5/14/12
My husband bought me an orchid plant for Mother's Day. He gave it to me after we had dinner with his mom and my parents at our house. As he handed me the plant, he asked my daughter to say "Happy Mother's Day!" Of course, she couldn't say the whole sentence so he told her to repeats after each word. I couldn't help but laughed at her funny accent because we don't often speak much English with her at home. It made me wonder whether she would know that we are trying to teach her two different languages. Sometimes, on our way over to my mom house, I asked her some basic words that she knows in both languages. For example, I asked her what is "con cho" called in English. She would answered me "Con cho la dog," which translated as "a dog is a dog." Then, I asked her about the English name for a cat, tiger, lion, giraffe, monkey, snake, panda, bird, penguin, whale, and rabbit. She seems to be able to name all of these animals correctly. For the one that she doesn't know, she would asked me, for instance, "Con ha ma la con gi?" Directly translated as: "What is a hippo?" Then I would tell her "Con ha ma is a hippo" and she would repeats the word "hippo." I guess she does understand that I am speaking different languages to her at times....
That's great! Your daughter seems really bright. She should be able to realize when she is speaking English and when she is speaking Vietnamese. I would say to stick with speaking to her in Vietnamese because you will probably end up having to fight her losing her heritage language as she goes through school. =( I don't want her to end up like me with my poor Chinglish!
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