Learning Mandarin as a Family

Wow! Judging by the silence, we may be the only family nutty enough to try to learn Mandarin together via ChinesePod and other tools. Unwitting trailblazers...hah! Steve

My family thinks I'm weird hehe.

Nope, my family is with ya Steve. I am blessed with a wife and two daughters. I try to have some sort of Mandarin around us all the time. Either Cpod on CD in the car, Mulan on the tv, or I reading books to the kids. Everyday. It is like breathing to us. One of my hopes is that Cpod can get their lessons to stream on a system like the Xbox, so that one can not only hear the lessons, but have the characters streaming on the computer, tv, also. Keep it up, Daniel

My kids are half-Chinese but, until high school, resisted learning Chinese as "stupid" (i.e. none of the other kids speak it). Now that they are in college, we (two sons, one daughter and two nieces) are all learning/fluent. (Sadly, I am not in the latter category.) Now, we all share our experiences, and it brings us closer together as a family. No different than anything else a family shares in common I suppose; nevertheless, no less worthwhile. Keep at it! Have you been able to travel to China as a family yet?

Daniel, I really like the notion of Mandarin being like breathing to the four of you. We are always trying to find new ways of surrounding ourselves with "Mandarin air." Just watched our first full length movie in Mandarin (wow...was that humbling...if only everyone spoke at the speed and with the clarity of the ChinesePod voices). And we are talking about starting some "Mandarin only" times in the house. Maybe five minutes first, and then build from there. We'll see... tvan, Yes, we did have the chance to go to China together, back in 2004. In fact, it was because of that trip that we eventually decided to start learning the language together. (We were there with no language at all, but were traveling and staying with friends from here in DC who were going back to their home district to visit family.) And now our language learning is taking on new urgency, as we will be moving to China for a year, beginning this summer. So Mandarin really will be like breathing! Steve

Bazza, Believe me, our extended families absolutely think we are weird! Steve

Movies are great, though Chinese movies often have sad endings and are confusing for adults, let alone kids. King of Masks is a good one with a happy ending. Other activities for families, depending on level: Have the kids ask for certain privileges or treats only in Chinese. Certain areas of the house are China and only Chinese is spoken there. Kids get some treat after performing a task or doing a treasure hunt that is written in Chinese (More work for adults or whoever is making the game.) Vocab card game: each person gets a 'name' that is a vocab word - best to keep categories, like names of animals. Deck of cards is divided among players and each player takes turns turning up a card. When there is a pair, the players with the matching cards have to be the first to yell out the opponent's 'name' and the loser has to collect both players' cards. Winner gets rid of all cards first. The more players, the more language intensive and fun this is. Games like Pictionary or charades are great for vocab as well, they just have to guess in Chinese.

sushan, So I read your suggestions to the family, and the kids really liked the idea of a designated "Mandarin room." Of course, the room they selected was the bathroom! We'll see how this goes...be practicing our "dà hào" and other related bathroom language, I guess! Steve