I’ve posted before about my disappointment with our public schools for failing to bring Mandarin classes into the schools. It’s been a sore spot with countless parents and me, but I’ve tried to stay positive and find other opportunities for my kids to learn Mandarin. Or at least be exposed to it.
Number one son, aka Jake, takes an extracurricular class once a week at the other middle school in town. Once he finishes middle school this year, I’ll have to find another Mandarin class for him. Because the high school doesn’t teach it either.
Today I brought my 2 year old, Martin, to the public library for Mandarin story time. Although free and sponsored by the library, the story time was run by a local language school that offers Mandarin for kids much younger than Jake.
The instructor greeted all the kids with a smiley ni hao. After the kids were seated, the instructor read an English story, but translated it in his head and only spoke Mandarin.
We were approaching Martin’s nap time, so while the other kids sat patiently and listened to the story and played with the props the instructor passed out, Martin rolled around on the floor.
Thirty minutes passed quickly. The kids each received a worksheet with some of the vocabulary (colors) they learned in the story and a brochure about the language classes.
While Martin seemed like he might not have gotten much out of it, I know it’s important to expose him to foreign languages at an early age. Even though he didn’t sit still, he heard Mandarin for thirty straight minutes (with no English spoken during this time).
I’m grateful our library offers this story time, even if it’s only twice a year for now.
If only the public schools would follow suit.
Wow! I wish my library had something like that! I try my best with Lilly, but I’m not a native Mandarin speaker. The local Confucian Institute (which is 30 minutes + away and barely local) does have parent child Mandarin crafts/language classes and I’d intended on signing us up for it. Alas, time got away from me and I blew it. Registration came and went. I’m hoping they’ll offer it again later in the year. Why they insist on offering foreign languages to kids in High School, after the ability to readily absorb languages has quieted, I don’t know.
@Susanbkason, you are right. Many Cantonese words sound quite alike to Mandarin. But the Hokkein word for yi (one)in Mandarin sounds enough closer to yat in Cantonese. In Hokkien is “it” for for “yi” in Mandarin. But generally, there are more words in Cantonese that are closer in sound to those in Mandarin than other Chinese dialects. That is why many Chinese people who are not Cantonese can speak Cantonese very well. Many of my Hokkien friends too speak Cantonese very well and you wouldn’t know whether they are Cantonese or Hokkien. I am one of the lazy exceptions perhaps. Maybe because at work we mostly speak Malay and English and sometimes rudimentary Tamil and with my siblings we speak Hokkien and sometimes Mandarin or sometimes both in the same sentence.
Yeah, any Chinese dialect is difficult for a non-Chinese speaker. My ex-husband’s family is from Hubei and their local dialect is pretty close to Mandarin, so I understood most of what they said. I don’t understand most Cantonese, that’s for sure. I’m lucky to get 20% of a conversation. I have some friends from China who’ve gone to Hong Kong to study and have picked up Cantonese like native speakers, while others haven’t bothered. I guess it’s like that everywhere (where people either try or they don’t). Or maybe they have no ear for language? It’s a fascinating subject to me!
@T, you got a point, but not too smart a one. Good for you, remain mono-lingual, while the rest of the world become multi-lingual. Then when you are in China or a place where everyone is speaking Chinese, you will feel comfortable indeed, like you know what they are babbling about or you could get them to speak English to you. No problem, but I had rather be able to understand their language too and not look like you are missing out or, worse still, somehow inadequate.
@SusanKason, I am impressed that you are able to speak Mandarin and can get along with the Cantonese dialect too. Knowing Mandarin does help, although Cantonese is an entirely different animal, no offence meant. I myself understand Cantonese better than I can speak it. I am Hokkien and the dialect is quite widely spoken here in Malaysia and Singapore. Taiwan and of course Fujian are where Kokkien is the lingua franca so to speak.
I think T does speak at least one Chinese dialect. The point he was trying to make is that people in the west have gotten by this long without learning a Chinese dialect and they’ve done just fine (in their minds, at least!). I can say that if I didn’t know Mandarin, I wouldn’t have formed bonds with certain friends upon first meeting them. It brings people together.
As for Cantonese and Mandarin, I have found some similarities where I don’t in other dialects like Shanghaihua and Hokkien (Minnanhua). I don’t understand either of those at all! In Mandarin, where we say yi for one, the Cantonese is yat. I don’t think those are all that different. And three is san/sam, four si/sei, etc. If I didn’t have previous knowledge of a Chinese dialect, it would have been much more difficult to pick up Cantonese. Now I can look at a Cantonese word like yat or sam and think, “that’s like yi and san in Mandarin” and note the same initial sound.
@OM, I wasn’t defending/advocating the monolingualism of English speakers; I was simply pointing out the reality that currently exists, which is the fact that English has established itself firmly as the language of international business and commerce and the lingua franca by which people of different linguistic backgrounds communicate with one another. As such, the advantageous position enjoyed by English speakers is likely to be maintained despite China’s growing economic clout, and the rush by the Chinese to learn the language would only lend support to this view. Therefore, there appears to be no compelling reason for Americans to trouble themselves with the struggle to learn Mandarin (or any other language for that matter).
@Susan, incidentally, the Wu dialect that you mentioned (i.e. Shanghaihua) is often regarded as the dialect that deviates the most from the Chinese family of languages for its characteristic lack of tones (it only has two, and they’re non-syllabic) and its subject-object-verb syntactic order. I’ve heard it described as being closer to Korean than Mandarin, so go figure.
(And thanks for explaining on my behalf, Susan.)
@T, you are right. The reality is current. But can you be sure for how long? You know, it is not in 30 or 40 years time that China is expected to overtake the American economy as many people are saying. Some experts are now talking in terms of a decade or even less! Once a country dominates the world economy, you can rest assured that its language will be the currency. I don’t know when or even if ever the Chinese economy will overtake America’s. But the point is, if one could learn another language why be so stingy on oneself just because everyone’s speaking your language. You are the one who will appear like the loser – and certainly look inadequate when you are in their environment and they don’t want to speak to you in your language. But of course being mono-lingual or not is a person’s choice. Nobody is living his life for him. But don’t be silly and nit-pick. You know what I mean and I know what you meant. In fact, when I added the sentence that when the Chinese people were all rushing to learn English why couldn’t Americans? I had expected a comment precisely like yours. Maybe I did deliberately put it that way just to see how people would react. On second thought, I did. And no apology. And you are right, not wrong at all logically, except not too wise nor too clever. But nothing personal okay?
Hope American public schools start getting serious about having Mandarin classes. Whether America like it or not, Mandarin is increasingly becoming an internationally important language. American people will lose out if they remain mono-lingual. The trend these days is to be at least bi- if not multi-lingual. If people in China are rushing to master English why can’t the Americans do the same? Even though I am a Chinese myself, I am struggling with the language because I didn’t get to learn the language in school which did not offer the language as a subject. I do get to practise and speak Mandarin with my siblings though, who all attended Chinese vernacular schools. And now I am trying to go further in learning the language.
Thank you! I totally agree! If I’d had the chance to learn Mandarin at an early age, I’d be better at it now. I didn’t start until 19. The high schools surrounding ours all teach it, so I’m not sure why ours doesn’t. We are supposedly one of the best in the state (yeah, right) and many of the parents in our town travel to China for business. With a good foundation in Mandarin, it’s possible to pick up other dialects. I learned enough Cantonese to get around Hong Kong (shopping, ordering food, etc.), but wouldn’t have picked it up without a formal class if I hadn’t studied Mandarin.
Yeah, but a counter-point to that would be, why should Americans bother with Mandarin if the Chinese are rushing to learn English? The thing is, English-speaking people have been doing just fine as monolinguals, no matter where they are in the world, precisely because everyone else learns English.
At least Martin’s one up on most of my students – he sat still and listened!
Do your students roll on the floor? That’s what Martin was doing. But today he said ‘ni hao’ over and over and had decent tones! I wasn’t going to sign the kids up for this school because it seems like a ton of money for something I could do at home. They gave out a sheet yesterday with the vocab in the story, but one of the pinyin words was spelled incorrectly. If I ran an English school, I would be mortified if I spelled an English word incorrectly.
My students don’t roll on the floor – but only because the desks and chairs are too close together to prevent them from doing so.
They’re about as keen to learn English as they are to have their fingernails pulled out, and no amount of coaxing, cajolling, pleading, or downright kicking them in the teeth will change that.
A colleague of mine only has English Majors in her classes, and even then they’re not interested in anything to do with English.
To them, as with the overwhelming majority of Chinese students on the Mainland, English is a waste of time and effort (WOFTAM), something they’re highly unlikely to use as most will never have any contact whatsoever with a native English speaker outside of the classroom.
In fact most English is taught here by non-natives, and at such a terrible level, that is absolutely useless anyway. One of the senior Chinese English teachers is incomprehensible, and only has the job because she has seniority within the department.
Given the current aggressive expansion of Mandarin beyond Chinese borders, through programs such as the Confuscious Institute, Mandarin is on the verge of outpacing English as an international language – especially in several emerging African nations (the ones with the oil and mineral resources, not the ones where there’s bugger all but sand).
You might find this interesting, Stuart:
http://www.realinstitutoelcano.org/wps/portal/rielcano_eng/Content?WCM_GLOBAL_CONTEXT=/elcano/elcano_in/zonas_in/sub-saharan+africa/ari23-2011
For Yang Yang this is the correct video
It’ll be nice if public schools in your area will have some classes for Mandarin 101. There are many lessons for learning Mandarin for Children on YouTube, like
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6kXBtJ7Xoo
On the right side you get many more videos. I was trying to learn Mandarin with Yang Yang
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNoOdNvdZlg
She’s good.
Thanks so much, Giora! I’ll check out these links. We had a cartoon on TV that taught Mandarin, but I think it’s off the air now.