Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Languages

For Reese, obviously English is considered his mother tongue. He speaks nothing but English. Then when he was 1+, we discovered he know some Chinese (Mandarin) words from watching a children program in Chinese! So I took the opportunity to teach him some Chinese and urged my parents to speak to him in Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese). They used to complain that I should speak Chinese to him so that he won't be a total 'banana' and yet..... hahaha... they themselves conversed in English with him! Anyway.... as of now, he knows quite a lot of Chinese words. I am bugging my mother to get some flash cards to teach him to recognize Chinese characters! I tried looking for it but I am just clueless, everything is written in Chinese and I can't read. Bleh!

About two months back, he started to pick up some Bahasa words too! Now he knows eyes, mouth, nose, ears, hand, leg, hair, head, milk, clothes and also one or two phases in Bahasa. My maid taught him some of them. Even though I am homeschooling him, I realized that if he wants to study in a local college, he will need to have at least Standard 6 level Bahasa Malaysia so there is no escaping! He needs to learn Bahasa and I am bad at it. Will probably get a tutor for him then. :)

I read that introducing different languages to a child should be done after the child turns two so I guess it's good timing for my little boy. Reese is at a stage where he can really absorb whatever you teach him and I really want to make use of this time to teach him as many words as we can!!

So how many languages does your child speaks?

3 comments:

Merryn said...

to go to college u need std 6 level of bahasa malaysia? no problem lah then!

ethan is currently speaking only english with understanding in malay as i have malay kids running into my house every now n then (my students)

Nina @ BabyBoon said...

send reese over to play with gibran then reese can teach gibran english and gibran can teach reese malay! hahahah! gibran understands english but would alwaysss reply in malay. headache...!

A gift from God said...

Merryn,

I think I will just hire a tutor for BM... :)

BabyBooned,
mmm... sounds like a good idea..... When I have more time I will ask you..

At least Gib understand English... Reese doesn't understand Malay!