Flexi Classes Shanghainese Classes Tester?

[zhouhaochen]

We have been running with Flexi Classes for Mandarin now since October and are going to expand it from Mandarin to Shanghainese.

 

I know Shanghainese not particularly "hot" language and I assume uptake is going to be pretty modest, but one of the reasons why I like China is because it is such a diverse place and I do hope it will remain that way. I think local languages (or dialects) are essential for that and we want to support that it remains that way. Not sure if we will succeed, but at least I will try.

 

So we are 2/3 finished with our Shanghainese Flexi Classes and plan to start teaching in May. We are looking for test users to try out the teaching materials. Flexi Classes as a learning software is very solid and runs well, but the teaching materials for Shanghainese of course will be very different.

https://flexiclasses.com/shanghainese-online/

 

I dont speak Shanghainese (the LTL Shanghai team is developing the materials) so I will try it out myself too as a student, but it would be great to have 2 or 3 other people doing it with me. We would give three free hours to anyone who wants to give it a go. We will offer complete beginner to low beginner intermediate level classes at the start. Further levels will be added later.

Please reply below if interested.

 

Cantonese and Hokkien (台语) are in the pipeline.

[Jan Finster]

51 minutes ago, zhouhaochen said:

Hokkien (台语)

 

51 minutes ago, zhouhaochen said:

Shanghainese

 

This is actually very cool. As a German native, I cannot imagine many foreigners would sign up for a  Platt German (Low German) or Frisian course. I do wonder what the market for Shanghainese and Hokkien really is (?) Will the students be Chinese natives? 

[suMMit]

Expats with Shanghai local wives/, husbands, gfs and inlaws maybe? 

 

 

[mungouk]

There's probably a sizeable bunch of people in Singapore who would be interested in Hokkien as a heritage language. 

 

[zhouhaochen]

7 hours ago, Jan Finster said:

 

This is actually very cool. As a German native, I cannot imagine many foreigners would sign up for a  Platt German (Low German) or Frisian course.

We have been teaching Shanghainese at LTL Shanghai for quite a while now. There are also quite a few students studying online Shanghainese with us now. https://www.ltl-shanghai.com/shanghainese/ We never had a native Mandarin student though many learners of Shanghainese studied Mandarin beforehand. The new trying this time will be that we developed or own teaching materials which is quite exciting because for Shanghainese there isn't much available.

And yes I fully agree, German is still very much in the old mindset of everyone should speak the standard language. Appreciation for dialects and local languages is coming but very slowly. Other European countries are far ahead there.

[Jan Finster]

37 minutes ago, zhouhaochen said:

And yes I fully agree, German is still very much in the old mindset of everyone should speak the standard language. Appreciation for dialects and local languages is coming but very slowly. Other European countries are far ahead there.

 

To be fair, Germany does cherish and support local dialects and Low German. I was more referring to foreigners. I find it hard to imagine someone from, lets say Japan, who just studied English to an intermediate to advanced level, to sign up for Welsh classes. But, what do I know ?

 

Anyway, I am glad your program has students interested in those minor languages.

[Flickserve]

I don’t see an option to change to Shanghainese lessons after logging  in.

[Flickserve]

15 hours ago, mungouk said:

There's probably a sizeable bunch of people in Singapore who would be interested in Hokkien as a heritage language. 

 

This is quite interesting. The Hokkien should have some variation in Singapore, Penang, other parts of Malaysia and Taiwan. Penangites can be a somewhat standoffish about their version of hokkien.

[zhouhaochen]

6 hours ago, Flickserve said:

don’t see an option to change to Shanghainese lessons after logging  in.

Yes not yet, it will all go live in May. At the moment we are still testing and preparing. Do you want to give it a try then?

[zhouhaochen]

On 4/5/2021 at 7:22 PM, suMMit said:

Expats with Shanghai local wives/, husbands, gfs and inlaws maybe? 

 

On 4/5/2021 at 7:28 PM, mungouk said:

There's probably a sizeable bunch of people in Singapore who would be interested in Hokkien as a heritage language

 

On 4/6/2021 at 10:51 AM, Flickserve said:

This is quite interesting. The Hokkien should have some variation in Singapore, Penang, other parts of Malaysia and Taiwan. Penangites can be a somewhat standoffish about their version of hokkien.

Yes, we see most of our interest for Shanghainese come from people who either have a family connection (parent, partner who speaks Shanghainese) or live in Shanghai and want to have a closer connection to the place.

 

For Hokkien, there are so many versions of it, but what we mainly taught so far is 台语 though thats probably due to our school in Taipei. We were just in the process of opening our school in Singapore when Covid hit.

In Flexi Classes we are having different city versions, so for Mandarin this started we Shanghai and we are starting to introduce Taipei (which includes both traditional and simplified characters).

For Hokkien we will have the same.

Its all quite exciting, because for Shanghaihua and Hokkien/台语 there really is very little out there in terms of learning materials so we can really make a difference there. I hope there will be people who will take up the offer. This is not a project that can or ever could make money, so as long as we manage to increase the interest in those languages and help those people who want to try to actually learn them, it is a win for me.

Lets see - Covid is horrible, but it also brought about a lot of change, some maybe not even so bad (at least for us).

[Flickserve]

23 hours ago, zhouhaochen said:

Do you want to give it a try then?

 

I can try it out. It's nice to learn a few phrases and surprise people. It's a nice ice breaker. 

 

Hokkien would definitely be interesting. I'm more used to the Malaysian hokkien though. I find spoken 台语 a bit difficult to recognise what with different accent, speed of delivery and intonation.

[zhouhaochen]

3 hours ago, Flickserve said:

On 4/6/2021 at 5:07 PM, zhouhaochen said:

Do you want to give it a try then?

 

I can try it out.

Great our first Shanghainese tester then. Anyone else? 

 

[zhouhaochen]

 

So we have one Shanghainese tester. We will go online in May. Who else wants to speak the language of the rich and glamorous?

[alantin]

Hi @zhouhaochen,
I have zero experience with Shanghainese, but I'd like to try it out if this offer still stands!

[zhouhaochen]

 

1 hour ago, alantin said:

I have zero experience with Shanghainese, but I'd like to try it out if this offer still stands!

It most definitely does. Great to have you on board. It will be a challenge to get a big enough group together to keep the system busy enough to run but I will try anything thats possible. We are ok to run group classes at one student each class for as long as needed.

Anyone else?

[madizi]

is there trial for Kanton (Guangdong)?

[anonymoose]

25 minutes ago, zhouhaochen said:

Anyone else?

 

How is this going to work? I potentially would, and I already speak some Shanghainese.

[alantin]

7 hours ago, zhouhaochen said:

It most definitely does. Great to have you on board. It will be a challenge to get a big enough group together to keep the system busy enough to run but I will try anything thats possible. We are ok to run group classes at one student each class for as long as needed.

Awesome!

[zhouhaochen]

16 hours ago, madizi said:

is there trial for Kanton (Guangdong)?

Cantonese Flexi Classes are not ready yet and it will be a while until they are I think. Once they are I will definitely post here.

We teach Cantonese classes online https://flexiclasses.com/online-cantonese-courses/ though and it is actually quite popular. It is all 1on1 classes though, which is great for learning, but they cost more than Flexi group Classes.

 

 

[zhouhaochen]

We taught our first Shanghainese Flexi Classes this week. We have one test from this forum, but would love to have a 2nd person to try it out. Anyone else interested? Its a fun language and definitely comes with VIP treatment in Shanghai. Our Shanghainese teaching team must be the most committed teachers we have. They all also teach Mandarin, but Mandarin to them is a job, teaching Shanghainese is a passion. They will love you immediately for giving it a try.