Category Archives: Bilingual English-Chinese

CD Review: Speak & Sing Chinese with Mei Mei

Posted on by

Speak & Sing Chinese with Mei Mei is one of the best resources we’ve come across for getting Chinese into a predominantly English-speaking family. The CD comprises a mix of basic vocabulary lessons and songs that incorporate those words. For example, the lesson on body parts is followed, naturally, by a Chinese version of the well-known English children’s song Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes. There’s no drilling on tones, grammar, or any of that, just “repeat after me” words.

Jacob loves this CD; for a while, it was an indispensible part of his morning routine. As we’re still waiting for his first words of any language, we can’t know if he’s learning any Chinese (or English).

Gene: I think this is a wonderful resource for both children and parents. Songs and music are fun and much easier to remember than just vocabulary words themselves. I find myself humming or singing many of the tunes from this CD throughout the day. Mei Mei exaggerates her pronunciation and tones, which I think makes it easier for a non-Chinese-speaker to pick up on the hardest aspects of the Chinese language.

For whatever reason Hu Mei Mei isn’t selling the rest of her resources on Amazon, but you can find them on her site, Mei Mei and Me. The DVDs (and VHS!) seem quite dated; I hope she does some upgrading soon as I really like this introductory CD. Highly recommended!

One Big Hapa Family

Posted on by

Jacob Anderkoo

100% Hapa

Meet Jacob Anderkoo. He’s 1/2 Chinese (“Koo”), 1/4 German, 1/8 Irish, 1/8 Norwegian (“Ander”) — and 100% Hapa.

I first encountered the term “Hapa” from the Hapa Project. It’s not an acronym for “Half-Asian/Pacific American,” but rather the Hawaiian word for “half,” which originally applied to the white part of a mixed-race individual’s ancestry. (Thank you, Hawaii, for also giving us the term “wiki-wiki”; what would kids use to shortcut their homework if it wasn’t for you?). I like having a special term for Americans who have some Asian heritage; I hope it’s worn as a badge of pride.

Rachel and I have made a commitment to teach Jacob Chinese as well as English, but it won’t be easy. I’m the only member of the household who speaks any Chinese (Mandarin), and while I’m told my accent is excellent, my vocabulary is extremely limited, and I’m illiterate to boot. I suspect many Chinese-Americans (whether in mixed-cultural parenting partnerships or not) face this same challenge.

In any event, this is the lens through which we’ll be looking at bilingual Chinese-English education – courses, books, CDs, etc. I look forward to sharing and also learning from our fellow bilingual Chinese-English bloggers!

Anderkoo blog reboots

Posted on by

After several years of understandable neglect, we’ve decided to reboot our blog. We’ll be focusing on the most important thing in our life, little Jacob Anderkoo (now 1 year old), and our efforts to teach him both English and Chinese. I can’t promise we’ll be able to write anywhere as much as we used to (oh those halcyon days!), but at least we’ll make the effort.

Rather than create yet another blog, we decided to commandeer this one. “Anderkoo” perfectly captures what we’re trying to do: create something new out of two very different traditions. Let’s see where this goes.