Learning languages

I have always spoken in English to Jayden most of his life. His main mode of instruction is in English. When he was younger, I used to speak to him in English and then translate it to Chinese, but when I went back to work, usage of Chinese was minimal.

I have tried so hard to get the hubs and in laws to speak to Jayden in Mandarin to not much avail. Although he understands mandarin, he chooses to reply us in English. Consequently, the hubs and in laws always use their broken English on Jayden, resulting in Jayden speaking grammatically incorrect sentences eg. I doing xxx instead of I am doing xxx. It frustrates me and I constantly correct the husband on it, till the extent that he thinks I’m undermining him. Well, why have I got to keep correcting him if he’d just make an effort to remember how to construct proper sentences? Argh! These men just don’t get it.

So anyway, there was a point in time where Jayden was constantly telling me that he hated Chinese and for us not to speak in Mandarin and it was a rude awakening to me how little Chinese we spoke at home. I started borrowing more cute chinese books from the library and made an effort to speak more mandarin at home. It’s frustrating at times because I need to be THE ONE who teaches Jayden how to speak proper English (since his dad pollutes him with all the grammatically bad English) and also be the one who tries to make him love Chinese being speaking more to him with the limited time I have with him after work. It’s really sad sometimes. Finally, after many months of doing so, Jayden seemingly speak more Mandarin now sometimes even uses English and mandarin interchangeably!

I decided to challenge him a little and set my mind to teach him another foreign language. I love languages and have always wanted to learn more languages, so I wanted him to take up French so we can learn together. However, the class at the French Toast was so boring that he hated it. Then I decided on trying out Spanish class at the Spanish Academy, but Jayden was bored to tears too because the lesson was so slow. We’d spend 1 hour learning colours and even I got it within 30 mins into the lesson. How could I then teach him another language at home on my own? The answer – learn the language myself.

I went to download the app “Duolingo” and started learning Spanish on my own firSt. It really isn’t as difficult picking up Spanish because its sentence structure is pretty similar to English, except that they have male and female and their adjectives are placed at the back of the sentence instead of the front. So I started seeing things around and using Spanish to describe those things. There are times he still tells me – I don’t want you to speak in Spanish, but there are a lot of times whereby we’d be talking and then whenever I break up in Spanish, he’d ask, “What’s xxx in Spanish?” He now knows how to count from 1-10 in Spanish and knows his colours in Spanish. We still have a long long way to go!

Here’s us lying in bed together, talking about everything under the sun