwich, and the result piece from one framework is going inside another framework split. And so, it’s very important because that result always follows the verb. Okay, so, even in this case where you have like an action object pair, right? Which is a chīfàn, the result follows the verb in that case, which is why it gets sandwiched in between. So, here are some examples of words you might typically see get sandwiched in between action object pairs. Okay, the first one is the complete action marker, right? so le or jo in Cantonese, sik jo faan, chī le fàn. Okay, then we have the guo for experience, so chī guo fàn, sik guo faan, have eaten before. Then we have the finished one, sik yun faan, chī waan fàn, finished eating. Then we have quantity. Okay, chī le liang ci fàn, sik jo liang ci faan, I ate twice. One thing to note here is that sometimes in Mandarin you can actually put the le specifically after the action object pair, and you’ll hear it like that sometimes. It’s acceptable. Okay, so you can say wo chī le fàn or you can say wo chī fàn le. Okay, that specific one is acceptable in Mandarin. Both are acceptable, right? Technically, the one that’s wo chī fàn le is the one you would normally want to go with. In Mandarin you can do this, but in Cantonese it’s forbidden. Always splits. So, wo chī le fàn becomes wo sik jo faan. That’s just how Cantonese works. Okay, in Mandarin you could say wo chī fàn le, but you can’t say wo sik faan jo in Cantonese. Okay, that doesn’t work. And that’s your That’s the key difference, right? Manner plus result equals to like one event, stays together. Okay, action and object equals two things put apart, and that gap between them accepts all different kinds of modifiers, right? Completion markers, result complements, quantity words, whatever. If you’re learning and you’re not sure split or not split, the easy way is if you have an action object pair, just always split it. If you always split it, you will be right. You might sound awkward sometimes cuz sometimes in modern Mandarin they don’t always split it, but you are always grammatically correct. Whereas [music] if you don’t split it, sometimes you might be wrong, and then then you would screw up. So, if you have an action object pair, easy way to start is just always split it, and then over time you’ll get a better feel for what sounds more natural. Before we get to the next framework, I want to emphasize that the splitting works across all pairs. So, for example, chī le fàn, sik jo faan, sik yun faan, chī waan fàn, finished eating. chī guo fàn, sik guo faan, chew on chow, fun on chow, chew on chow, fun on chow. But your ear, be like ear, but go ear, be go ear. So what are those examples now? May sick on me go may ah. Me chew go chew go la ma. Me chew go chew go la ma. May sick on me go may ah. Me is you. May in Cantonese, sick means to eat, chew in Mandarin. Go means experience before. Okay, remember that goes in between the action object pair here. So here the action object pair is chew and the object is chew go, this. Eat this. Experience marker goes in between because it’s an action object pair. Okay, so me chew go, sick go. Me go is this or chew go in Mandarin and then may ah or la ma is that’s just how to ask questions. Yeah. So that’s how this works here. Another example, tie eating be like ear that high may chow dow go go. In Cantonese, go eating but your ear. Done chew may one dow go go. Now, key thing here is you might hear Mandarin tie eating be like ear. Be like ear and be like ear both work. It’s just different ways to say it. So let’s break that one down. So tie or toy means he, she, it. Okay, eating eating [music] in Mandarin means already. But or be basically means to graduate. La means complete the action marker because the act of graduating is completed or join Cantonese and then eat or means basically their area of expertise. Okay, so they already graduated from their area of expertise. So that’s the action object pair. Then in Cantonese Mandarin means but. Okay, join [music] means still in Mandarin high. Okay, may may means hasn’t. Then one dow, chow dow. One is actually the verb here or chow in Mandarin and then dow is basically the results. Okay, so that’s the result complement indicates that the act of finding has gotten the results of like it happened. Wan dou found that you would looked. What means to look? It’s the action and then dou means like dou means action successfully completed. Not successfully completed is what it’s saying. So, chong mei wan dou, that’s a framework two. And then gong zuo is work or gong zuo in Mandarin. So, this is that framework and there’s actually a name for these, it’s called liheci or liheci in Mandarin. Okay, these are called separable verbs. And it’s a verb-object pair that splits apart to let things [music] in between. And there are hundreds of these in Chinese. And the reason why this matters is because once you know [music] these like the way they split, the grammar just stops feeling random. Okay, you see sik jo fan and you know exactly why that jo or again in Mandarin, chi le fan, why exactly it’s sitting in between the chi and the fan. And the reason why is cuz it’s modifying the verb, not the pair. You see sik yun fan or chi wan fan and you recognize the result complement wan or yun from the result recipe sitting inside a separable sandwich. That is the framework. The important thing is if you want to get good at Chinese, you have to stop memorizing a compound verb for just a compound verb, but rather because there’s a million verbs that mean the same thing if you translate to English. But if you understand what the verb is actually implying, then you reach that next level of understanding Chinese. So, that’s three frameworks down, right? Simple singles, result recipes, and separable sandwiches. Now, before our fourth framework, let’s do one more action verb breakdown to kind of lock it in. Ta chi wan fan jiu pao chu qu le. Okay, sik yun fan jiu pao chu qu le. He finished eating and ran out. Okay, so play-by-play, he ate, finished the meal, then he ran out, and off he goes. So, let’s look at all the verbs here. Chi wan fan, okay, we just learned that one. Action-object split with a wan or yun in between. But look at pao chu qu, okay? Pao chu qu, run out and go. In this case, chu qu or chu qu isn’t a result. Nothing resulted from running and it’s not an object. He didn’t run on something. It’s telling you where the running went. And that’s a different kind of compound entirely, which brings us now into our fourth framework, which I call the direction drop. So, what kind of compound is paau chyuut heui or paau chyut heui? Okay, this is a direction drop. Run out and go. So, if we said chyuut heui or chyut heui isn’t a result, it’s not an object, it’s a direction, where the movement ended up. And here’s what makes this framework powerful. Because direction is its own piece, it’s interchangeable. Chyuut heui doesn’t belong to paau. Okay, but it works with any movement verb. Same direction, different ways of moving. Let’s take some examples to just make this a bit more clear. Paau chyuut heui paau chyut heui means to run out. Zaau chyuut heui or zaau chyuut heui means to walk out. Fei chyuut heui fei chyuut heui means to fly out. Paa chyuut heui paa chyuut heui means to crawl out. Yaau chyuut heui yaau chyuut heui means to swim out. So, it’s the same Lego principle as result recipe. You swap one piece, you keep the other. Now, this where it gets really cool. You flip it. Let’s keep the movement paau and swap the direction complements. So, for example, paau chyuut heui or paau chyuut heui, we know that means to run out, away from you. Paau chyuut laai paau chyuut laai, that means run out towards you. Paau yaap heui paau jin chyuu, means to run in, but running away from you. Paau jin laai, means to run in towards you. Paau faan laai, paau wui laai, means to run back. Paau seung heui paau seung chyuu, means to run up. Paau lo heui or paau haa chyuu, means to run down. Now, the key thing here is there were a lot of direction combinations that I just went over, but I don’t want you to memorize them like vocabulary. Instead, I want you to understand the sequence. Because each direction piece is built from two parts. The first character tells you the direction, where the movement is heading. The second character tells you the perspective, towards you or away from you. Let’s look at some examples with sentences. Keui paau yaap heui lo ye. Ta paau jin chyuu naa dung si. Okay, so keui ta means he. Pao or pao means to run. Jin means to go in yep in Cantonese and then hui means away from us. Okay, so to go away from us and go or chu in Mandarin. So pao jin chu means to run in away from us. Lo is to take and then na in Mandarin and then dong xi is the word for thing in Mandarin and we use ye in Cantonese so hui pao hui lo ye ta pao jin chu na dong xi. He ran in to get something. And just like separable sandwich this applies in both Cantonese and Mandarin, right? Like you saw pao chu hui pao chu chui the exact same rules in both languages. Same characters, same direction pieces, same everything. Okay, if you’re a Cantonese speaker who wants to learn Mandarin, I’m glad you enjoy this explanation, but you don’t need to learn all this specific framework and all this stuff because you know it intuitively because you’ve been speaking all your life Cantonese. And so you can actually learn Mandarin a lot faster. All you got to do is learn how to map your Cantonese over to Mandarin. And so if you are Cantonese speaker who’s trying to learn Mandarin, just uh click the link down below. We have an entire masterclass that shows you how to learn Mandarin a lot faster by using your Cantonese as as leverage. I know you don’t need to know how to read or write. It works if your Cantonese is just like ten sec gong. So, framework five. This is called bridge block. This one explains whether an action can achieve its results or can’t. You’ve been seeing this boo or pop up in pieces all over this video. So tui m hoi tui m kai sim hoi sim m kai. Now let’s talk about what it’s actually doing. Remember, in separable sandwich we learned that the lo and the gwo can go between action object pairs. So chi lo fan chi gwo fan. Okay, those markers modify the action. Did you complete it? Have you experienced it? But with Mandarin result compounds like da kai, the lo and gwo don’t go between the pieces, they go after. So it’s not da lo kai it’s da kai lo. It’s not da gwo kai it’s da kai gwo. Why? Because da guy is one event. The hitting and the opening happening together. The law comments on the whole event. The hit opening is complete. So it goes after the whole thing. The block bridge covers whether an action can reach its result or not. To do that we use the boo or men Cantonese to indicate it can’t and we use buck or duh to indicate it can. But unlike law where it went after the compound verb, the boo and the duh those go in between. Now the question you might have now is why did this go between? Because it didn’t wasn’t between for the law. Well, the reason why is because they’re asking a different question. They’re not asking that it happened, they’re asking can the action reach the result? Can the hitting lead to opening? Duh says yes or duh in Cantonese. The action can reach the result. Boo says no, it can’t. So da duh kai means you hit, can it reach the result opening? Yes, it can. Da duh kai. Da boo kai. You hit, can it reach the result opening? No, it can’t. It boo. Na da boo kai cannot reach that result opening. So think of it this way, okay? The duh and the boo sit between the action and the result because they’re questioning the bridge between them. Can A get to B? [music] Can the action lead to the result? Yes or no, okay? Da da hoi. Yes, it can. Da boo hoi. No, [music] it can’t. Okay, so let me show you some examples. Moon tai chung la. Wo da boo kai. Moon tai chung la. Wo da boo hoi. So the door is too heavy, I can’t open it. Moon or moon means door. Tai chung la. Tai chung la means too heavy. And then wo da boo hoi or wo da boo kai means I can’t open it. And here’s where it all comes together, okay? This works on both the result recipe and the direction drop compounds, okay? The same duh and boo position, same everything. For example, pa chin chu means to crawl in. Pa boo chin chu. Pa boo chin chu means can’t crawl in. So pa means crawl, boo means can’t, chin chu means go in, right? So pa boo chin chu. Can’t crawl in. Remember that boo goes in between the main verb and [music] in this case the direction. What it’s implying in this case with the direction complement is saying that the verb cannot achieve the desired direction. We can’t crawl it. For pao chu lai, pao chu lai, to run out, or pao chu lai in Mandarin means to run out towards us. Pao de chu lai means pao means to run, de means can, and then chu lai means to come out, right? So, you can you can run direction of coming out. Pao de chu lai, you can run that direction of coming out. And so, you see it doesn’t matter if the destination is a result or direction, but da and the boo just ask can the action get there? And so, bridge block is important because it turns the other four frameworks from vocabulary into a live system. Without it, you know how to build the compounds, da kai chu fan, pao chu lai, whatever. But with it, you can now ask where those compounds can actually happen. Da de kai ma, chu bu wan, pao bu chu chu, right? Every compound you learn in the first four frameworks now has a can and can’t form that applies to everything. And this is what fluent speakers actually do. They don’t memorize verb forms. [music] They know these five frameworks inherently because, you know, they’re freaking natives. But simple singles, result recipe, separable sandwich, direction drop, and bridge block. Now, by the way, they don’t call it these. I named it these cuz I think alliteration makes it more fun. But this is what they do, and then they build like they need. You don’t memorize every finished set. You just know you have these different [music] bricks, and that’s what gets you to that 83% of Chinese verbs. See, Chen and Duanmu published corpus research in 2016 that showed that action object, action result, and direction compounds together make up 83% of every multi-character Chinese verb. All three compound types follow the same principle, pieces that snap together, split apart, and accept that bridge block. And so, that’s why this is so important and so helpful. Most textbooks spend a lot of time on this stuff, but you just got it in a short amount of time. So, I hope that was helpful. That was um a lot longer than I expected to take on my end, too. My mouth is exhausted, okay? So, I’m going to call it a day. Hope you enjoyed my video. If you did, then subscribe for more. And uh remember, if you’re a Cantonese speaker who wants to learn Mandarin, we have a free guide uh down below that will show you exactly how you can use that Cantonese to help you learn more Mandarin, okay? Until next time, joy gein, zai jian, bye-bye. Ah, I’m tired.