Canto to Mando

I found a You Tube video on the 3 Patterns That Unlock 80% of Chinese by Canto to Mando today. While the goal of the channel is to teach Cantonese speakers how to speak Mandarin, I think this will also help me a lot in picking up Mandarin because I had noticed the things he talked about on some phrases but do not have enough of a background with Mandarin to realize what was actually happening. This is the type of thing that would be really helpful to me to have a Mandarin speaker explain. I'm glad I found this channel.

The 1st pattern is the STPVO Blueprint. Apparently in both Mandarin & Cantonese there is only 1 basic pattern whereas in English there can be more than 1. Sentences in Chinese are set up with Subject 1st, followed by Time, then Place, Verb, & Object. I do not have enough of a vocabulary to have noticed this yet. But now that I know about, I will likely recognize it in the Duolingo lessons.

Subject = I, Time = yesterday, Place = home, Verb = read, Object = book.

Due to STPVO pattern, direct translation does not work. 

 

The 2nd pattern is The Action Chain. Apparently there are no prepositional phrases in Chinese, you just string things together. If there is more than 1 action in a sentence, they are listed chronologically with no prepositions.

Don't look for a Chinese word for that "to".

I don't think they should have included the "to" under the 2 in English.

This is one way to say this in English.

In Chinese it is said chronologically.

The color coding is wrong but numbers are correct. Basically it is "I plane went China."

This color coding is correct.

Both these English sentences have the same translation in Chinese.

Here's another example of the Action Chain with a longer series of actions. You apparently keep stringing them together in chronological order.

When translating in to Chinese, say it like it actually happens.

There is also a Crucial Upgrade. It is basically the If-Then statement. Both in English & Chinese the "Then" is frequently absent.

The "then" does not need to be there for the If-Then statement.

In Chinese it is more like a Because-So statement.

Both have same Chinese translation, "I yesterday home ate pizza."

There is a bonus pattern; it is the use of the word "but". 

The final Pattern 3 deals with Time & its effect on verbs. In the present time, the Mandarin word 在（zài) is placed before the verb. For a past action, the Mandarin word 了（le) is either placed right after the verb or at the end of the sentence. For future tense, the Mandarin word 会（huì) is placed before the verb.

How time changes verb in English.

But in Chinese verbs themselves do not change.

A filter word is added; in Mandarin "right now" filter is before verb.

For "past actions" filter word in Mandarin is either after verb or at end of sentence.

The "future" filter word is placed before the verb.

Here is the actual full video. It is about 21 minutes long, I found it very interesting.  I will be checking out more of his videos.