Mine the only ones not learning Mandarin?

MotherOfTwo
Wed, 23 Jan 2008 12:07:42 +0000

Dad II - Related to your comment, but a little off topic… We are not Chinese, but my daughter who is studying Chinese has many Chinese-American classmates who are in her Chinese classes. Some of them can speak Chinese but cannot read and write it. As most readers of this thread probably know, unlike English or Spanish, etc. which are phonetic, the sounds of the Chinese words have no relationship to the Chinese characters, so even a fluent speaker must spend a lot of time studying to be able to read and write. Some larger universities with enough interested Chinese-Amierican students actually have special Chinese classes for these students who learned to speak at home and wish to learn to read and write.