Learn Mandarin the Chineasy way
Aug 12, 2013 2:53:08 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Aug 12, 2013 2:53:08 GMT -5
Good morning to you! To all those who survived the weekend, what a weekend it turned out to be! Congratulations to all! Writing in 'FT Weekend', Isabel Berwick reports on how to learn Mandarin the Chineasy way: ShaoLan Hsueh shows how learning Chinese can be child’s play. ShaoLan Hsueh was born and raised in Taiwan, the daughter of a calligrapher and a ceramic artist. “I grew up in this environment, in the mud, in the ink, in the paintbrushes,” she says. She didn’t immediately take on her parents’ artistic legacy: describing herself as an unashamed “geek”, she studied biochemistry at university, wrote some unlikely and bestselling Microsoft user manuals (“I used my imagination and put a lot of my own thoughts in”) and went on to be a first-wave internet entrepreneur, co-founding pAsia, an early internet success story, in 1995. At its peak it had 250 employees.
Hsueh later moved to London and set up a venture capital investment firm in 2005, but her latest project is one directly linked to her family roots among the paint pots and calligraphy brushes. She’s developing a kind of shareware for the mind – a groundbreaking method of reading and interpreting Chinese characters for westerners, called “Chineasy”. And she’s (so far) funded the project herself from her savings, giving it all away free via her Facebook page and website. “It is a legacy, and something I would like to share,” she says. We meet in Chineasy’s tiny Soho office, where beautifully illustrated Chinese characters cover the walls, the papers fluttering gently in the breeze. Isabel concludes thus:
I should perhaps confess that I do not speak Mandarin, although it is the second most commonly spoken language in the world, after English. Should I learn? Can music, and the wider arts, be usefully considered like languages?
Hsueh later moved to London and set up a venture capital investment firm in 2005, but her latest project is one directly linked to her family roots among the paint pots and calligraphy brushes. She’s developing a kind of shareware for the mind – a groundbreaking method of reading and interpreting Chinese characters for westerners, called “Chineasy”. And she’s (so far) funded the project herself from her savings, giving it all away free via her Facebook page and website. “It is a legacy, and something I would like to share,” she says. We meet in Chineasy’s tiny Soho office, where beautifully illustrated Chinese characters cover the walls, the papers fluttering gently in the breeze. Isabel concludes thus:
' ... Chineasy can be worked on alone, or used as a classroom aid, but because of the way it’s spreading through social media, its young devotees tend to help each other. It’s a peer-to-peer model in action: “Lots of my friends talk to each other on Facebook, become friends, the more advanced people help beginners.” They don’t just wait for Hsueh to come and tell them what to do next. Several have offered to translate Chineasy – it’s English only at the moment – into other languages. “I hope eventually it becomes a movement between languages,” she says.
On another level, she sees Chineasy as a wider project to engage westerners more generally with all Asian cultures. Chinese is a collection of languages, covering Mandarin, Hakka, Wu, Cantonese and others. “They have the same written form, which is the form I am teaching, and most of the characters also cover Kanji, Japanese characters. It doesn’t matter how it is pronounced for you to know this.”
So, potentially, Chineasy unlocks those hidden, mysterious meanings – on signs, menus, internet pages and in business dealings – right across Asia. More than that, it could be a bridge to deeper cultural understanding. It’s grown from Hsueh’s hobby to become something meaningful to thousands of other people. Most importantly, it’s worked a treat on the two people she first set out to impress – her children, who now know somewhere between 200 and 300 characters.
“They are following it, and they think their Mummy’s cool. With their encouragement I will carry on doing it.” '
On another level, she sees Chineasy as a wider project to engage westerners more generally with all Asian cultures. Chinese is a collection of languages, covering Mandarin, Hakka, Wu, Cantonese and others. “They have the same written form, which is the form I am teaching, and most of the characters also cover Kanji, Japanese characters. It doesn’t matter how it is pronounced for you to know this.”
So, potentially, Chineasy unlocks those hidden, mysterious meanings – on signs, menus, internet pages and in business dealings – right across Asia. More than that, it could be a bridge to deeper cultural understanding. It’s grown from Hsueh’s hobby to become something meaningful to thousands of other people. Most importantly, it’s worked a treat on the two people she first set out to impress – her children, who now know somewhere between 200 and 300 characters.
“They are following it, and they think their Mummy’s cool. With their encouragement I will carry on doing it.” '
I should perhaps confess that I do not speak Mandarin, although it is the second most commonly spoken language in the world, after English. Should I learn? Can music, and the wider arts, be usefully considered like languages?
