Speaking Chinese the ACS way

We make no secret of the fact that we can't speak Chinese to save our lives. Packrat more than myself but honestly, my Chinese is nothing to shout about. It doesn't stop me from trying with the twins. We were told by the twins' Chinese teacher to keep speaking to them and getting them to form sentences. Simple sentences.

Thankfully, that I can still do. So I narrate what they are doing in Chinese. Jordan is eating bread. Evan is drinking water. And they dutifully parrot after me. Both speak passably. They're not about to recite Tang poetry or anything but I'm happy that they are beginning to have a workable command of the language.

We've gotten to the point that they voluntarily announce their actions in Chinese.

A few days ago, we heard Evan announce that he was drinking milk. We praised him effusively for it. Basking in the glory of his achievement, he pronounced it louder and that's when we discovered that " 我 喝牛奶" sounded slightly off. He was pronouncing 牛奶 [niu (2) nai (3) ] as [miu (2) mai (3)].

When corrected, he very seriously told me that MILK started with the 'm' sound and therefore 牛奶 which was milk had to be pronounced miu (2) mai (3). While the boy has a point, I don't think it works that way.

Nevertheless, we get what he's saying, he's tickled by it and he's making an effort with the language. So we're going to leave it for now. But to make sure he remembers himself being silly, we recorded him saying it with such glee!



Technorati Tags: twins, Learning Chinese