Children’s Song: Two little tiger 《两只老虎》

This is a very fun mandarin song my mother often sang to me when I was a child. It actually follows the tone of Frère Jacques, or Are you Sleeping Brother John. I will do a bilingual version of the latter in a separate post, however, I don’t speak French, so I won’t be working on the French version for now.

Pronunciation tip

When two Chinese characters both with the third tone are placed together in a word, in the case of Tiger 老虎 Lǎo hǔ, it is actually pronounced with the first character sounding like the second tone (láo hǔ), however, that doesn’t change the way pinyin is written.

Also in this sound, we can often sing it with different body part during circle time to encourage learning of additional words. For example, instead of singing “one is with no mouth, one is with no tail”, try switching it up and play with other words like nose, eyes, etc. It can make for a much more engaging and educational session.

If you don’t know this tone, this video has the music.