March6
I was very impressed over the weekend. Just before my family members left Singapore, my niece asked me to take her downtown so that she could buy a Bible that had Chinese characters, Chinese phonetics (hanyu pinyin), and English. It’s an expensive book, but she used the money that had been given to her in red packets during the Chinese New Year to buy it. She said she wanted to use it to learn Chinese. I know that it is possible to learn to read a language this way (and with the environment around you, to speak as well), but have not seen anyone do it. Watching my niece was amazing.
The night they were preparing to leave, she took the Bible out and started reading. By verse 2 of Genesis 1, she’d figured out that 神 is God (though that one might cause her some confusion as she goes on). With a quick look back over the verses she’d read so far, she figured out that 地 was earth, and so 天 must be heaven. She continued on this way, and put together everything in the first two verses. She read them aloud for me several times, and then I read them and she repeated (without looking at the printed words) 2 times. She plans on continuing this method, 2 verses a day, from now until the time she comes back to stay with me again, which she tentatively plans to do in August/September. By then she should be somewhere in Exodus, and I am going to be interested to see how her language skills are at that time.
I’ve read that it was once pretty common to give kids a text in a classical language and a lexicon, and before you know it, they would be able to read the language without any problem. I don’t think it is something that is done so often anymore — we are much more hands-on these days, and that is a real pity. My 13-year-old niece is just the age that a lot of people started this sort of education, back in the day, and I am very intrigued to see how the experiment works out for her. Watching things click in her mind the other day, I realized that this old-fashioned way of learning certainly has some merit.
If things work out as she plans, she’ll be staying with me for a few weeks in Shanghai toward the end of the summer or early fall. If she is still interested in the language like she is at this moment, I am thinking I will sign her up to attend language classes every day. With the environment, and the ground work she is going to do between now and then (and I do believe she will do it — she is a very motivated kid!), she could end up learning Chinese very well in a relatively short time.
Making me completely jealous. And extremely proud.