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??

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

[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.

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

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]

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.

[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]

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]

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]

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!

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