Learning Mandarin With My Kids ft. Jeanne Chang: Passing Down a Language You're Still Learning | Real You Mandarin Podcast EP28

Prefer audio? Listen on Spotify | Apple Podcasts

Most bilingual parenting advice assumes you already speak the language you're trying to pass down. Jeanne Chang didn't. She's Taiwanese-American, and growing up she spoke only Taiwanese with her parents and grandparents at home. Mandarin wasn't part of it. So when she had her own kids and decided she wanted them to have the language, she was starting close to zero herself.

In this episode, Crystal Hsia, our Real You Mandarin: Self-Expression partner teacher, and I sit down with Jeanne, the creator of the blog Mama & Baby Learn Mandarin and @mamababymandarin on Instagram. Eight years ago she could string together only a few sentences of Mandarin. Today she's raising two kids in it — and if you listen to her in this episode, you'd never guess where she started.

Learning a Language at the Same Time as Your Kids

There's a particular 學習曲線 / 学习曲线 / xué xí qǔ xiàn / learning curve to teaching something you haven't learned yourself yet, and Jeanne is refreshingly open about it. She describes in the beginning how she'd reach first for the Taiwanese word, translate it into English, then run it through a translation app to get to Mandarin — and she still wasnt' sure the result was right.

That uncertainty is something a lot of us in the West will recognize, even those of us who did grow up around Mandarin. In the episode she tells a story about a very ordinary word at a very ordinary playground that sent her spiraling into doubt about her own Mandarin, and I resonated hard with that experience.

Why She Skipped Chinese School

Jeanne made a deliberate choice not to send her kids down the path most of our parents chose for us. Her read is that the way Chinese School is often taught here is 過時 / 过时 / guò shí / outdated — day one, you open a textbook, and most kids will decide this is boring or too hard before they ever get to speak.

She points to how nearly all of us had friends who went to Chinese School alongside us as kids, and almost none of us came out of it able to hold a conversation. Instead, she looked for something 沉浸式 / 沉浸式 / chén jìn shì / immersive. In the episode we get into what she chose in its place, and why she thinks having friends to speak with matters more than the curriculum itself.

Building the Resources That Didn't Exist Yet

The part of Jeanne's story I find most impressive is that when she couldn't find what she needed, she built it. She started her own little Mandarin summer camp with a friend. She went deep on researching what programs and activities existed back in Taiwan to immerse her kids — research that eventually became the blog she's been writing for over eight years.

We also get sidetracked about her time on Love Boat, the study tour a lot of Taiwanese diaspora went on as teenagers, where it turns out Crystal spent time as a counselor. They both have stories about it. We'll leave those in the episode.

Key Vocab From This Episode

沉浸式 / 沉浸式 | chén jìn shì (immersion / immersive)

過時 / 过时 | guò shí (outdated / out of date)

學習曲線 / 学习曲线 | xué xí qǔ xiàn (learning curve)

These come straight out of a real conversation about real parenting decisions — not a textbook unit on education.

Want to Talk With Your Own Kids in Mandarin?

Real You Mandarin: Self-Expression is built for American-born Chinese (ABCs), American-born Taiwanese (ABTs), and advanced Mandarin learners who want to express their real selves in Mandarin. And fittingly for this episode, there's an entire module built around fertility and parenting for those of you also trying to pass the language down to your kids.

Not sure if it's for you yet? Try a free lesson from the course first to see if the format is right for you, and learn more at realyoumandarin.com.

Get the Full Transcript

Want the full transcript of this episode in Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Pinyin, and English with key vocab highlighted? Download the EP1 transcript for free here. If you find it useful, check out our Podcast Transcript Membership to unlock all episode transcripts.

We had so much to talk about with Jeanne that we split this conversation into two episodes. Come back for the next one, where we get into identity.

You can find Jeanne's blog at Mama & Baby Learn Mandarin, and follow her on IG at @mamababymandarin.

If you liked this episode, come hang out with us on Instagram and TikTok at @realyoumandarin where we post clips from every episode plus other Mandarin learning content. And if you haven't already, subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts so you don't miss the next one.