All about San Zi Jing 三字经 - Three-Character Classic

[RS Mum]

A great site which briefly explains the meanings of the Three-Character Classic 三字. All characters in Traditional Chinese.

http://www.yellowbridge.com/onlinelit/sanzijing.php

In the homepage, features a downloadable program (1 week trial/ payable for full version) YellowBridge Talker which allows Chinese texts to be pronounced in speech on any web page. Try it with the online Chinese flashcard/ memory game/ Dictionary!



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Animated San Zi Jing, slow upload/ streaming time (during daytime), U may consider to download with youtube downloader/ Real player.

Part 1 : http://www.tudou.com/playlist/playindex.do?lid=3119032&iid=15738274&cid=21
Part 2 : http://www.tudou.com/playlist/playindex.do?lid=3119032&iid=15738109&cid=21
Part 3 : http://www.tudou.com/playlist/playindex.do?lid=3119032&iid=15738274&cid=21
Part 4 : http://www.tudou.com/playlist/playindex.do?lid=3119032&iid=15738421&cid=21
Part 5 : http://www.tudou.com/playlist/playindex.do?lid=3119032&iid=15738653&cid=21
Part 6 : http://www.tudou.com/playlist/playindex.do?lid=3119032&iid=15738794&cid=9
Part 7 : http://www.tudou.com/playlist/playindex.do?lid=3119032&iid=15738928&cid=9
Part 8 : http://www.tudou.com/playlist/playindex.do?lid=3119032&iid=15739131&cid=21


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Stories of the San Zi Jing 听故事学三字经 (Note: Not downloadable, click "pause" button to allow upload streaming before playing)
http://v.ku6.com/show/ro96vn2AZtzf2T_U.html

Enjoy!

[karmie]

The one shown on TuDou.com is good.  Do you have any idea where to buy that?

sam
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Link to Lesson 1:
http://www.tudou.com/playlist/playindex.do?lid=3119032&iid=15737700&cid=21

[Nikita]

Thank you for these links. And tell me, what should I teach my little ones...traditional or simplified? If China uses simplified, then simplified makes sense...you cant get more chinese than in china! Though I have to say, if those characters are simplified, I'd hate to see what they consider complicated!! And what is Bo Po Mo?

[wenjonggal]

What exactly is a child whose first language is not chinese supposed to get out of these tu dou wang videos (I like that... potato web)? I already knew a few of the characters, and I suppose it was good to hear them pronounced, but there is no image or anything to indicate what meaning is. Mostly it went in one ear and out the other. I could be pleasant and rhythmic but unlike flashcards that alternate image and word, it is just a slew of words. I am pretty sure my son would not learn anything from this, and I cannot imagine him or I watching it for longer than a couple seconds before tuning out.

I guess if one understands the language already, one would be learning how the characters look for words one already knows/understands.

It was amusing to see the little section on teeth rotting if you come home and eat to much candy without brushing and that seaweed soup is good for you... fortunately those sections (di er ke and di san ke, at the end of each lesson) had narrative characters speaking, context and clear animated images to go with the text and promote comprehension.

I did find also the music quite intrusive and the little moving animals took my attention away from the chinese characters, and I'm not even a child who would be more entranced by laughing monkeys along the side than by words  on the screen.

So I am very curious as to what the purpose of these tu dou videos would be, the pros and the cons. Thankyou!

[RS Mum]

Interesting observations Wenjonggal! 
U r right! tudou = potato... i wonder why someone would want to name their website that, just another alternative site to youku.com where u can find many chinese reources.

These may not be the best videos for teaching the San Zi Jing but they are certainly good general introductions to many even to adult native Chinese who may know nuts & not to mention reciting. (The long historical moral/ confucian stories & reference etc). They read out each 3-characters with clarity and San Zi Jing are usu taught as a chant to be memorised.

I do agree on the distracting animation which is trying to add some interest but take away the main focus on the characters. Had run through several video clips on San Zi Jing which many would give u huge chunks of characters on a single page which would not offer much help but confusion.

San Zi Jing is definitely not a simple chinese classic to pick up but due to the 3-character nature, usu easier to introduce to young children. If a kid could just pick up 1 part of 3-character everyday, he/ she would be learning ard 1200 words in a year (without understanding the meanings).
How amazing it is, a story condensed in 3 words! The classical chinese music seem quite soothing to me. In the ancient Chinese classroom, the children would recite nodding their head in circular motion as they repeat/ chant after their teacher, whether they understand it or not.

Flash cards would work provided that the presenter speaks well & able to explain some stories behind each part.

For non-Chinese speakers, it would be more interesting to start on Chinese nursery rhymes/ songs/ tongue twister (rao kuo ling 绕口令) which are more catchy and more associative. No one would not want to introduce Shakespearance literature before the child learns how to read some basic words, or i may be wrong.

There are many poor quality educational products from China, so would be good to filter out. But of course there are many in foreign languages which are packaged under educational which are of not much value.

Nikita,
The debate on simplified & traditional Chinese will go on & on... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_on_traditional_and_simplified_Chinese_characters

but in general, decide which area u intend to prepare your children to venture should they decide to work overseas. Simplified chinese makes learning easier with lesser strokes due to complexity of writing. Traditional Chinese retains the true meaning & origins of the characters...

Bo Po Mo Fo refers to the Chinese phonetics.(B sounds like Bo, P sounds like Po, M- Mo & F-Fo)
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/chinese2.htm

Karmie
These videos available in China only.

[wenjonggal]

Yes, I think it would be like getting children or babies to recite the Gettysburg address or something. And I am not so sure that they would “learn 1200 words” , and the “that they don’t understand the meaning” seems beyond pointless to me. I could just read words out of the dictionary or recite the table of elements... well even less so, because they can use the table of elements later in life, and I am not sure wherever my son would use stuff about generations of filial piety. He is an only child with no father, and frankly being adopted from China, he is totally disconnected from the generations before him, etc etc. It all makes sense in a society that may be based on these principles, where country and family etc are traditional basis for centuries. But I am pretty sure it has very little bearing on his life now, and he might be interested in the principles behind it as well as the history if he decides to study chinese history and culture as a college student.

But spouting words that passed by with no meaning (even if I explained to him, whatever would he understand of these Buddhist principles?), how will that develop anything linguistically? I am pretty sure he would tune it out. The best I can imagine is that he could run around chanting it, like the little French girls in the neighborhood I used to hear singing the Spice Girls. They had a lot of the pronunciations down, but couldn’t tell me the meaning of a single word (and in fact, couldn’t tell syllables apart from separate words... they were just sounds to them), and could not and still cannot speak one iota of English.

As for the San Zi format... it is wonderful and a brilliant poetry form we cannot replicate here, as we don’t have single character words, and very few one syllable words that have much meaning at all in english. The format is used brilliantly in all sorts of children’s books/songs/poems. I have several books at home with this format, rhyming three character lines. But with illustrations and about things in a child’s life or nature, so they are learning words they understand and can use later in conversation. I’d rather my son learn 500 words he knows the meaning of and can use (dog, cat, friend, throw a ball, leaf, tree, farm, run, kick, laugh, cry, sad, fly, happy...) than 1200 words he has no clue what they are or what they mean.

So, I agree with the format but I guess I don’t see that the San Zi Jing is useful to me, whether the animations are cute or not. Thanks though... it was very interesting to read the it and the history behind it.

[wenjonggal]

LOL!
I just saw the cover of the Chinese version of Dr. Seuss "Hop on Pop" and thought about San zi Jing! Now of course Hop on Pop is not a philosophical or historical treatise, but one can hardly get shorter more succinct words and sentences than that... and then the Chinese translation is so long!!! LOL! I somehow think the simple consonant-vowel-consonant three letter rhyming for beginner readers is quite lost in translation!
http://lanbridge.org/hop-on-pop.html

[RS Mum]

   Exactly. We dont learn translated Chinese! The ways English & Chinese phonetics work are totally different cups of tea. Translation is also an art to be able to retain the essence of the originals skillfully.

Dr Seuss's series is considered as rhymes to learn the English phonics, so meaningless to translate into any other language.

Unlike English, The Chinese language does not consist of alphabets, the characters are made up of pictograms, ideograms, ideogrammic compounds, phono-semantic compounds, transformed cognates & rebus.

If Dr Titzer (Your Baby can read) thinks that babies are able to figure out the English phonetic patterns with exposure to many English words, by introducing many chinese characters and occasionally grouping the characters with the same radicals  (eg. 女radical in 妈，姐, 妹，媚, 姣 all associated with feminine roles or characteristic of a woman), i deduce that babies can gather the meanings or phonetic patterns (may or may not sound alike) by looking at the components (radicals) of the characters. No studies to support this, so basically my own assumption but that is what a regular Grade 6 chinese student should be able to do.

It is usually said that about 2,000 characters are needed for basic literacy in Chinese (eg.to read a Chinese newspaper or novel), and a proficient person will know well in excess of 4,000 to 5,000 characters. A chinese dictionary is made up of 50K+ to 100K characters.

<<三字经>> San Zi Jing would be a basic introduction, coupled with <<千字文>> Qian Zi Wen (Thousand Character Classic- all different 1000 characters with no repetition); and <<百家姓>> Bai Jia Xing (504 Chinese surnames), these 3 classic are called the 「三百千」San Bai Qian-the 3 ancient elementary children classic. Of course there are more and the list goes on & on...


I am in no way affiliated to these acclaimed language enrichment schools but this is how chinese is taught to preschoolers by different approaches:
http://www.yuquan.com.sg/preschool/program.php

http://www.berriesworld.com/3programmes_preschool.php (no classic is used but still efficient & fun)

[wenjonggal]

OK, I think you totally misunderstood me.

I did NOT cite translated Chinese as the best way for small children to learn characters. I only cited it as an example of how in English we Can and Do have the ability to write meaningful sentences in three words of three or two letters that rhyme. We were just marveling about how wonderful Chinese is in that way: using three characters to rhyme to form a complete sentence with meaning. That is the ONLY reason I wrote the last post. Because I saw "Hop on Pop" and laughed at seeing the situation flipped.

Yes I have been learning Chinese myself for over three years now, and can read things like "Hop on Pop" and "Go Dog Go" in Chinese because the concepts are simple and the words used are high frequency, even though they do not rhyme in Chinese and are not succinct. I still can use the vocab and sentence structure when practicing spoken and read chinese with my son. He hops on the dog, for instance. We say "stop!" and "go!" at red and green lights, and I can say "Do you like my hat?" "I do not like our hat"... We are familiar with the story and thus it is easier for us to pick up new chinese characters when there is no pinyin.

I don't think it is possible to compare teaching chinese as a second language and teaching chinese characters to chinese speaking children. There are some similarities, but usually chinese speaking children already know normal sentence structure for speaking in Chinese, as well as culture, and thus can understand the large meaning behind complex ideas rendered in only three characters. They are memorizing the characters, but aren't memorizing the meanings at the same time: they already know most of the words spoken: that "gou" means "dog"... "ren" means "person" etc. The chinese speaking children aren't only learning the language in school: they learn it in context all day long on the street, home, etc.

I do think it would be possible to flash characters with images to teach characters without any translation to small children' or in some cases even adults (which is what Doman... ie Baby Learns Chinese, and Pimsleur does) and have them grasp meaning, and make connections intuitively about the radicals. Of course many words are not precise enough  with just images. In BLC, I couldn't tell without translation if a certain character meant "sweater" "top" "cardigan" "pullover" etc... Even for a dog" does the character mean "greyhound" or "dog" or "hunting dog" if the photo is of a greyhound...

And I still submit that this San Zi Jing is a wonderful classic, but for a child who knows very little or no chinese, given no context, no images, such adult concepts that are foreign to our culture and lifestyle... very little "character learning" would go on... though listening to it might be good for hearing the sounds of chinese language, and looking at it might be good for recognising chinese (vs korean or english or arabic) script.

Thanks for the links to the preschools... it is interesting to see the curriculum. And I do see that they do learn characters "Berries Read & Recognise Programme lays foundation for interest in reading through short sentences created using words the child has learnt" as well as nursery rhymes etc, which makes perfect sense to me.

Anyways, I did order the Dr. Seuss books... we know them by heart in English, and so I am sure that reading the chinese will go well. (note my son is nearly 4, not a baby either. )

And I do want you to know I do very much appreciate the info in the San Zi Jing... I find it so important to know about Chinese traditions and culture.

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