Virtual Mandarin

家庭 jiātíng

In the Summer School which I'm organising, we learned about family yesterday. I thought I'd have a go at describing my own family. As ever, feel free to correct!

我叫马克。
wǒ jiào Mark.

我妻子叫 Karen.
wǒ qīzi jiào Karen.

我们有两个儿子。他们叫 Michael 和 Oscar.
wǒ men yǒu liǎng ge érzi. Tā men jiào Michel hé Oscar.

Michael 四岁。Oscar 一岁。
Michael sì suì. Oscar yī suì.

我有一个弟弟。他叫 David. 他三十二岁。
wǒ yǒu yí ge dì di. Tā jiào David. Tā sān shí èr suì.

我有一个姐姐。她叫 Katy. 她三十八岁。
wǒ yǒu yí ge jiě jie. Tā jiào Katy. Tā sān shí bā suì.

我妈妈叫 Gayle.
wǒ mā ma jiào Gayle.

我爸爸叫 Steve.
wǒ bā ba jiào Steve.

Not quite sure which word to use for "wife" - qīzi 妻子 àirén 爱人 fūrén 夫人 tàitai 太太?

Summer School blog launched

As promised, I've now launched the blog in preparation for the Summer School which we're running in Kilmarnock, Scotland, next week. The blog can be found at http://pienews.blogs.com/chinese/ and we'd be very grateful if visitors to Virtual Mandarin would help to support the learning of 21 young people who are taking their first steps in Mandarin language and culture next week. 谢谢 xiè xie in advance!

我很热 wǒ hěn rè!!!

In Scotland (as in the rest of the UK and much of northern Europe) we're experiencing a heat wave at the moment with unprecendented temperatures. Today at 6pm it was 31° in my home town of Ayr! The temperatures down south have already reached 36.4° today which makes today officially the hottest day on record. So I thought it was only right to learn a new phrase:

我很热 wǒ hěn rè = I'm very hot.

It's good to see that it follows the same pattern as 我很好 wǒ hěn hǎo and 我很忙 wǒ hěn máng and 我很累 wǒ hěn lèi:

我很好 wǒ hěn hǎo - I'm very well
我很忙 wǒ hěn máng - I'm very busy
我很累 wǒ hěn lèi - I'm very tired

你很热吗？nǐ hěn rè ma? - Are you very hot?
你很好吗？nǐ hěn hǎo ma? - Are you very well?
你很忙吗？nǐ hěn máng ma? - Are you very busy?
你很累吗？nǐ hěn lèi ma? - Are you very tired?

Always good to try build the vocabulary in phrases and constructions that I know!

Destination 昆明

Another link in the Chinese language-learning which is happening with young people in Scotland is the visit of a group of students from Grange Academy in Kilmarnock to the city of 昆明, Kunming. They're spending just over two weeks in the city, attending a language school and taking part in a whole range of cultural and tourist activities. I've helped the students set up a blog and they're writing fairly regular entries, although their internet access isn't great. You can follow their adventures here.

They're just one of three schools involved in Scottish-Chinese links this summer and Grantown Grammar School are also keeping a blog of their adventures. The Grantown blog can be found here. And they've got everything worked out technologically so you can even tune into their podcasts on location!

中文暑期班 zhōng wén shǔ qī bān - Chinese Summer School

Way back at the beginning of this project I announced that I was learning Chinese primarily because I was going to be more involved with Chinese in my "day job" in the coming year. The first of several Chinese-linked events begins next Monday when 21 young people from my local area will be coming together during their school summer holidays and spending a week learning basic Mandarin language and Chinese culture.

We're working in conjunction with the Mandarin Gateway, a company in Glasgow who provide access to Chinese language primarily for business people. The wonderful 林凡 has been so helpful in getting everything organised and I'm really looking forward to attending the classes next week with the pupils. We're going to be keeping a blog, all being well, both to provide backup for the students involved in the project, and to make things available to the public. More details of the blog will follow.

我很抱歉! wǒ hěn bào qiàn - My humble apologies

Four weeks since my last post and I have to say 我很抱歉 wǒ hěn bào qiàn because although I've been thinking lots about Chinese and my attempts to learn it, I've just not had the time to follow up my thoughts with some blog posting. Work has been very busy over the past few weeks - I've been travelling a lot. But while I've been travelling I've been trying to catch up with my Chinese vocabulary and, in particular, with my knowledge of Chinese characters. Despite my self-imposed restrictions relating to learning Chinese only through the internet I've actually bought a couple of books and a set of "multimedia flashcards" from Sinolingua. However, I'm a bit disappointed in these flashcards because like many Chinese writing courses they seem to jump straight into fairly complex characters, even providing complex "character in context" sentences. See below for a scan of a sample card. I'll maybe try to follow up with a review of the materials, but for the meantime I'm just trying to get something on the blog!!!

I've still been following Chinesepod.com and I'm hoping that tomorrow I'll get the chance to firm up on lessons 6 and 7 for which I've already prepared my flashcards and just need to find the time to do a bit more work. The Chinesepod website continues to develop and I'm astounded at the amount of development there is on the site. I've let my full subscription slip for the moment - primarily because through June and July I knew that I wouldn't have time to use it and therefore get my money's worth (who says 苏格兰人 sū gè lán rén are stingy?!) but once I get back into my Chinese I'll definitely be resubscribing!

More soon.