Posted in Education on 10/22/2009 08:18 pm by sophie
A quick p.s. to my earlier post on simplified vs. traditional characters… In New York Chinatown (and elsewhere in Chinese communities around the globe), there is also the question of whether to teach your children Cantonese or Mandarin. Read the article in today’s New York Times:
Some Cantonese-speaking parents are deciding it is more important to point their children toward the future than the past — their family’s native dialect — even if that leaves them unable to communicate well with relatives in China.
“I figure if they have to acquire a language, I wanted them to have Mandarin because it makes it easier when they go into the workplace,” said Jennifer Ng, whose 5-year-old daughter studies Mandarin at the language school of the Church of the Transfiguration, a Roman Catholic parish on Mott Street where nearly half the classes are devoted to Mandarin. Her 8-year-old son takes Cantonese, but only because there is no English-speaking Mandarin teacher for his age group.
“Can I tell you the truth?” she said. “They hate it! But it’s important for the future.”
On the San Francisco Chronicle’s site, William Wong gives a Bay Area perspective to this question.
Posted in Education on 10/17/2009 02:09 pm by sophie
An interesting article from the LA Times on schools in Los Angeles which have become battlegrounds in the war over whether to teach traditional or simplified characters. The reporter introduces parents from Taiwan who are in the middle of a heated debate over the issue:
Last April, the school held a meeting with parents to discuss the issue. Parents were urged to “focus on interests, not positions.”
Because of what he deemed a “hostile” attitude toward his support of simplified script, Lim didn’t want his son’s name used for this story.
“The reaction to eliminating traditional has been overwhelming,” Vannasdall said. “It’s a really controversial issue.”
Two years ago, when Christine Lee was president of the Arcadia Chinese parents club, some parents pushing for the simplified form tried to draw the group into the debate. But Lee said the club resisted taking sides.
Still, Lee, who came to the U.S. from Taiwan in the 1980s, said she resented Lim’s characterization of traditional script as obsolete. “Chinese characters are so beautiful, why would you give that up?” she said. “How could 5,000 years of history go away that easily?”
Read the full article here. I wrote an earlier post about the debate over the issue here.
Posted in Uncategorized on 10/05/2009 01:02 pm by sophie
Jonathan Liu, who blogs on GeekDad for Wired and is raising bilingual kids, reviews Langu, a new iPhone app to teach kids Chinese. Will try it out soon.
Posted in Education on 10/05/2009 12:57 pm by sophie
Amazing statistics about students studying Chinese in Minnesota:
Woodbury students and more than 5,500 others across the state studying Chinese are part of a mushrooming movement starting in the Twin Cities area and moving out. The number of Chinese-language students in Minnesota public schools has grown five-fold in recent years, with no end of the interest in sight.
To put the growth in perspective, there are more Minnesota students learning Chinese now than in the entire country in 2000.
From the Daily Globe.
