I Like Chinese Website and Videos

I've had quite a break from posting here. It's been a busy past few months with the arrival of Sam on November 14th and getting used to having 2 kids. We are all adjusting well and Max has started kindy this year so I get 5 days a fortnight with just Sam and I...and Sam sleeps heaps so it's pretty much a day to myself. :-)

Here's a photo of Sam from a few days ago. He was 3 months old yesterday! He somehow managed to inherit beautiful olive skin from my Nana who is Chinese. :-) He's the complete opposite in colouring to Max who has very white skin and strawberry blonde hair! (But I still think they're both gorgeous!)

I've been talking in Chinese to Sam whenever I remember as I would really love to see what impact this will have on him as he learns to speak and later, to learn Chinese. I recently read an article talking about how research has shown that long before babies can speak, they can understand words we say and associate them to an object or action, so this has really got me keen again to keep working on my Chinese and keep it up with the boys. Max's favourite CD is still our Chinese songs CD from Better Chinese and we often sings songs together with Sam.

This morning, I stumbled across some great short videos on youtube from a website, www.i-like-chinese.com/. Most of the videos are only about 1 minute long and teach you the words for common objects and other common words such as friend, thank you, China etc. Most videos look at 4 words and include a picture, the characters, and pinyin. This is perfect for me as I don't have too much time now and am really only focussing on individual words or very short phrases with the boys right now.

I found them fun to watch and it was really easy to practice saying the words and hear the correct pronunciation. Max and Sam seemed to like them too. :-)

Here's one of the videos to give you an idea of what they are like.

Arch Chinese - Pinyin Syllable Table

This is an amazing website for learning Chinese. Most of it is free but to get the full use of it's functions, you need to subscribe. I have found however, that I have all I need in the free functions and it has been a big help with my learning.

Today I'll tell you about the Chinese Pinyin Syllable Table. It is a complete list of all pinyin syllables used in standard Mandarin. It gives you every possible pronunciation you will ever need to speak standard Mandarin. You can click on each syllable to hear it's pronunciation, view all characters with each pronunciation in each tone, and also view each character's definition. You can also click on each character and you will go to a page that gives you further info on the stroke order, radicals used, and definition. It is simply fantastic and an invaluable tool.

I am currently using the table to remind me of pronunciation because I often forget it after I go home from class. I have flash cards for all the words I have learnt so far and I simply look at the flash card and then click on the corresponding pinyin syllable and choose the correct tone. I make sure I do this without checking my flashcard first to try and memorize the pinyin for each character. After I find the syllable I think is correct, I then choose to view the characters that have that pronunciation and see if the one I am looking for is in the list. It seems quite a simple task but it really helps me to memorize the correct pinyin and even the meaning of characters.

Go here to check it out: Arch Chinese