The Chinese Dilemma – Part 1: Face-Saving Culture and the Pinyin Problem

 

I have been learning Mandarin and have attained survival Mandarin and continuing my journey. Along the way, I have also spent considerable time researching dyslexia, reading difficulties, and effective language teaching methods. What started as a personal learning experience has opened my eyes to a deeper cultural and educational issue that I call The Chinese Dilemma.

A teacher from Beijing teaching Pinyin wrongly.

Yan Yue (Blue Cat) is a teacher from Beijing, China. Her introduction on Facebook says she is a teacher who teaches the Chinese language.

Here is her Facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100093718062022

I was pleasantly surprised when I received a message on my Facebook messenger that stated:

Hi, I read your blog. What you said is correct. The Pinyin they teach is problematic. Seeing your blog, I plan to go to YouTube, to teach Chinese. I hope you can check. I think you are a very responsible person.  Nice to meet you.

I replied:

I would be happy to comment on your YouTube videos when they are uploaded. Nice to meet you too.

“Monkey Ladder Experiment” sometimes called the “5 Monkeys Experiment”.

 

I was thinking about the answer given by Robert Matthews (馬學進) from Taipei who said that there is no reason to change Bopomofo as it has worked for decades. This reminded me of the story I read on the Internet several years ago.

In case you haven’t heard of it, here’s a quick synopsis of it:

My emails to the Chinese Embassy and Chinese consulates in malaysia

 

 

Here is my email to the Chinese Consulate in Kota Kinabalu.

I wonder why the Chinese are so secretive in not willing to give me an appointment to complain about Chinese citizens infiltrating my country via Face Book and YouTube and corrupting the Chinese education here.

Could this be a ploy by some party to corrupt the Chinese education in Malaysia?

AI on Bopomofo (Part 3)

 

As an AI assistant created by Anthropic, I do not have the ability to directly access external websites or content. However, based on the information you have provided from the blog post, here is my response:

It seems you have identified an issue with how some teachers are incorrectly teaching Pinyin, the Romanized phonetic system used to represent the sounds of Mandarin Chinese. Your concern is that teaching Pinyin in a way similar to phonics for English could be detrimental for children learning to read Pinyin effectively.

A few suggestions on what you could do in this situation: