Tag Archives: Chinese

Greetings from China (and a few fun photos)

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Brad
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  Ever since I was little I wanted to travel and learn as many languages as I could, and I’ve definitely moved forward in that adventure over the past 15 years.  Wonderful journées I’m currently in China for a week interpreting for my family business (violins), and it’s such a pleasure to be surrounded by this language and culture again. If you didn’t already know I lived here for 3 years and really, really enjoyed it and soaked up quite a bit of Mandarin, learning enough to communicate and certainly crack a few jokes; it’s a very unique rapport to (…)

Posted in ELT | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 14 Comments

How I learned Chinese (blog challenge part 2)

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Brad
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  If you didn’t catch the first part of my recent learning language blog challenge, check ‘er out, and since then I’ve loved reading Ceci, Sandy, Nina, James, Elinda, Naomi, Shikha, Ann, Ty, Louise, Christos, Tyson, Chris, Stephen, Rebecca, Larisa and Icha’s stories and can’t wait to hear yours   Ever hear someone say our language-learning skills peak at age twelve?   There’s certainly some biological truth to it, but might it also be the case that adults not only lose a touch of  brain plasticity, but also the wonder, ease, and social interaction that children employ to learn a language?  I think so.  Actually, (…)

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Will everyone be speaking Chinese in 2030?

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Brad
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    Every now and again I hear someone say something along these lines:   “oh yeah, well, everyone’ll be speaking Chinese in…“.  As I’ve been down that path, I thought I’d share the insider story and why I have a hard time ever seeing that happen.  So, without further ado, 4 reasons why I don’t think Chinese will be the next lingua franca:   1) Most everyone will share a language, but it won’t be Chinese. a) It will be (or rather, it is) English.  English hasn’t been crowned the lingua franca, and it never will be, and maybe (…)

Posted in ELT | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 66 Comments

My Edublog Award Nominations #Eddies11

Posted on November 21, 2011 by Brad
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  The above chinese saying is one of my favorite.  It is compareable to “beauty is in the eye of the beholder“, but literally translates as “In lovers’ eyes, the loved one is always most beautiful”. One challenge of being a teacher is to distance our evaluations of a student’s work from the student themselves, as it’s easy for our perceptions to be influenced by student behavior in class. In a similar way, I’ve had a hard time “evaluating” my international staffroom blog crew while nominating for the Edublog Awards.  When I saw Dave Dodgson, Arjana Blazic, Marijana S and Adam Simpson* make the first (…)

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It’s my birthday blog post: etymology of “happy bday” in Chinese

Posted on September 14, 2011 by Brad
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  Feeling pretty fine September 14th, 2011 thanks to all the kind b-day wishes.  To top it off, I was greeted with a Happy B-day video from some of my fav tweeps.  A big virtual panda hug to you all ! @irishmikeh, @AnnaMusielak @DavidWarr @SueAnnan @tarabenwell @seburnt @vickyloras @cerirhiannon @willycard @CeciELT @ShellTerrell @BethCagnol @theteacherjames @esolcourses   …and my present to you in return is the etymology of “happy birthday” in Chinese.       What does this look like ? This is the character 土.  Above is how it was written a very long time ago… almost 400o years ago (…)

Posted in Etymology, Fun | Tagged , , , | 28 Comments