Welcome to CantotoMando!

Welcome!

My first blog entry!

About me:

Hello, my name is Karen, but for the purposes of this blog, I will use the name, Bo-Chui, since that is my Chinese name which translates to “Precious Jade.” 

Do you wish you could learn more Mandarin? Do you know Cantonese, but find it hard to learn Mandarin? Or do you want to know how Mandarin and Cantonese are similar or different? Maybe you just want to learn some Mandarin.  If so, you’ve come to the right place. I created this blog to put down my thoughts on one of my favorite interests: the Chinese language. Growing up in the United States, I find it hard to transition between Cantonese to the Mandarin language while my parents, who were born in Hong Kong, can at least understand Mandarin even though they don’t speak Mandarin well. Therefore, I can’t let the next generation lag behind my parents in language skills.

In this blog, I will mainly introduce and demystify Mandarin from a Cantonese and English point of view. Hopefully, you might gain some interest in Mandarin through this unique viewpoint. It is important to understand that what I write may not be 100% correct since, after all, I am a lifetime student myself. I have a high interest in studying Chinese even though I’m not excellent at it. I hope to get feedback from readers and learn from them since I will put a lot of my thoughts and research in this blog. If I find that anything in this blog is not valid anymore, I will certainly edit it at some point. I feel passionate enough that I want to spread the joy of language to anybody interested. If I had supreme confidence and knowledge, I would like to officially become a teacher, but I have a long way to go.

I’ll include a little history about me so you can get a feel of how much I have learned throughout my lifetime. It’s not my intention to bore you so I will put some bullet notes.

• Grew up with a Cantonese/Toisanese family in the suburbs away from a Chinese community in New York.
• I believe I studied Cantonese at the New York Chinese School on Elizabeth St, Chinatown, NY for a few years.
• I transferred to the Chinese Transfiguration School at Mott St in order to continue Cantonese studies until I graduated Elementary school at 15 years old, ranking #1, top of my class.
• I used to collect and read Old Master Q comic books.
• I loved watching ATV, TVB dramas and listened to Cantopop.
• I interned at Sinovision TV station (2003) for the show, Chinese Popstar hosted by Jojo Zhou. I mostly tried to translate Chinese documents into English or composed words in English to represent the Chinese Popstar show. I helped sell light sticks at the final Chinese Popstar finale at the MGM Grand in Connecticut.
• I interned at HKVPRadio.com (2003) for Annie Lam, writing biographies about Hong Kong pop stars as well as adding songs to the radio collection.
• Took a 10-week Mandarin course at Nassau Community College.
• In 2010, I took a 10-week Taiwanese-Mandarin course at the Queens Woodhaven Public Library.
• I tried the Pimsleur CD course, but never finished it. I also tried other various listening courses, but never successfully completed them.
• Took beginning Mandarin classes at ABC Language Exchange for six lessons in New York (2011).
• I am currently a beginner Mandarin student at ALESN, a language exchange group in New York (2011-).

Who knows where I’ll go from here?

If you find this blog interesting, feel free to check out my other blogs regarding my other interests. Thank you!