Adventures in Pinyin (c) by Michael Casey
Adventures in Pinyin(c)
By Michael Casey
My big daughter is doing her Deans Award soon, its a singing thing for those of you who don’t sing or don’t go near a church. She has a head start due to Betty her singing teacher. Betty teaches singing at Saint Hilda’s, so twice a week my two daughters get singing lessons, then on Sunday the real thing. My daughters also have piano lessons from Betty. Betty is 84 now and I believe deserves an OBE for all her industry.
So there was the Dean’s practice yesterday and my daughter did not get back till 9pm. So while I was on the computer I was thinking what next should my girls be introduced to. Pinyin came to mind. Both girls speak Chinese/Shanghai already as most of you already know. My big daughter can 1/2 understand IMs from Birmingham to granny in Shanghai already. So it would be nice if she could read/write Chinese too.
Traditional Chinese would be too much of an ask, however Pinyin offers hope. So I browsed Amazon for books. I should say I once did email the Chinese Embassy but got no reply. I had hoped they would recommend books we could buy. So now I’ll try Amazon. I have in fact ordered 2 books. Amazon will no doubt suggest many more, once you click on anything they know what you like and offer much more of the same. Outlook is boasting the fact they don’t read your emails like Gmail, but they do Judging from the adverts and targeted mail I get. Try GMX mail and see what they are like.
One of the books I’ve ordered is little stories with Traditional Chinese, Pinyin and then English plus vocabulary. So I’m hopping that’ll encourage my girls. I do have a hope that I could do the exact same thing using my shorts in 300 and Not OUT plus recordings from www.michaelgcasey.typepad.com but going from English into any other language.
The best I can do is wo ai ni but it’s been enough for our marriage and 2 daughters. However to be able to write to the Shanghai side of the family would be good and in the future when our daughters grow up being able to speak Chinese and write it through Pinyin would be a great help to themselves. Or they could just follow Carrie Gracie or the Sky news girl, a Casey correspondent in Shanghai, and get free dinner from grannie.
Like all bilingual children daughters get scolded in Shanghai/Urdu/Japanese then reply in English. I just want them to take advantage of their advantage. Being pretty is an advantage too, but we make sure that they know that looks are really transitory. They won’t be spoilt like Verruca in Charlie and The Chocolate factory, not by us anyway. I do look forward to being a spoilt OAP myself, that’s assuming everything stumbles to a happy conclusion.
So I’ll be boring you all with updates on the Pinyin progress. And don’t forget you can always read my stuff on Amazon Kindle just look for the Panzi, this is my Chinese name, it means FAT FAT BOY.
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