Am soooooo excited, we have a new language in the Bilingual Babes household! Schmoo's school has just started offering Mandarin as an after-school club and I just couldn't resist. I've already downloaded all the Mandarin apps I can find for the iPad, and it's amazing how many words they've picked up. I'm sure being bilingual from birth has played a huge part in their ability to pick up another language more easily. They already know that another language can be useful, they already get the concept that an object can have more than one name.
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We are now one term in to Schmoo's Mandarin learning and she totally loves it. Even better, Pan-Pan is picking up quite a lot too, since it's somehow become one of our 'official' household languages! I have been seeking out anything I can find in Mandarin. Not easy, as I don't speak a word myself, so not always even sure if what I'm looking at is Mandarin, but have managed to source some great DVDs that they've watched, like Muzzy, which has a very grainy old 70s feel that they seem just as gripped by as the modern whizz-bang animation they're more used to. I'm now looking for phonic books to read with them, as I have no clue how to pronounce the characters. If anyone has any suggestions for books an English speaker could cope with, or other toys that could be helpful, that would be brilliant.
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Its wonderful that the kids enjoy learning languages. Just recently my health visitor suggested that I get some books for my soon, in French, as I mentioned hubby has family there. Prehaps in a few months I'll explore this, when the madness of a newborn in the household has settled a bit.
ReplyDeleteYes, I think they've really got the language bug, which is great news, as sometimes I have wondered if I've been so strict it would backfire! Getting your kids into French sounds like a great idea, especially as you have francophone relatives. Hope you are finding a few moments of peace amongst the mayhem!
DeleteHave you tried youtube? Type in Chinese or Mandarin Children's songs and a whole bunch videos will come up with Chinese and sometimes pinyin subtitles.
ReplyDeleteThere should be free apps on the Ipad that help with pinyin (Romanization of Chinese phonetics). I don't know how good they are since I already know pinyin and haven't needed to use them. If you know someone who is Chinese I would suggest that you ask them to teach you either pinyin or zhu yin fu hao (Chinese phonetics). It is well worth the time to learn either since most children's books in Chinese include zhu yin and many youtube videos use pinyin. Maybe you can do a language exchange to get someone to help you =)
In case you don't know about these apps (I typed in Chinese children's book as the search and they came up):
Shapes - first book was free (includes Chinese characters and you can either have it read aloud or "read myself" option) Additional books cost .99 each. English translation for some vocab but not for the whole story. I think there are some videos too.
Ana Lomba's easy Immersions classic storybooks (the free one is La Petite Poule Rousse in both Mandarin and French). It is too long for me to read to my 9 month old but your kids will enjoy it I think since they are older.
Pleco is a good dictionary. You can type in English word and get the Chinese word. Dict function is free. There is an optical character reader (point iphone or ipad at a Chinese word on the page, it will scan and tell you the definition) that costs about $15. The only thing is it gives multiple definitions (depending on context) so if you aren't familiar with Chinese, it might not be that useful.
There are a bunch of other apps for learning vocab but I am thinking you already have downloaded them.
Thanks so much for all of these helpful sources! I think you're right, I need to learn Chinese right along with my children! I have started trying to decipher the characters and learn pinyin, so I can try to stay at least one step ahead.
DeleteI'm going to take a look at all of these and am especially interested in the dictionary because at the moment we just have a couple of books full of random characters, which is not so easy when you need to find a specific word!
almost forgot this website for ordering books. I already ordered a few. there are reviews of the books too which I found helpful in determining what to order. Also, there are free resources.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.childbook.com/
And this site looks great! They have a really good range. I am also on the lookout for any similar sites that sell from the UK or Europe, as shipping charges can be very high.
DeleteCongratulations! You have been nominated for the Liebster award. I don't know what the meaning of it is, but it must be something good (I hope you don't mind being nominated)...http://spaghetti-o.blogspot.fr/2013/01/liebster-award.html
ReplyDeleteThanks, Reb, I'll take a look. I think I was nominated for this once before, it seems to be a kind of blog networking idea. It's always nice to be nominated for anything :-)
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