Saturday, February 23, 2008
Talking Dutch
Mylene is talking Chinese already very well now. I must admit, she has overhauled me :-( On the positive side for me, I am learning a lot from her.
She is telling stories in Chinese, singing songs, and, most of, giving us orders about what it is that we need to do for her.
She can even count in Chinese:
"yi, er, san, si, wu, liu, qi, ba, jiu, shi, shi-yi, shi-er, shi-wu"
(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, ,12, 15)
We are not sure whether she has fully understood the concept of numbers, though. Because basically, what Mylene is doing, is repeating what she hears. And she is quite good at doing this.
This really adds a new dimension to the relationship. We are realizing again how important and valuable it is to be able to speak. It is much easier now, to understand what Mylene needs, or finding out what the problem is if she is feeling uncomfortable.
Of course, Shiqi is able to enjoy this even more than I do.
Therefore, I was very happy when a week or two ago Mylene took the first step in talking Dutch to me.
As every morning, we picked up Mylene from her room and brought her to ours, when she woke up and started to shout. The normal routine is that she comes into our bed, gets a 250ml package of milk with a straw, and 2 small "milk cookies".
That morning, Mylene sat in our bed, between Shiqi and me. And suddenly she turned to me and said in Dutch "Papa, melk drinken", then turned to Shiqi and said "Mama, wo yao he niunai" (I want to drink milk).
Even though the sentence was short, it made me very happy.
Since that morning, she is regularly saying some words in Dutch to me. She never does that to Shiqi. It seems she starts to find out how to distinguish Chinese from Dutch and also knows that papa talks Dutch and mama talks Chinese.
She is telling stories in Chinese, singing songs, and, most of, giving us orders about what it is that we need to do for her.
She can even count in Chinese:
"yi, er, san, si, wu, liu, qi, ba, jiu, shi, shi-yi, shi-er, shi-wu"
(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, ,12, 15)
We are not sure whether she has fully understood the concept of numbers, though. Because basically, what Mylene is doing, is repeating what she hears. And she is quite good at doing this.
This really adds a new dimension to the relationship. We are realizing again how important and valuable it is to be able to speak. It is much easier now, to understand what Mylene needs, or finding out what the problem is if she is feeling uncomfortable.
Of course, Shiqi is able to enjoy this even more than I do.
Therefore, I was very happy when a week or two ago Mylene took the first step in talking Dutch to me.
As every morning, we picked up Mylene from her room and brought her to ours, when she woke up and started to shout. The normal routine is that she comes into our bed, gets a 250ml package of milk with a straw, and 2 small "milk cookies".
That morning, Mylene sat in our bed, between Shiqi and me. And suddenly she turned to me and said in Dutch "Papa, melk drinken", then turned to Shiqi and said "Mama, wo yao he niunai" (I want to drink milk).
Even though the sentence was short, it made me very happy.
Since that morning, she is regularly saying some words in Dutch to me. She never does that to Shiqi. It seems she starts to find out how to distinguish Chinese from Dutch and also knows that papa talks Dutch and mama talks Chinese.
