I think this will be a huge advantage to her in life. However, many people including English people say that I should only teach her Polish or she will be confused. Let the facts speak for themselves, bilingual children gain intelligence because of early brain plasticity. Their brains are stretch, instead of experiencing the normal rate of neuron death most toddlers experience.  It is the time the brain is pruning cells away and half your brain cells have died by age two.

Why I teach my child Chinese

I really do not care if my daughter ever uses or learns Chinese. She might not like it, or have no interest in China. She does not have to go to the best school or be top of her class or be a very important person in life. She can be who she wants to be. However, if I exposure  her to one Asian language at an early age, she will at least have the opportunity to choose this latter if she wants to.

My view is I do not care if my child lays on the beach and is a surf bum, I just want to make sure she has a good foundation for life. Parenting is stewardship not ownership. It is to set the base and let them do what they want with it.

Right now she has a great rapport with her Chinese tutor.  Oudi her tutor, studies music and is from Peking so she speaks Mandarin. At this juncture her lessons are not different than having a Chinese babysitter. We also watch active Chinese videos on Youtube that she likes. But the most important is physical interaction. Kids need real concrete three dimensional one on one interaction for their lessons to be effective. This is better than any Chinese tutorial, but not as good as sending them to Hong Kong or Beijing.

In fact we joke than when our child is ten we can go to China and she can give us a tour as she is a native speaker. I think this would be funny. If you want to educate yourself more on Chinese culture you can go to the official website which has many interesting news, language and cultural items.

• Learn Chinese and about China

Why have I started her so early? Because now its all a game. Its all fun, not work. She craves mental stimulation, her biggest problem is her day gets boring sometimes. So I thought why not solve this with a Chinese babysitter?  Further, only to about the age of three can a baby be a real native speaker.  If you start lessons at five it will be really hard for them to be accent free. Some people say the age is eight or before adolescence, but the reality is the brain is design to absorb languages and that is the plural form before the age of three.

Chinese lesson and money

I am a teacher in Poland so I do not make a lot of money.  However, I believe if my daughter is a trilingual native speaker in Chinese, English and Polish without an accent she could have a very interesting life.

If you give your child Chinese lessons there life might be more interesting

I do not know if I am good father or not. I spend way to much time working and wish I could be wiser. I am not a rich man. But I love her very much and would like this to be something she has in her life.

If you live in the rich USA, and it is a rich place, even if you are poor, I think you can afford to give your child language lessons in Chinese or any other language, it will change their life, statistically they will have a greater increase in future income then even getting an extra degree. But most important because it is fun for them.

This is why I highly recommend as a language teacher and a parent if you have ever considered to exposure to child to a language early do it. Chinese is the third most studied language in the USA after English and Spanish. Let me know your thoughts on my radical idea of having Chinese lessons for my baby.

After learning Polish, and now starting to learn Chinese, I find Chinese ridiculously simple.  They do have tones, but since this has a musically quality and its not hard to learn.  Chinese grammar, is almost non existent.  No cases, verb conjugation, no article. Nothing.  What about the writing. Well since humans have spoken languages for, lets say, 40,000 years and 99 % of humans did not read or write until lets say 100 years ago, I think speaking and understanding a language is the most important.  Then you can learn to read, unless you want to hand someone a note or something.

So in my opinion Chinese is not a hard language to learn.

Chinese is an easy language. How do I know. I started to learn Chinese.  It has no grammar, no verb changes, no tenses, no articles, no real prepositions, no cases, noun cases nothing.  The words are short and easy to say. It does have intonations but this is not hard with practive.  If you want to learn Chinese, do it.   To learn Chinese it takes patience.  Oh and what about  writing in the Chinese language? Well start with simplified latin charaters.  If you do this you can always learn the old script once you learn Chinese enough to speak. After all speaking a language is 100 times more important then reading. 100 years ago many people spoke Chinese but most Chinese never learned to write and read at that time.  My personal experience with Chinese is it is easy to learn Chinese compared to say the Polish language.

The powers

The way I see it is there is the USA, Europe, China, Russia, India.

Other power

 Other considerations are either too small, like Japan or South Korea or like Africa or South America or the Arab world, does not have; at this time have a critical level of economic factors to be a superpower.

Round one elimination

Russia

Despite Russia’s resource wealth Russia has demographic problem with a sharp decline in population, which at this juncture is not easily reversible.

India

India, with huge growth still has too many domestic problems to dominate.

So we are really left with Europe, China and the USA.

What is super power

If you have ever played the computer game Sid Meier’s Civilization, you know what I mean by world domination, general economic, demographic, scientific and cultural greatness.  Military power as a definition of super power I hope is passé, and always was interdependent with economic and technological advancement.

EU

Europe – A unified market, with a mix fresh new  eastern economies and western technological developed.  The main issue with Europe is low birth rate, nationalism and socialistic tendencies will prevent them from getting the gold.

America

America – All roads lead to Rome.  The center of innovation and trade. Easy markets, it continues to be a center for great minds, hard working population. However get involved in imperialism and these drags down the economy.  War, imperialism, taxes, none advantages bilateral trade agreements.

China

China- Powerhouse producer, centralized government that is mercantilist.  Billion people who a Bright and productive. their downside is people in china ill eventually want more in life than rules and to be cogs in the wheels for Beijing mercantilism ambitious.

The winner

Who will win? I think if the USA can stay out of wars, taxation and special interest for the political or businesses elite or sliding into slow growth socialism, than it can focus on education, innovation.

Which language will dominate in one hundred years

What is more important manufacturing or innovation? The answer to this question will answer which culture and language will dominate.   We will see if English or Chinese will be the dominate language in a hundred years.
 

The USA has given more funding and starting new programs in bilingual education in the public schools.  The objective is to make the USA more competitive in the global market.  These programs are just not traditional languages classes in a foreign language, but these are true bilingual education programs in public schools. For example, each class will have half the students fluent in Chinese and half the class fluent in English.  This fifty- fifty approach is going to be the reality for the `10,000 students who signed up for this in NYC alone.

Effect on students

So far the students who signed up are only showing enthusiasm for and excitement.  Where school was boring now it has become something new.

Arabic schools in NYC

One of the most controversial bilingual programs is Arabic in NYC public schools. Many oppose this. I do not. The reason, is we can not be bias against something or someone based on their race or culture as a whole.  The Arab culture is generally peaceful.  What happen with the terrorist attacks where done by people who turned against God. They betrayed their own culture and God.  God is the God of peace, love and forgiveness. They damaged the reputation of the billions of believers around the world, those who believe that God is the God of peace and love.  Sorry for all this but I think we should build bridges between cultures.  Look at the Germans and the French or the Poles, once sworn enemies are now cooperating and building the EU. Or the American north and south since the civil war.

I am an American living in Poland.   And for fun sometimes I go to Ukraine and buy things cheap and sell them in the Polish open air market.  I make some money but more important selling things in a stand all day I learn a lot of Polish.  It is a good technique to learn a language.  In any city in the world you see foreigners, such a people from china selling things and speaking the language of the country.  You can learn this way too.  It is not only free but its a great way to immerse yourself in the language.  It is very funny by the way to meet Chinese in the market who do not speak English but only Polish.  As an American it takes me by suprises.

Trends in business and demographics is like global warming, often there is little that can be done to reverse these trends. So is the case with the English language. “English has already invaded the languages of Moliere, Cervantes and Goethe, dominating the fields of technology and business and even taking some native tongues hostage.But purists are fighting back as hybrids such as “surfen” and “downloaden” on the Internet, “emailear” and style terms “looke” or “gestyled” show the creeping advance of English.Spanglish, Franglais or even Denglish, a mix of Deutsch (German) and English, are prompting a backlash, with a call to arms in some European countries for protective measures or new policies.”

English the new world language

I do not think there can be anything we can do about such trends, its really not that English is taking over, rather I think eventually the world will speak one language, with other languages existing but most people speaking one for business and one at home, that language could be English or Spanish or Chinese, we do not know. Look at the USA, the same argument is being made but the language that is invading, for good or bad, is Spanish.

Of course language will be an issue in the 2008 Chinese Olympics.

“Translators and interpreters at next year’s Games will need more than just knowledge of a couple of languages, an expert has said. They’ll also need to be able to speak the language of sport.

As American Colin Pine – Yao Ming’s aide and translator in the US – once said: “Chinese was my second language, basketball was my third.”

Without understanding sports terminology, translators will be unable to properly express what the athletes and officials are saying, Li Yashu, vice-chairman of the Translation Association of China said during in an interview with China Youth Daily recently.

And a recent survey – jointly conducted by the Science & Technology Translators’ Association of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Transn Information Technology Ltd – has shown that linguists with good sports knowledge are in short supply.”

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