This is a true story about how a well-known American animated sitcom, The Simpsons, helped me learn English and to learn some of the ways people live in North America. In China one can learn writing, reading and listening in formal classroom settings with Chinese English teachers, but The Simpsons helped me learn how to speak English. By listening to the English spoken and reading both the English and Mandarin captions, I was able to match written words with tone and mood to make sense of slang in realistic situations.
Hearing the slang was particularly helpful because when you look up slang in a dictionary it doesn’t tell you what situations are appropriate for it. The captions also helped me learn more words and casual grammar because he could pause at anytime to look things up. I also found out that he likes American Humor more than Chinese humor.
What I have done with this installation is to reverse my learning experience by choosing clips from original Simpson’s episodes and dubbing them into Mandarin Chinese. Then we captioned the clips in Chinese and English. In this way, as an English speaker, you can experience my learning progress. By watching and listening to The Simpsons in Mandarin and reading captions in both English and Mandarin, you can understand mood and tone in the conversations and learn slangs in these “realistic” scenarios. We hope Simpsons Mandarin helps to make learning Mandarin a fun experience.
Interacting with design. Learning Chinese with the Simpsons.
