Meet the four-year-old Assyrian child who learned to speak Mandarin from home

At the age of four, Messiah Mourad can speak, read and partially write in Mandarin Chinese before ever setting foot in a school.

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And Messiah's language abilities extend well beyond Mandarin. According to his mother, Nawal Shamoun, he can also speak Assyrian and a bit of German and some Arabic as well.

Ms Shamoun said she wanted him to learn Mandarin because of her belief that the language was on course to becoming an international language on a par with English.

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But Ms Shamoun affirmed that no matter what language people learned, their mother language was always the most important one.

To this end, she said she was planning to enrol Messiah at the St Hurmizd Assyrian Primary school to learn "proper Assyrian".

Ms Shamoun said some countries such as Saudi Arabia had included Mandarin in school curricula. Even former US President, Donald Trump, showed a video of his grand-daughter, Arabella Kushner, singing in Mandarin and reciting part of the Three-Character Classic and several ancient Chinese poems, to President, Xi Jinping, during his visit to China in 2017.

I love to see Messiah in Assyrian school learning the Assyrian language properly.

Ms Shamoun said scientists believed that because Mandarin Chinese involved learning language, sounds, drawing, and mathematics all at once, it activated more regions of the brain and improved overall cognitive development.

Messiah was two years old when he first started learning Mandarin, with the help of a Chinese language tutor.

The tutor used to come once a week from Sydney central to Fairfield where Messiah and his mother and grandmother live, to teach him the language for one hour.

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Ms Shamoun's husband, Albert Mourad, died two years after their marriage from a heart attack. He used to run a bridalware factory with the business lost following his death.

With whatever money was left, she said she had decided to save for the education of their son.

I decided to sacrifice my personal needs for the sake of Messiah's education. I don't go to the beauty salon or buy expensive clothes like any other woman would like to, I rather spend the money on Messiah's tutoring.

Ms Shamoun said, "I used to pay the tutor $80 per one-hour lessons. It is a lot of money spent on a weekly basis, I had to sacrifice many things to be able to afford the lessons".

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After the COVID-19 restrictions and lockdowns, Messiah started learning Mandarin online with the help of some online software.

When the virus restrictions were lifted for the first time, Ms Shamoun started preparing her son to learn German. After two months, the lockdown resumed and that disrupted all of her plans. She went back into online learning for her son, focusing on Mandarin.

To watch video clips posted by Ms Shamoun about her son Messiah's learning and interacting with his teacher, go to the Facebook page at:

Learn with Messiah

You can watch the full interview at this link: