Friday, July 30, 2004

Picking up Mandarin

When I consciously force my self, I would speak Mandarin to S at home so that she understands and pick up the language (I hope). For me being tri-lingual has been quite handy. People treated me with more warmth when I speak their language.
In the following conversation we were discussing her upcoming Bday which is 7 months away. Mandarin is in italics
Me: "Who would you like to invite to your up coming Bday party?"
S: "Tiffany ah.. Katelyn ah.."
Me: " What about Ethan?"
S: " Ethan ah.."
Where did she pick this up from? Adding ah.. at the end of names? I must have talked that way in Mandarin or how else would she pick this up?

I also use Mandarin as our secret language since hubby pretends that he doesn't understand. An example:
S: "Mom can you help me open this?"
Me: "Ask Dad to help you"
S: "Dad can you help me open this?"
This confirms that she understands but doesn't have enough vocabulary to converse with me in Mandarin
Must check out if there's any Chinese school I can send her too.

2 comments:

Bullseye said...

You should see if they have an Mandarine emmersion program. Casey is in one and she's almost fluent. She can pretty much understand what I say to her and speak back. She was a bit reluctant a year ago but she's gotten over that fear.

Sam said...

She's lucky that she has that @ SJ. There isn't any where we live.