Maths, music and Mandarin

[Lizcat]

Does anyone have any experience of these three subjects being link for G and T. We have been aware that DD is gifted in Maths for three years now, she plays the recorder loves it and FIL who was semiprofessional musician feels the ability the be able change key of piece of music without being taught is unusual. At parents meeting last night we were surprised to discover that she has a talent for mandarin, even writing the language which native Chinese teacher described as just like a little Chinese girls writing. This is not a general language ability as in Spanish she is described as enthusiastic, but cautious about using the language. Senior school is starting to be on horizon and beginning think that ability to study mandarin could be really important.

I've never heard that mandarin is linked (and will be interested to see if anyone knows).

It doesn't seem likely to me - mandarin requires an ability to learn a great deal by rote, and I suspect that is a totally separate thing from the abilities associated with music and maths. This might mean that your DD has a range of abilities, not one linked set.

When the school started mandarin one if the things they said about it was that children whose strengths lay in Maths, science and music often found mandarin easier than Latin languages due to being a symbol based language.

Maybe that's the reason why Chinese kids are so good at maths,science,music!Mmmm...

Maths and music definitely often go together. I don't know about language, esp Mandarin though. Music can be expressed mathematically so it makes sense that they go together to me.

Oh another thought to add, DH was a maths wizz at school (has A levels in maths, pure maths, advanced maths, super duper maths) and he has been learning Japanese which uses 2,000 Chinese characters - and he seems to find that aspect of learning Japanese quite easy despite not being a 'visual' learner. So maybe there is something in it...

Japanese isn't that similar to mandarin, as kanji (?) involves a kind of script in addition to characters, making at least some of it possible to deduce.

In Mandarin, you have to learn every single one of the buggers by rote - no short cuts, just plain learning by sight recognition.

The link between math and music, I believe, lies in pattern recognition. Mandarin requires rote learning of the characters but the characters do follow a certain pattern (e.g. common radicals), so maybe that is the link.

Mandarin grammar is relatively easy. What makes the language difficult to pick up is the rote character learning. It is also a tonal language (one sound can have 4-5 different tones, and each tone signifies a different character) so that is where a good ear for music helps to differentiate the different tones.

Japanese uses kanji, which means 'Chinese characters' (composed of radicals as blueshoes mentions above), plus two phonic alphabets called hiragana and katakana. But my point was that DH finds the learning of the kanji easier than I ever did when I lived in Japan. He just is good at seeing and memorizing. I'm a very visual person, and I would have thought that being visual would mean I'd find the kanji quite easy as they are visual representations for concepts, things etc. But I could not retain in my memory the sheer number of kanji he can. I could cope with about 200 and then I started to struggle!

Interestingly the two aspects of her ability that really set her apart her are her intonation and her structuring of the characters. I get her ability in Maths same as me and music from DH, but both of us are pretty rubbish at languages, I speak French through hard work no natural ability.

My DS is advanced in both maths and music but really struggling with Mandarin which he has chosen to do for a year but will then give up. The tonal speaking is fine but the character drawing is an issue.

He has the same problem that I have though - an inability to recognise faces easily (he always confuses film actors for example) - so maybe that's no surprise.

He is a whizz at Latin and Greek though. Go figure.

coffeeaddict, that can be diagnosed and it's called prosopagnosia.

Ooh.Thanks. Will look into that!

someone I knew socially, clearly had a brain the size of a small planet.. she had a first in Maths and Music.. (weird or not I don't know)? When we were sitting at a concert in a hall where the karate club also met, she started reading the sign on the wall, I asked if her children attended and she said no, she had for a brief period been fascinated by chinese opera so taught herself to read the language, which she described as surprisingly easy.... is this relevant? I don't know but I was so stunned by it that I've remembered it for years and always wanted to tell people.

hardboiled and coffeeaddict, not recognising faces also comes up a lot at my group of autism mums... nearly all of our boys suffer from it at one level or another, thanks for the name for it. I shall look into that too