Teaching chinese language-Traditional or simplified chinese??

[diva7]

Hi there,

I would like to teach my daughter chinese(manderin). I do not speak this chinese dialect and know absolutely zero about teaching chinese to a toddler. I would like to start with flash cards. Any suggestions would be extremely helpful. I have a few questions to ask though:

1-What do I teach? Simplified or traditional chinese?
2-Am I able to teach my daughter manderin when I dont speak it myself??
3-What if I am pronouncing it wrong?? lol

I have started showing her some teaching babies/kids dvd in chinese. She’s not overly interested though…maybe once she understands what they are on about, it might get interesting :unsure:

[ikeadaddy]

Hi Divaseven,

you are amazing and far-sighted. It’s good to put your child on Chinese acquisition when he/she is young.

check out this fantastic and awesome DVD program from Singapore. It focuses on speech, character recognition and application. step-by-step using flashcard methodology.

chec out their website and webshop: www.WINKTOLEARN.com. They provide free delivery worldwide from singapore and you can order online securely via paypal. they post a number of free lessons online. check it out!

Have fun! Keep up the spirit!

Cheers!

[superdad]

Hi there,

To answer to your questions:

1. It’s always easier to teach simplied chinese, given that traditional chinese has alot more strokes
2. You can expose her but I don’t think she will be able to hold a very good conversation in Mandarin since she won’t get to use it on a day-to-day basis
3. Do you have access to Chinese Educational Software or Audio CDs? It might help in getting your child’s pronunciation right

My 2 cents worth.

[iyph28]

Hey,

Here are some suggestions for you:

1-What do I teach? Simplified or traditional chinese?

I would suggest Simplified Chinese because it is commonly used in China and it is easier.

2-Am I able to teach my daughter mandarin when I dont speak it myself??

You can expose her child to Chinese native speaker such as getting a Chinese nanny or get educational materials online or from stores. Chinese children songs will be good as she will pick up easily with the music.

3-What if I am pronouncing it wrong??

This is a good tool of Chinese text to speech. As much as you want to teach her, you can learn as well.

http://www.iflylanguage.com/ltt/

[diva7]

Thank you all for your responses. It will motivate me to continue teaching my daughter a language I am not familiar with. :happy:

Those wink to learn dvd seems awesome! Thanks to you ikeadaddy! I have purchase them all! :ohmy:

http://www.iflylanguage.com/ltt/ this link doesnt seem to work. But thank you for the suggestions iyph28. I will search around for one.

[patience]

I believe this is the link to the site that was suggested earlier…http://www.iflylanguage.com/ListenToThis/. You should be able to record your voice and the site will evaluate it for you and tell you if you made a mistake. I am also in the process of teaching my son Chinese and have been for a while now (he just turned 1). He is not speaking much chinese only ba4ba (daddy) and ma1ma (mommy), but he understands a lot. I only have some nursery rhymes that he listens to, as well as flashcards, but most of his exposeure comes from me talking to him. I have been learning chinese since earlier this year and it is going great!! If you ever have any questions please don’t hesitate to let me know!!

[ev]

The lessons from www.WINKTOLEARN.com look pretty good. I especially like how the different parts are in different colors. Can you do that with Little Reader?

[Lappy_1]

Hi ev!

Yes, you can randomize the colors of the words and the backgrounds in Little Reader too - the PlayBack Settings panel allows you to set the color of your choice for the words and backgrounds, as well as keep it changing each and every time. :yes:

[ev]

Hi Lappy,

Really? Can there be different colors for different parts of a single Chinese character? How would you do that?

[KL]

I’m afraid that’s not possible right now. We also don’t have plans for such a function. I can understand splitting up different characters, why would you want to split up parts of one character?

[Lappy_1]

Oh Sorry Ev, I must have misunderstood!

The Little Reader function I was talking about allows you to customize the colors and backgrounds of the words (or characters) - randomly different for each slide. There is, however, no support for multicolored letters as KL said.

[joan_1]

Chinese characters are made up different parts. If you can read the parts, most of the times, you can guess the meaning of the character. Showing the different parts in different color highlights each section, I think that will help the brain to “see” the individual parts.

[texaslady22]

@joan post:12

Chinese characters are made up different parts. If you can read the parts, most of the times, you can guess the meaning of the character. Showing the different parts in different color highlights each section, I think that will help the brain to “see” the individual parts.

Even without the different colors, a child might (or probably) still learn it on his own. We don’t teach a child the parts of a sentence, but the child still learns how to put one together. Exposure, exposure, and the rest will take care of itself!

[wenjonggal]

1. It is probably easiest to learn /teach simplified characters, as others pointed out, they are SIMPLIFIED! LOL! But it is good to have some exposure to traditional ones… just to recognize that they the same meaning as simplified ones you/she knows. Because a LOT of bilingual stuff, and mandarin stuff available is from Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan… and they all use traditional. Many more resources in traditional, including subtitling in dvds etc. (our Bob the Builder ones are subtitled in traditional characters only)

2. You can probably learn at the same time as your child. All the things a beginner in a foreign language learns is the same as the child’s early vocab… very simple phrases, easy vocab etc. Right now I am learning “in” “out” “beside” etc in Chinee, and my son is just learning the differences between these in any language. He and I are at the same level in flashcards, baby books etc! And as someone said, you can get someone in. I just asked around, an an acquaintance had a Chinese (Beijing) girlfriend, who now comes to our home once a week. She teaches us words and phrases… usually just about what we are doing: “baby wants milk! Mama puts milk in the bottle” “baby is hungry” “mama will give you a cookie”. And then I can say the same things the whole week til she comes again and I learn new phrases. And she corrects my pronunciation.

3. As an adult learner, I highly recommend http://chinespod.com which focuses on spoken chinese (from Shanghai). Very good for hearing correct pronunciation. You can listen over and over, and the newbie level is very easy. You can search for lessons by subject ie “baby” “children” “family”

[iyph28]

Dear wenjonggal,

FYI, Singapore is using simplied Chinese.

Dear divaseven,

Greatest advantage of using simplied Chinese, you can communicate with Mainland China of estimated population of 1,330,044,544.

Some information on Chinese written language and the countries of use:

Simplified Chinese: Mainland China, Singapore, Malaysia

Traditional Chinese: Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Overseas Chinese Communities

Simplified Chinese Characters - General Information
Simplified Chinese Characters are one of two standard sets of Chinese characters of the contemporary Chinese written language. They are based mostly on popular cursive (caoshu) forms embodying graphic or phonetic simplifications of the “traditional” forms that were used in printed text for over a thousand years. The government of the People’s Republic of China has promoted them for use in printing in an attempt to increase literacy. They are officially used in the People’s Republic of China or Mainland China, Singapore, Malaysia, and the United Nations.

Traditional Chinese Characters - General Information
Traditional Chinese is currently used in the Republic of China (Taiwan), Hong Kong and Macau. Overseas Chinese communities generally use traditional characters, but simplified characters are often used among mainland Chinese immigrants.

Cheers!

[trinity_papa]

It’s pretty hard to teach a foreign language if you do not know or speak it yourself, its slow, its tedious, and its not effective. … But there is hope.

You can get dvds in multi languages, if your kid (above 3) likes dora the explorer you can try getting some of it from china or singapore, if you want SC, or from taiwan, if you want TC. The curious child would force themselve to look at it again and again till they picked up something … but to communicate in chinese … they will need to attend proper classes … just the cd dvds etc, it would help because they have a built in auditory reciever that helps them get in tune to that language and have a rough idea … so say when the teacher tries to explain or express certain meaning of teh words … little Dora comes back into the picture … and he would realize why dora say this or that …

Some caution though …

1. SC is easier and can use hanyupinying to type in a computer easier for non-chinese native speakers … but those who learn TC can understand SC, whereas learning SC … one may not understand TC easily, but TC is much much harder to learn and its not so easy to type TC in a computer for non-native speakers …

2. Chinese has many dialects, taiwan speaks menan hua … and to those not so exposed may get confused … like in HK the locals like to call their local dialect cantonese as chinese… its actually a local village language … as like teochew, hokkien, hakka, shanghai, etc … and each village or city (international village) calls their local dialect chinese … You can say the varies dialects are like the EU, each region have their own language, like fench, italian, german etc … but not sure if there is a EU language …, so … when someone tells you they speak chinese … you really have to find out if its the chinese and not some dialect group …

3. As with all language there are differences in tones, pitch and delivery … although english is well known, but not many speak international english … but then what is international english…? In uk, where i studied, the walch doesn’t understand the scottish, the scottish doesn’t understand the yorks … and so on, as there are british english, and texan english … there are different tones of the chinese… so is there international chinese?? Well i guess internationally non native speakers learn english thru their tv programs … and hollywood sets the stage for international english, if you can understand hollywood english, you can understand what i am saying, … however, you can’t do that for the chinese because beijing movies …isn’t that well developed yet and some movies are quite opera like or in a ancient setting of the warring states etc and the language spoken then and now is different, so may need to get CD instead …

(talking of which i don’t understand most of the so called native english speakers teaching english in kindergartens and schools in HK, it doesn’t sound like international english to put it politely,… this is important because if the child learns the wrong accent of the language he would carry that accent into adulthood. hence even if you employ a nanny to teach a foreign language the accent may be important too…)

[hafam]

Hi

I’m using Wink to learn to teach my baby Chinese, and she is most often glued to it, the same for anything new and being a mix of multimedia. And they use simplified characters if I remember correctly.

Personally I don’t care simplified or traditional, whatever available, accurate, and adhering to Doman’s or right brain method, I use it. It’s an extra language, an extra knowledge to gain for my baby. Later on if she is interested she can go exploring all 3000 different dialects of various Chinese community for all I care. The foundation is there to help her.

I want to introduce her to German, French, Russian, Chinese, Vietnamese, English, music, math, art, etc… you name it. Since I have very very limited knowledge of these, and I still have to go to work to earn our living, I don’t think I can hold her hands through all the steps in depth. What I try to achieve is to expose her and build up a foundation for her, which will enable her to go on learning things on herself eagerly, effectively, and hopefully effortlessly.

I would not be so worried about a nanny who can speak Chinese. You can not hire all required people to expose your child to all the languages that you want her to speak. And depending on your time budget, you can set your own ideas around exposing her to real people who talk the language. Now think about it, as a working parent I can’t right now afford to take my child to see all the artworks by sight. But it would not worry me the least about teaching her art. She will have plenty of time to do it later on. And she does not need to see the whole world or sight all the historical inventions in order to learn about them. Couldn’t the same rule apply to languages? Something will stay with her. I remember one of my favourite lines from Doman’s books: if a child can remember 50% of 2000 words, isn’t better than 100% of 20 words?

About accent, I think it’s more of a preference than a compulsory requirement. Who can say which English is better to learn for everyone: British, American, Australian, or New Zealand? I will teach my baby Vietnamese in Hanoi’s accent (Hanoi is the capital, also the accent on national radio and television), but it’s only because that’s my accent and my family’s accent. And she can learn to understand variants of Vietnamese accents (Southern, middle part, etc…) when she comes into contact with these accents.

[hafam]

Now someone mention it, do you guys think it would be good if all the parents specify which accent is it that they upload in their language files? It would be good to know and tell your child what accent it is. And maybe good to expose our children to different accents along the life of learning???

[wenjonggal]

That’s a really interesting point about the accent… I do know that my friend who comes into the house is from Beijing, and Chinesepod is Shanghai… there are some differences they point out at times (finishing words like wan with an “r” sound for instance). On that same point, the chinese Bob the Builder I have on cd has an English option, and Bob speaks a very cute british English with very british expressions! So I guess my child is getting yet another language he wouldn’t hear in his daily life! I do know I read reviews, and on Amazon there are a few “sing and learn chinese” cds that reviewers have specified are Taiwan accent and not mainland China. And the local convenience store has a couple working there who come from the south of China, and they are always trying to correct my (Beijing) accent.

I used to have a tutor for myself for Swedish lessons, and when I went to a “Swedish club” meeting of the whole city, everyone knew who my teacher was as she had a particular provincial way of saying her Rs which she passed on to me.