After three series of learning Chinese (how to call family members in Chinese, how to name body parts in Chinese and how to name vegetables and fruits in Chinese), the forth lesson series starts today: Lesson 4-Animals.

The animals in this series include wild and domestic animals, sorted alphabetically by common name. Today, I am going to teach you to say alligator, ant, anteater and armadillo in Chinese.
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chinese language for young children, Chinese learning for babies, How to say alligator in Chinese?, How to say ant in Chinese?, How to say anteater in Chinese?, How to say armadillo in Chinese?, learn chinese for free | August 19, 2010 7:29 pm | Comments (1)

Since June (I have an idea to open a Chinese bookstore online!), I have been working on building the online bilingual bookstore. I decided to call it an online “bilingual bookstore” rather than a “Chinese bookstore”, since I might add other language books and multimedia later, for an instance, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, and etc.

The bookstore is supposed to be open on Monday, November 1 2010. My dear fellow-readers, welcome to shop with us during the grand-opening. With your support, more books for more languages will be available for parents who want to bring up babies bilingual. And I can continue to produce and develop more posts for the blog, including free Chinese language lessons. [......]

Best4Future bilingual bookstore is under construction | July 24, 2010 3:29 pm | Comments (0)

Since September 2009, once a week, I have been putting out a lesson on how to name vegetables and fruits in Chinese. Today’s lesson is the last episode of this series.

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chinese language for young children, Chinese learning for babies, How to say tomato in Chinese?, How to say watermelon in Chinese?, How to say yam in Chinese?, How to say zucchini in Chinese? learn chinese for free | July 8, 2010 9:01 am | Comments (1)

Phono-semantic compound, also called semantic-phonetic compound or pictophonetic compound, is composed of two parts: one of a limited set of pictograms, often graphically simplified, which suggests the general meaning of the character, and an existing character pronounced approximately as the new target word.

Considering its size and close assocations among pictograms, ideograms and phono-semantic compounds, my forth advice would be children should use pictograms and ideograms as bases to understand and memorize phono-semantic compounds.

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How to help children learn Chinese characters? (Method 5) | June 25, 2010 7:03 pm | Comments (2)

Do you know when Mickey Mouse was first introduced into China?

It was on October 26, 1986, Sunday. Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, squeaking and squawking in Mandarin Chinese, made their debut of 104 half-hour episodes on China Central Television (CCTV), China’s state-owned TV station with exclusive nationwide broadcasting at that time. Since then, this animated character has become America’s most popular cultural ambassador to China.
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Chinese-speaking Mickey Mouse, Mickey Mouse speaks Chinese! | June 17, 2010 3:11 pm | Comments (6)

Spinach truly is one of the healthiest foods you can eat. Though low in calories, spinach contains high concentration of iron and calcium. It is extremely high in antioxidants, especially when fresh, steamed, or quickly boiled (see Get children eat vegetables: Spinach casserole with bacon and fresh [......]

继续阅读

chinese language for young children, Chinese learning for babies, How to say snow pea in Chinese?, How to say spinach in Chinese?, How to say strawberry in Chinese?, How to say sweet potato in Chinese? learn chinese for free | June 11, 2010 3:34 pm | Comments (2)

I want to share these wonderful Chinese learning resources with my worldwide readers. How about I open Chinese bookstore online and sell them via the Internet? I already have a blog. Now I just need to add a database-driven shopping cart onto the website.

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I have an idea to open a Chinese bookstore online! | May 27, 2010 11:46 am | Comments (1)

Approximately 13% of the total Chinese characters are ideogrammic compounds, making it the second largest category. Considering the close assocations among pictograms, ideograms and ideogrammic compounds, my forth advice would be children should use pictograms and ideograms as bases to understand and memorize ideogrammic compounds.

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How to help children learn Chinese characters? (Method 4), How to help children learn Chinese characters? (Part 4) | May 21, 2010 3:39 pm | Comments (2)

It looks like there are more vegetables and fruits starting with the letter p. Besides pea, potato, peach and pear, pumpkin, papaya, pineapple and plum all start with the letter p. Here is the tutorial on how to say pumpkin, papaya, pineapple and plum in Chinese. [......]

chinese language for young children, Chinese learning for babies, How to say papaya in Chinese?, How to say pineapple in Chinese?, How to say plum in Chinese?, How to say pumpkin in Chinese? learn chinese for free | May 13, 2010 12:51 pm | Comments (2)

According to the US State Department, Chinese ranks among the toughest languages in the world for English speakers, requiring 2200 hours of study for minimal proficiency.

Therefore, it makes perfect sense for learners to start with the simplest Chinese characters, for example, pictograms, which are stylised drawings of the objects they represent (see How to help children learn Chinese characters? (Method 2))

Besides pictograms, a lot of ideograms are the simplest Chinese characters. Also called simple indicatives or simple ideographs, ideograms express an abstract idea through an iconic form. They either modify existing pictographs iconically, or are direct iconic illustrations.
In another word, ideograms are more like graphical representations of abstract ideas. [......]

How to help children learn Chinese characters? (Method 3) | April 30, 2010 1:39 pm | Comments (4)