My Son & Chinese

This year since my babysitter has gone back to work, I am not able to attend Chinese classes. :-( I'm disappointed because this will only prolong the process of learning the language and increasing my proficiency. Anyway, I'm doing my best to keep up what I have learnt so far and slowly add new words and phrases along the way. It really helps that I am teaching my son what I have learnt because we can speak it to each other and I have some way to practice...even if it isn't ideal. He is 2 1/2 years old.

It's so great to see him pick up Chinese while he is learning English. I try and use Chinese and English words when teaching him different things so that he learns right from the start that different languages exist and we can easily use and learn each language. I really hope to help him grow up with the idea that being bilingual is a completely normal and great part of life.

I have a set of books for him to read in Chinese that are all on simple topics suitable for children and I had the most wonderful experience a few weeks ago when I saw him pick up one of the books and tell himself the story in Chinese!!!! He can't read but he had completely (almost perfectly) memorised the story in Mandarin. It was so rewarding to see some results from my effort to teach him. Because he is so young, he just picks up the words as though he was learning English words and it is completely normal to him. I can even ask him simple sentences like 这是谁？ (who is this?) and he understands and answers me! It's really exciting. :-)

I discovered 'international schools' the other day. Ok, maybe it has taken me awhile but anyway, I finally discovered them and would totally love to teach at one and send my son to one. One particular school I looked at in China has 2 teachers for every class, one Chinese and one Western, so that everything is done bilingually and multiculturally. I would love to give my son this wonderful opportunity to learn about Chinese culture and learn the language while he is young. My husband will finish his teaching degree in a couple of years so we are considering applying for teaching jobs then and heading over and with us teaching at an international school, it makes the perfect opportunity for our son to attend and for us all to really increase our knowledge and proficiency in the language. I don't know whether this will happen but I am so glad I discovered this option and I hope we will get the opportunity to make the most of it.

333 Hanzi In A Day

The other day I stumbled across this great e-book for learning Chinese characters (hanzi). I found it while I was browsing through scribd and managed to fine the main website which had the e-book for free and a heap of other resources.

http://www.kanji-sudoku.com/

Now, when you go to the website, you will fine a heap of stuff for learning Japanese Kanji. Don't worry, you are at the right place! Most Japanese Kanji is based off Chinese characters (hanzi) and therefore, there is a large set of characters that look identical in both languages. In many cases, the meaning is also the same but I'm pretty sure the pronunciation is always different between the languages.

Pretty much everything you will want is found in the lists of links on each side of the homepage, specifically the right hand side which contains all the links for the actual downloads. The list of links on the left seems to mainly be links to pages with information on the given topic and doesn't contain the link you need to download. As this page is made primarily for Japanese Kanji, you will see that there is not too much for Chinese but what they do have seems fantastic.

You will find:

• 333 Hanzi In A Day e-book
• Chinese sudoku using numbers 1-9 in the form they are written for legal/financial documents
• 12x12 sudoku using the Chinese Zodiac characters
• Hanzi Crossword Puzzle

These are all really useful ways to practice your basic characters. I haven't tried them out yet but after having a read through the e-book, I thought it looked very practical and really made sense learning characters that were so similar. I found even in just a few minutes of looking at some characters, it really aided my memorisation of their meaning and construction.

How to type in Chinese on your iMac.

Here's the steps to get your Apple iMac set up to type in Chinese. It's pretty simple but I've put detailed instructions below so that anyone can set it up, no matter how good/bad you are with computers. :-) Please note: I am using Mac OS X Version 10.6.6 It may be a little different on older versions.

1. Click on the apple symbol in the top, lefthand corner of your screen.

2. Click on System Preferences. A window should open.

3. Click (You'll probably have to double click) on an icon called Language and Text. It has a little blue flag above it and is the 5th icon from the left in the top row. If your display is a little different, it is under the category, 'personal'.

4. Now that you are in the Language and Text window, there should be 4 headings near the top. The last one should be Input Sources. Click on this.

5. You will now see a list of languages on the left that you can scroll through. Scroll down until you find Chinese and click on the box next to it. You can choose either Simplified or Traditional Chinese. I only use Simplified. It also has 4 sub-options underneath it. I'm pretty sure the main one you will need is just the pinyin-simplified one but you can tick all if you like just to make sure. You can always try them out and then go back and un-tick them later.

6. Take a look at the bottom of the Language and Text window and make sure you tick an option that says 'Show Input menu in menu bar'. You have now done everything you need to do to get going.

7. Before you close the Language and Text window, you can have a look at the keyboard shortcuts for changing between English and Chinese. These make it a lot faster and efficient if you are often changing between the two languages. You will see the shortcuts near the top right corner of the window. You can use the default shortcuts already shown or if you click on the button that says 'keyboard shortcuts...', you can set up your own shortcuts. I won't go into how to set up your own because that could take awhile but feel free to try it out yourself. You can always reset them back to the default settings if you mess it up.

8. Give it a go using the keyboard shortcuts to change between English and Chinese. Make sure you have a typing program open like Text Edit or Pages so you can actually try it out.

9. To see which language you are in, take a look at the bar at the very top of your screen. In the top right corner near the time, you should see either a flag from your country (mine shows an Australian flag) or a grey square with a Chinese character in it. This is what indicates your language 'input'. You can either use the keyboard shortcuts to make this change or you can click on the flag/symbol with your mouse to make a drop down menu appear. You can then choose your selected language with your mouse from the drop down menu.

10. When you are in Chinese typing mode, you need to type in the pinyin for the character you want. For example, try typing, 'yi'. A list will then appear of possible characters and you can select the character you want by pressing the corresponding number. This may seem slow at first but it actually gets quite quick with practice. It will only show 9 options at a time (sometimes less) but if the one you want isn't in the list, you can usually click on a little down arrow after the 9th character to see more options. I occasionally don't find the character I'm looking for. I don't know why they don't exist but I just find it in another program and copy and paste it in. For words that require more than one Chinese character, you can type in the pinyin for both (or more) characters and you will be given the option to choose multiple characters at once. Eg. type 'taiyang'. (this means sun) You will then be given the option to input 2 characters at once, 太阳. This is much faster than typing tai, selecting the character, and then typing yang, and selecting the character.

I think that's about everything you need to know. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I think the main thing is to have a go at it yourself and try it out. You will figure out all kinds of things when using it yourself.

Have fun typing in Chinese!!

ProVoc - Language Learning Program for Mac

The other day, my husband reminded me of this fantastic program that he used to learn Greek when he was at uni. It's called ProVoc and is only for Apple Macs. It is completely free. You download the program and then either create your own vocabulary lists or download lists that others have made. They have heaps for Chinese - some are more useful than others. A lot of people have made lists for the textbook they are using so you might find yours in there. I have ended up making my own list for my textbook.

It is so simple to use. You put in your vocabulary including translation and comments if you wish. Then you have a few different types of tests you can do to practice your words. There are also many different options for the tests so you can really vary them to suit yourself and your needs. When you are making your own vocabulary list, it really helps if you have Chinese as an option for typing on your computer. I'll explain how to set that up on a mac in another post. It's really easy. :-)

To download ProVoc, go to http://www.arizona-software.ch/provoc/download.html. You can also download a widget to practice your words too.

To download the vocabulary lists, go to http://www.arizona-software.ch/provoc/vocabulary.html?show=cn.

Hope you find this as useful as I have!