「不」vs 「沒」: 一字之差的心態
現在的家長也許很少對孩子說「不」了，大多數會說「NO」吧。(當然，在對話情況下還是會說「不行」、「不可以」、「唔得」⋯⋯) 英文的一個「NO」字，中文卻不是簡單的一個「不」字喔。另一個相等份量的字是「沒」。 對於已在學習躍進級的孩子，可以集中認識一下這兩個字不同的用法。 Even among the Chinese community, it is very common for parents nowadays to use “NO” to their children. Although in many conversations, one would still often say「不行」、「不可以」、「唔得」⋯ Translating the English “no” into Chinese is often more than a simple “不”. Another commonly used word is “沒”. If your child is on Building […]
漢語中的比較詞 Let’s compare
對英語文法稍有認識的人，都會知道英語的 comparative 和 superlative 的詞彙和法則 (一般來說是形容詞/副詞加 er 或 est，或在前面加上 more 或 the most)。 中文有這類比較詞嗎？ 當然有。 最顯淺、直接的方法，可以和英語文法對照的，是在形容詞/副詞前面加上「更」或「最」。 When we make comparisons in English, we use comparatives and superlatives.The equivalents in Chinese is to add 更 or 最 respectively, such as the examples below. 哥哥跳得高，學長跳得更高，體育老師跳得最高。 面包好吃，餃子更好吃，蔥油餅最好吃！ 走路的時候要小心，走梯級的時候更要小心，天雨過馬路的時候最要小心！ 英語的 superlative 有時會用完全不同的字來表達。例如，雖然 the best 是 good 的最高層次，但 wonderful 或 […]
The Importance of Chinese Radicals
Chinese radicals (Bu-Shou) are graphical components of Chinese characters. One of the main functions of radicals is to look up characters in a Chinese dictionary, as all characters are listed under specific radicals. Nowadays, while characters are still being listed according to radicals, many dictionaries also offer pinyin look-up. Most smartphone apps accept handwriting characters […]
Learning Chinese poetry
In this article, we will discuss the benefits of teaching our children Chinese poetry, both classical and modern. After grammar, many children, and adults alike, find poetry to be the next horrible thing they are forced to learn. Why then, in the pursuit of Chinese literacy, should we consider introducing Chinese poetry to our children? […]
Benefits of Learning Chinese Idioms
Every language has idioms and Chinese is no exception. To many parents whose first language is not Chinese, most Chinese Idioms may seem to be a group of characters that produce a meaning not readily apparent from the actual characters used! This can all be quite confusing. When it comes to teaching our children, it […]
How to Improve Writing & Speaking Chinese
This is part of our linguistic series. You can read the other post on: Memory and Language Development, how to use observation to improve linguistic capabilities in child and use questions to stimulate thinking and writing. This post focuses on the different ways that you can help your children apply speaking and writing Chinese in their […]
Stimulate Thinking and Writing by using questions
The article delved deep into our children’s natural ability to pick up new languages. As Chinese is a compact language, there were many ideas packed into very few words. In order to do justice to each point, we thought it best to split the piece into a series to stimulate learning. This is part of […]
Use Observation to Improve Linguistic Capabilities
This is part of our linguistic series. You can read the other post on Memory and Language Development here. This blog post focuses on the innate ability of young children to pick up languages. Thus, even though Chinese is one of the hardest languages in the world to learn, it’s also so easy that even […]
Linguistic and cognitive developments through reading comics
Many parents and educators consider comics to be a less desirable use of our children’s time. Often maligned as trashy or a waste of brain space, in truth, reading comics benefits our children in many ways – some of which are related to heightened reading ability and comprehension. Comics is a visual art consisting of […]
How Writing Chinese Promotes Thinking
This is part of our linguistic series. You can read the other post on Memory and Language Development here. This post discussed our children’s innate ability to learn new languages and offered many ways we parents could help our kids in this process. The article was very dense so we split each point into their […]