No matter how hard it might feel, you can learn to speak Chinese
How is it like to learn a second language as an adult is a question I encounter with on a daily basis when teaching my students Chinese. I started learning Chinese when I was 20, but before that I already had experience in learning a foreign language. I started English at 9 years old, German at 11 and Swedish when I was 13. But how is it like for adults who start their very first foreign language and it happens to be Chinese? First an article on Hacking Chinese came to my mind: You might be too lazy to learn Chinese, but you’re not too old. Olle reminds as that…
Getting used to a trilingual home
Our home here in Guangzhou has been mainly surrounded by Mandarin Chinese as that’s the love language between me and my husband. We met in Mandarin, fell in love in Mandarin and also got married in a Mandarin wedding ceremony. Of course we throw in a few phrases of English every now and then, especially when we have guests or when hubby wants to practice his English. But as we are getting ready to welcome a new family member at the end of the year, we are also getting ready to become a trilingual family. According to what I’ve read, in a multilingual home it’s best that each of the…