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My nine-year-old son is bilingual English/French (British father, French mother) and absolutely devours books for his age in both languages (ie his reading age in both languages seems roughly equal), and is keen to learn a third language.

He has been fascinated by the 'visuals' and culture of China for many years now, and seeing him understand the benefits of being able to speak multiple languages, plus the plasticity that bilingualism brings, I would like to at least show him some resources for learning Chinese to see what he makes of them.

Are there any good resources aimed at children for learning Chinese? Is it even a good idea? Nobody in our family can speak Chinese, so we wouldn't be able to offer any help whatsoever.

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Chineasy is a well known teaching system which associates Chinese characters to pictures. For example, the character 人 is drawn as a person to show that it is the character for person.

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    Are you aware of the criticism of Chineasy by sinologists?
    – Tsundoku ♦
    Commented Jan 4, 2023 at 15:24
  • Naturally, if you use Chineasy as your sole method of language learning, you're not going to go very far, just as you can't only use Wikipedia to learn French. You won't be able to use the imperative, your vocabulary will be stuff, and you won't actually be able to speak the language. Thus, you need to use multiple sources to expand your horizons. Frankly, I see Chineasy like Duolingo: for beginners (like the OP), it's great, but the people behind it praise it a bit too highly and once you become more advanced, you'll move on to other resources.
    – ILEM World
    Commented Jan 4, 2023 at 17:44

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