After 9 months of chinese immersion at the preschool, T's conversational cantonese has improved remarkably over the past 2 months. She will now voluntarily speak in cantonese to daddy and continues to converse in english with me. I am nicely surprised that she can make her own direct translations at times.
Incident 1 -
T : Mummy see, I 'dirty cat'.
Me : huh? what is dirty cat, there is no cat here.
T : see, my mouth, dirty cat
Me : there is no dirty cat in your mouth dear
T : (getting a little frustrated) Mummy, I eat ice cream, see my mouth, dirty cat. Tissue please.
Only at this moment did I get it. Dirty cat = cantonese direct translation "Wu1 zhuo1 mao1", meaning dirty person.
Incident 2 -
T was drinking a packet drink and it was almost dinner time. I asked the maid to take the drink from her. Both Daddy and I were present. She complains to us (individually) immediately. She looks at Daddy and complains in Canto about the maid taking her drink and right after turns to look at me and repeats the same complain in English.
2 months ago
