Can a cartoon really teach our children Mandarin?

Are you sitting comfortably? Have you got Oliver Bear snuggled on your lap? And a bowl of noodles with chopsticks you can’t work? Good girl. Let the Chinese hot-housing commence! As my three year old, Tabitha, and I settled on the sofa yesterday to watch the much-heralded new CBeebies language programme, The Lingo Show, I couldn’t have been more excited if we’d been operating the switchboard of the UN General Assembly interpreters’ channel. The 11-minute Lingo cartoon, which focuses on one language per episode, began life as a CBeebies online feature and was consistently one of the website’s most popular items (you know who you are, pushy Mumsnetters). Somebody obviously felt it was time to take the brand mainstream, and the launch show was an introduction to Mandarin. Subsequent follow-ups will variously be in Polish, Somali, Punjabi, Urdu, French, Spanish and Welsh, but to tell the truth, we switched off after Mandarin. Could there be any sweeter music to middle-class ears? As one-upmanship among pre-school parents goes, a tiny tot speaking Mandarin is the holy grail. It has more kudos than pretty much anything else, including playing the violin (although possibly not the viola). And, without wishing to boast, in our house, young Tabitha has a little bit of catching up to do on the sinophilia front. Our nine year old, Lily, goes to a state primary with a visionary headmaster, who introduced First Mandarin to the curriculum years ago. Every now and then he invites a party of pupils to pitch up from Beijing, and their most recent visit left our children slack jawed with wonder, admiration and envy. There was the impressive grasp of English, good manners, biddability, academic diligence and gorgeous, shiny identical haircuts. But these were all upstaged by the fact the girls were so physically dexterous they could twirl ribbons while leaping over the assembly hall piano, which in this country would probably constitute a GCSE. Having rashly promised Lily several months ago that I would take her to China when her language skills are more advanced, I too decided to take up the language. As I possess a Masters in German, I have always secretly flattered myself that I am a natural linguist. But three minutes on the BBC internet tutorial All You Need To Start Learning Chinese quickly disabused me of the notion. Mandarin is a tonal language, which means it’s all in the pronunciation, which is fiendishly difficult to get right. There are four main tones and a fifth neutral one. Moreover, the Teutonic fondness for mathematical grammar that resembles a simultaneous equation is useless in acquiring a language in which the emphasis is on vocabulary, set phrases and instinct rather than rules – and “ji” can mean “chicken” or “jealous”. This would explain why, after some months, I have got little further than the niceties. At least I hope I’m pronouncing them as niceties. It’s hard to learn as an adult, but for the next generation a gift for Mandarin will open doors – and not just to a Shangri-La of chef’s specials. It will provide a first-class ticket to the economic powerhouse of the future (and, should it ever be an issue later in life, a choice of some 30 million peasant men urgently in need of a wife. I’m just saying). But I must put plans for a Western Woods Two Kingdoms Dynasty on the back-burner while I get back to The Lingo Show, which was, I am sorry to report, garish and horrible. The premise is of insects of various nationalities putting on a show; each time a different minibeast is chosen, it sings about its homeland and speaks a different language. Unfortunately, Wei, the cartoon Chinese fly, would insist on teaching us the words for banana and ice cream by landing on them, which I found unexpectedly irritating on health and hygiene grounds. A casual observer might have inferred that Tabitha, who was beaming, loved it. But then she is three, with no taste. Truth be told, she was so thrilled to be sitting on the sofa with me and a snack instead of playing worthily with bricks, we might as well have been tuned into Bloomberg TV. I couldn’t remember anything afterwards, apart from “hello”, which I knew anyway, and the animation itself was so charmless that I won’t be tuning in again. That’s 11 minutes of my life I can claw back, but it does mean I’ll have to find another way to upstage fellow parents. Anyone got the number for a top-flight viola teacher?