#THIS IS A COOL QUESTION THANK YEW :33 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

synthbug · 1 year ago

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I have a question about Singapore: when learning how to write, do they teach you the phonetic spelling, and then move on to Chinese characters, or do they start with Chinese characters? Or something else?

OOH THATS A VERY COOL QUESTION !! :3 if we are learning actual words, they must teach both at the same time!! Since chinese characters are not entirely phonetics based, you need to know both the pronunciation and written character to read it ! that's why for younger kids they print worksheets with the phonetics above the characters, but once you get older they just give you the characters and expect you to know how to pronounce them </3

However for like absolute beginners the first thing they usually teach is the tones using the vowel sounds so u can properly use and differentiate the tones later on, so if you wanna be technical it would be some sort of phonetics first, but after that any new words are usually taught with both at the same time :3

#when i say u need to know both pronunciation and written itz cuz there are MAAAANNNY MANY words and phrases with the EXACT same tone #and pronounciation but are totally different written characters with different meanings #conversely there are characters that can change meaning based on pronounciation #like uhm 觉 :) if its pronounced jue it means like feel but if its pronounced jiao it means sleep :3 #this is from a chinese kid so this is from my knowledge of how they teach young kids #idk if the people who take chinese as a third language learn any different but it should be the same!#actually correction chinese is not phonetics based but u can guess for SOME words based on prior knowledge #like 干 and 赶 have similar pronounciations but different tones #but its not always the case like 甜(tian) isnt at all 舌(she) or 甘(gan)#THIS IS A COOL QUESTION THANK YEW :33 #isa rambles

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