BrillKids Forum

I need help with 2 topics:

First:
I am planning to get the NEW LR Deluxe that comes with all the extra material that will help in teaching LR.

Since i will also buy Chinese Curriculum, i would like to know if it comes with some physical material (Lesson Planners).

If this is the case, I would like both to be shipped together to avoid paying extra.

second:

I do not know much about Mandarin. Which one will be better the simplified or traditional characters? What is the difference.

I see in Rosetta that there are 3 options of 'words' as shown on the image attached.

One is the one i understand the most. Is this what is called 'pinyin' ?
Are the other 2: simplified and traditional? I do not see too much difference between these two.

have no idea of Chinese

Hi 2010BEBES,

I purchased the physical product of Little Reader Chinese and I received a box set that included the curriculum content and a daily lesson planner.
I did a little research (on the brillkid forum) and I found out that the difference of simplified and traditional characters is basically that simplified is a cleaner version of the traditional character and is more commonly used where people speak Mandarin.


http://www.gts-translation.com/Chinesefaq.asp

Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese are different variations of the written Chinese language. They have the same basic grammatical structure but for various cultural and historical reasons, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese use different writing systems and are not interchangeable. Therefore, you may need to prepare translations in both Simplified and Traditional.

Simplified Chinese is used and is the official writing system in mainland China (PRC) and in Singapore. Traditional Chinese is used and is the official writing system in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.

Traditional Chinese uses about 13,000 characters; some of the characters are highly complex. The complexity of this written system was one of the causes of widespread illiteracy in China for many years. The Simplified Chinese writing system, which has about 8,000 characters, was introduced as an official writing language in 1949 in order to combat illiteracy

I looked at the picture you posted of Rosetta's Option One and that is pinyin.
Pinyin is a translation of mandarin characters into alphabet letters

Here is the Wikipedia (Thanks DadDude!) definition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin
Pinyin (Chinese: 拼音; pinyin: pīnyīn; Mandarin pronunciation: [pʰɪ́n jɪ́n]) is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters to teach Mandarin Chinese in China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan.[1] It is also often used to spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters (汉字, hànzì) into computers.

Pinyin has become a tool for many foreigners to learn the Mandarin pronunciation, and is used to explain the grammar and spoken Mandarin together with hanzi. Books containing both Chinese characters and pinyin are often used by foreign learners of Chinese; pinyin's role in teaching pronunciation to foreigners and children is similar in some respects to furigana-based books (with hiragana letters written above or next to kanji) in Japanese or fully vocalised texts in Arabic ("vocalised Arabic").

The government in China introduced Simplified Chinese to make it easier for the citizens to become literate in the mid 1900s.  However, Hong Kong and Taiwan are the major 2 countries which have not switched to Simplified Chinese characters.  I am learning university Chinese at the moment - and also having spoken to a few people from Hong Kong - have heard that the argument for learning Traditional Characters is that they have a meaning behind them (according to the 'radicals' within the character) and if you understand the smaller components (radicals) then you will find it easier to memorise.  The critisism that I have heard level against Simplified Characters is sometimes they bear no resemblance to the traditional Character.

Having started learning in Traditional - it's certainly more difficult to write the script ... and a lot easier to learn Simplified.  And I don't recall too many problems switching from Traditional to Simplified when I was a child learning at weekend 'Chinese School'.

I agree with Mela Bala re PinYin - it's only an aid for pronunciation and helpful for typing Chinese Hanzi into computers.  It's much easier to learn the characters and memorise them as pictures rather than adding an additional piece of information to memorise.

I would be interested to see how you go with learning the Rosetta Stone!

Thanks for clearing up the difference between simplified and traditional Chinese mtbb999
When my son is ready I will make sure I can find him a teacher who can teach him and myself the traditional Chinese

I have just re-started learning with Mandarin because 3 years ago i did the first 5 lessons but then i quit. Now i am planning to teach my granddaughter so i think it will be much better if a understand or may pronounce some things. Beisdes Rosetta, i will follow Brillkids chinese curriculum and learn at the same time wiht her.

Wouyld you recomend to go for simplified or traditional Chinese. I suppose that in the image i attached we have the last written quote in traditional. Is it right?

i myself cant read/write chinese, but my husband can..
so i asked my hubby as to whether we should teach simplified or traditional chinese.. and he said Simplified.
reasons being, it's more widely used..and traditional chinese writing is harder to learn..(most of them can read but not write tradtional chinese)

just a personal opinion!

thanks luckybabe, i too am incline for the simplified chinese. I find it difficult enough for me to learn with the pinyin presentation in order to understand and then go to the symbols that trying the traditional will be almost imposible. Since I will be the one teaching my granddaughter, or at least learning wih her through DVD, CD and LR mandarin i think i have to choose Simplified version.

Thanks a lot. I will start in one or two month from now and take it slowly since she is only 2 month old and do not want to force her vision watching much TV or PC and i will start with LR english. 

Hello everyone,

I think Mela and mtb999's explanations are already clear and informative enough, but in case you haven't seen our Support article about this you may find it here: http://support.brillkids.com/index.php/article/difference-simplified-traditional-chinese-curriculum


2010BEBES, about your product and shipping questions, yes the Chinese Curriculum box set comes with the printed weekly lesson planners. You may find the item list for each product in the Online Store pages (just click on the Learn More button for the product you want to know more about). And yes, you may just checkout once with all the products you want to buy together. To further save on shipping, you may actually get just the download-only version of the Chinese Curriculum -- LR already has a Progress Diary screen, which is exactly the same as the printed planners (but if you prefer to write things down in hard-copy planners then I guess the best option for you is to really get the box set).

:)