Teaching chinese language-Traditional or simplified chinese??

[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.

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