Dr Seuss sounds pleasing, Even when you're Chinesing

I grew up on Seuss
I read him a lot
And though I'm a grown-up
I still think he's hot!

If I Ran the Zoo
And then: Hop on Pop
Horton Hears a Who
Ten Apples up on Top

One Fish Two Fish
The Cat in the Hat
Red Fish Blue Fish
So many classics like that.

You can read Wikipedia
With relative ease
About the Doc's background
In English / Chinese

But that got me thinking
How I could fit it in
To translate his titles
Into pure Mandarin

So with some quick searching
I found this and that
And have copied it down here
Now give me a pat

You can read them quite quickly
Without paying much heed
Or copy-and-paste them
Into flashcards you'll need

Whatever you choose
Remember you are the one
You just cannot lose
When you make Mandarin fun.

 .  .  .  .


Some Translations

Dr Seuss
苏斯博士 (simplified)
蘇斯博士 (traditional)
sūsī bó​shì (pinyin)
Note: The first part is clearly an attempt to transliterate his name, and the second (博士) means doctor or PhD

Cat in the Hat
戴高帽的猫
戴高帽的貓
dài gāo mào de māo
Note: The literal Chinese translation is a little different: 'the cat that wears the tall hat' (and how coincidental that 帽 and 猫 sound the same :)

Green Eggs & Ham
绿鸡蛋和火腿
綠雞蛋和火腿
lǜ jīdàn hé huǒtuǐ
Note: Literally translated. Green. Eggs. And. Ham.

If I Ran the Circus
如果我来经营马戏团
如果我來經營馬戲團
rúguǒ wǒ lái jīngyíng mǎxìtuán
Note: And now I know the word for circus :)

One Fish Two Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish
一条鱼 两条鱼 红色的鱼 蓝色的鱼
一條魚 兩條魚 紅色的魚 藍色的魚
yī tiáo yú liǎng tiáo yú hóngsè de yú lánsè yú
Note: Measure words really make a hash out of this!


Other posts
While searching for the Chinese names of his books, I found some other internet articles / blogposts, for those who might be interested ...

• Dr Seuss in Chinese!
• Dr Seuss: lost in translation
• Bilingual Dr Seuss
• 苏斯博士：让孩子站在地平线上 ---- 儿童文学博士李虹

This last link has a long list of his books, including Chinese book names - certainly much longer than my list above.

Bookmark this post. For reference. And stuff.

Flashcards - the full collection of articles

It was back in 2011 that I wrote my first post dedicated to the use of flashcards for learning Chinese, entitled "Flashcards: Just do it". And this remains my strong recommendation for anyone who isn't yet an "advanced" student of Chinese (or any language you might be learning).

Since then, I have written a number of posts dedicated to the use of flashcards, and this article brings all such posts together into a full compilation - to make it easier for you to find them all ...

• Flashcards: Just do it (I don't think I could be more explicit about how important flashcards are if you really want to accelerate your language learning)
• My long romance with flashcards (This post is about how I got into flashcards - after first trying and failing and giving up - to finally doing it properly)
• The 'redneck' guide to flashcards (A humorous look at "You know you should be using flashcards if ...")
• How many flashcards does it take to change a lightbulb? (Here I give you an early insight into my actual flashcard deck, with lots of stats about its content and my usage, with some early and some recent examples of cards added)
• Getting sentenced in Chinese (In this article I talk about why I had moved to learning sentences and not just words, and how to 'roll your own' sentences)
• A clever butcher uses a cleaver (As you can see from the heading, you can actually create really clever sentences which link words, making them much easier to memorise)
• "Write on!!" - reviewing Skritter for iOS (Here I reviewed the Skritter iOS app, coming to the conclusion it's a great flashcard-style system for reading & writing Chinese)
• The one flashcard I review more than any other (A little tongue-in-cheek article about vocabulary :)

The above articles are specifically about flashcards, and the number of articles will grow over time. I make many other references to flashcards in articles, especially those in the Heisig series, as well as in terms of 'dragon tattoo' posts and 'Charlie Brown' posts and 'flexible' posts and 'snake' posts and 'boat' posts and 'horse' posts (and many others) where I include sentences that can easily be copied-and-pasted into your own home-grown flashcard pack.

And for those who are wondering, I have been using the Anki flashcard software (originally on Windows, then Mac, now mainly on iOS) - it's fantastic software, for many many reasons.

And, just to make my point clear, there is one post you really should read: Flashcards: just do it!