Chinese is a family, not a language

Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, Shanghainese and Hakka are all called Chinese, but a Mandarin speaker cannot simply understand Cantonese by listening. They are related the way major European languages are related.

So the first question for a family is which one is actually spoken at home. A grandparent speaking Cantonese will not recognise a Mandarin recording as their own language.

  • Ask relatives which variety they speak before choosing materials.
  • Mandarin is the standard taught in mainland China and Taiwan. It may not be your family's.

The second question is the characters

Written Chinese uses characters, and there are two sets in use. Simplified characters are standard in mainland China and Singapore; traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.

Many characters are identical in both, but plenty are not. A family from Taiwan opening a simplified book will notice immediately.

  • Check which character set a book uses before buying.
  • Neither set is a corruption of the other in a child's eyes. Pick the one your family reads.

Tones and the helper systems

Mandarin distinguishes words by tone, with four main tones plus a neutral one, and getting the tone wrong changes the word rather than the mood.

Two systems exist to show pronunciation: pinyin, which uses Latin letters with tone marks and is standard in the mainland, and zhuyin, a set of phonetic symbols used in Taiwan. A children's book may print one of them alongside the characters.

  • Pinyin is the practical route for an English-reading parent.
  • Do not read pinyin with English vowel values. Learn a handful of the rules first.

Reading together

Characters are not sounded out, so a child meets them as whole shapes long before reading them. At two, the job is hearing the language, not decoding the page.

Let the fluent speaker name the picture, and let the other parent carry the English line and point. Both roles are real.

  • Point at the picture and say the word. Do not point at the character yet.
  • Record a relative naming six pictures in your family's variety, not a standard one.