Here are the utterances that Jie-Jie is using on a consistent basis these days:Mandarin Words
- tang - hot - he pronounces it as 'kong'
- tiwa - telephone - he pronounces it as 'chiwa'
- xie-xie - thank-you
- chichow - truck - I totally don't know the correct pronouncation or spelling for this
- chocola - open - don't know correct Mandarin pronouncation or spelling
- yue - fish
- ma - horse
- aya - negation (e.g.'aya mama' - 'no mama' - usually uses this when I ask if I should put him to bed)
- Baba - daddy
- Mei-Mei - little sister
- Mama - Mommy
- de - possessive marker
- Jie-Jie
- Lao-Lao - maternal grandma
- Gong-Gong - maternal grandfather
- niu-nia - milk
- ni hao - hello
- hao shi ma/ya - does that taste good?
- hao shi yo/da - it tastes good
- gugugai - the sound a chicken makes. Uses this for eggs, chickens & Baba's nose (guessing he's thinking of a chicken's beak....)
- bu-yao - pronunced 'boo-yao' - I don't want - He combines that one a lot with Mei-Mei ('Bu-yao Mei-Mei) - I don't want you to do/take/touch/look at.....Mei-Mei.
English Words
- train
- booootza - boots
- shooza - shoes
- sooooupa - soup
- spoona - spoon
- sleepa - sleep (a song says, 'and sleep and sleep'. he hears 'nd sleepa nd' sleepa)
- buza - bus
- go Jie-Jie
- patch
- bye-bye
- jooza - juice
- apple
- mine
- this
- look at this
- whatz that
French Words
- pee-pee
- ka-ka - he says a cross between 'ta-ta' and 'da-da'
- dodo - sleep
- fait dodo - go to sleep
- manger - you, we, I eat - we tell him, 'on va manger' (we're going to eat) and he yells, 'manger!'
- du lait - some milk, but he thinks it's one word
- non
- bo-bo - owie
- camion - truck
- Papa
- chocolat - chocolate
- Allo - hello
- cereal
- banane
- yogourt
- fini - finished/all done
- ballon - balloons and flags
- ou est-tu? - where are you. While techniqually a phase, he seems to see it as one word.
- bin-bin (a family inveted word for 'cracker')
- Broccoli - in reference to a woman who sings children's songs
- yoga - he says 'Yoda' - this cracks me up every time he sings it cause...well... I kind of think that Jie-Jie looks a little like....well.... Yoda.
It's truly amazing the range of things he can express with these 58 vocabulary items individually and when he combines them into two and three word utterances.
May the Force Be with You!
4 comments:
I love how he ads an "a" at the end of his english words. Sounds a little....Italian. You're not teaching him that too, right? :-)
I'm loving my mop. Used it yesterday. Worked like a dream!
The more the kids can say, the cuter they are, IMHO!!
Clarissa's first phrases were "mama come", which came out as "mama dum(b?!)" and (when it was handwashing time) "mama, soap", which came out as "mama dope". It's really hard to know how to respond to a child that doesn't respect you.... ;)
By far my favourite little sentence right now is (read this in a cute little girlie voice):
"mama, I, I yub you".
Sometimes she even says it unprompted....
Sonya
How wonderful! Amazing how quickly he is picking up both English and French. That is fantastic!
xo Jen
I have to meet Janet some day - she thinks like I do...
I keep thinking that Jie-Jie sounds like a little old Italian man when he "speaka da Eeenglish"
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