Saturday, October 16, 2010

Very good!

This morning, my son said, "Hěn hǎo." That means "Very good" in Mandarin. I'm so proud of him. Admittedly, he was just imitating me. Over the past year, I've gradually lost my Mandarin and really only use "Hěn hǎo" and "Lái lái lái" (Come come come, or come here) on a regular basis anymore.

But he's so good at tones. Probably better than me. I worked hard to learn tones, but he imitates my tones perfectly.

I'm starting to feel a little pang of regret that he's not getting the opportunity to learn Mandarin at this time in his life. He'd be so good at it. I can't guess whether he'd have more success at learning Mandarin than English. I wonder. But there's no way to know.

Now I want to resolve, again, to teach myself Mandarin. Or at least to try harder to keep the Mandarin I know. Unfortunately, resolving and doing are two different things.

Today will be busy. First we're going to the Fall Festival at our friend's Baptist Church. Then we go into Boston for a comic artists' meeting. Then we visit Great-Grandma and Auntie, because they live so close to where the meeting will be.

Then I will drop from exhaustion. Oh well. At least I washed all the dishes, cleaned the fishtank, and got assorted other housework done already. A moderately neat-ish house makes me moderately happy-ish.

1 comment:

  1. Good for you for keeping your son in touch with his native language. I wish I had learned tagalog (Filipino) and reinforced it with Becky. When we went back to the Philippines to visit when she was 16, it was very awkward for her not knowing how to speak the language when everyone there expected her to.

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