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學中文 Learn Mandarin Chinese

Why learn chinese language? You ask …

  1. FUTURE: Spoken by 1/5th of the population on this lovely planet.
  2. PAST: Chinese culture has 4,000 years of continuous human history.
  3. GOOD: Amazing chinese culture:  stories, history, philosophy, poetry, art, science and so forth.

Fluency in this language means having the ticket to the playground at the riverbank of tomorrow!

Now, ain’t that fun?

Mandarin language (中文) consists of Hanyu Pīnyīn (拼音) phonetic system and an “alphabet” in the form of 47,035 mandarin words/characters or Hànzì (漢字). Learning mandarin is a lesson in duality, as both right and left brain hemispheres are active when learning pictograms and their corresponding pronunciation and tones.

The hieroglyphic/ pictorial nature of chinese writing stimulate the right brain, as other romance languages stimulate the left brain. With a language like chinese, your brain gets a balancing of left and right brain capabilities in terms of word/character recognition and logic. It is said regarding mandarin chinese: “left brain, right brain, middle language 中文 (which is the direct translation of the word Chinese).”

Left brain: Pinyin/tonal phonetics  +  Right-brain: Hieroglyphic character recognition.
Learn chinese and both halves of your brain get to have fun!

On anecdotal veins…

I have always been personally convinced that my precise drawing skills (e.g. ability to draw people’s faces from visually study them from life) are a result of years of writing Chinese calligraphy correctly. In order to produce recognizable chinese characters, one must pay special attention to the propotions, spatial placements, distances between elements of strokes in chinese characters. All these chinese character writing skills makes it feel natural to draw a human face, e.g. to judge the distance between tip of nose and tip of lips, spaces between eyes, sizes and propotions in foreshortening, etc in life drawing.  Just a gut feeling!

Also, secretly, I feel that my ability to distinguish and produce complex musical tones (as in an aria) are a result of my experience with many melodic tones of the spoken mandarin language. Another gut feeling of mine, no double-blind control research on my part to prove the theory of sing-song mandarin language induced musical pitch perfection just yet.

Well, not yet 100% convinced on the oodles of noodles of joy of learning mandarin ? Try ordering dim sum in English versus Chinese…get ready to see your world expand!

So let’s chop-chop and start learning to speak Mandarin fluently! Let’s dive into this culture rich with the treasures of an ancient heritage!

Check out the free, fun and beautiful learning materials lovingly put together on this website! I hope it helps your child (or inner child) learn chinese language with joy and success!

Thank you for putting up with my incoherent ranting. This page needs massaging.

I want you to learn mandarin chinese with LOVE!

 Did you get the memo from 2000 years ago?

 

Chinese idioms for children 兒童成語故事

Classical Chinese Poetry in easily digested format for children and adults alike.

Meet interesting people!

Travel interesting places!

Devour such interesting stories!

Taste delicious delights of the hearts.

Sing Songs and Dance in mandarin chinese!

Peek into the meaning of life!

Go ahead and subscribe (click Google Friends Connect) and check back on this website as I add good stuffs to it! Go have a good day now!

 

Comments

  • Joseph M.

    I just stumbled upon your lovely site — and, indeed, have posted a question about Franz Schubert’s portrait on your musicians’ birthdays page.

    Here I comment on your “Another gut feeling of mine, no double-blind control research on my part to prove the theory of sing-song mandarin language induced musical pitch perfection just yet”:

    Whereas I cannot (from memory) reproduce the relevant references,* as a neuroscientist (and undergrad Chinese major) I can confirm your intuition: While most of us (if taught early enough) can learn relative pitch, absolute pitch on the other hand seems to be largely innate. But for whatever reason, speakers of tonal languages have a significantly higher prevalence of singers possessing absolute pitch.

    * It shouldn’t be too hard to track these down, espec. via Google Scholar or even, Medline.

    Thank you and do keep up the great work!

    October 25, 2013
    reply

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