Did you know?

If you subscribe to SCV Cable and have Playhouse Disney (Channel 34) available as part of your package, did you know that you could get to view quite a number of the programmes in Mandarin?

I think its probably something that not a lot of people know about. Or at least I certainly didn't up until last week when an American Chinese colleague of Louis enlightened me. I was sharing about my desperate search to hunt for more Mandarin DVDs of the usual programmes that Faith watches e.g. Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, My Friends Tigger & Pooh and the likes.

Turns out that like the Dual Sound Mode available for Korean dramas, you can similarly use the same switch on your SCV cable remote control to turn to Mandarin mode for Playhouse Disney - it might work with other channels too?!

The best programmes are Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and My Friends Tigger & Pooh cos the shows are fully in Mandarin, including the songs they sing. For the rest of the programmes like Dibo the Gift Dinosaur, Barney, Word World, Higgly Town Heroes, the dialogues are in Mandarin. However, the songs sung continue to be in English.

In our bid to make attending her JG Mandarin lessons less painful, we have tried to expose her to as much of the language as we could, in addition to listening to Mandarin nursery rhymes and trying to speak as much Mandarin to her whenever we remember.

Watching all the programmes in Mandarin has certainly improved her understanding of the language. And mine too for that matter!

She could now count from 1-10 correctly when she's in the mood to do so herself without much prompting. I figured that if she's going to spend so much time glued to the tube, she might as well learn something useful from it. So, I've been toggling back and forth between both languages since I've discovered this little nugget of information.

Hoorays to Dual Sound Modes!