Learning English With A Five Year Old. Life Imitates Art

Reading bedtimes stories is one of my favorite activities as a Dad. It's amazing to watch him learn new words at such a rapid pace. Seems like just yesterday he was still trying to remember his ABC's. Now he can read many of the Dr. Seuss books that he received from his older sister.

While he has mastered many monosyllabic words, he is facing some frustrations with the intricacies of English language. As anybody who has tried to learn English knows, our language is not the easiest one to comprehend, with all sorts of rules of pronunciation that defy all manners of logic. Like the classic "I Love Lucy" clip above, these illogical practices can drive one to tears.

For instance, while reading one of his books tonight, he came across several words that look like they should be pronounced the same, but are in fact, quite different. The words were "here", "there", and "where." All end in "ere" yet each one is supposed to be said in a distinct way. It got to the point where he hesistated before speaking such seemingly innocent looking words. I won't even go into how the word "ere" itself is supposed to be spoken lest it causes the reader to descend to madness.

Another one where he got stumped was "know" and "now." With one change in letter, the two words are suddenly pronounced entiredly unalike. How is this possible? How can one language not have consistent rules for its words? It's probably due to the melting pot nature of American society that we have so many ways of speaking similar words. Every new immigrant brought with him his native language which eventually got incorporated into our language. Unfortunately this also included the pronunciations of the native language as well. So now we have a polyglot of ways to say similar words.

My son can sympathize with Ricky Ricardo's angst. Ricky notes that Spanish is very easy to learn, with the same rules applying to all words. Unfortunately for American English learners, we don't have the luxury of such a pure uncontaminated language. Ours has been stirred through the melting pot of our wider culture. It is now a test of endurance and brain power to correctly decipher our English. This is a great way to make sure only smart people can migrate to the U.S. and become productive citizens.

What Rhymes With Bucket?

My preschooler son is busy learning new words. In my eyes he has an astonishing capacity to acquire new information. One game we like to play is finding words that rhyme. This is a very quick and efficient method for him to expand his vocabulary. Some words are easy and have lots of rhyming words. I'll ask him what rhymes with "car". He'll then go down the alphabet and gives me all the words that sound like car like bar, far, jar, mar, star, tar, etc.. If a word doesn't sound familiar he'll ask what it means. Most of the time I'll tell him there is no such word as "yar" but sometimes he'll learn a new word with this process.

The other day my wife and I were reading a story to him and came across the word "bucket". Out of habit I asked him what rhymes with bucket. He then proceeded down the alphabet: cucket, ducket... fucket. I gasped a little bit and looked at my wife. She looked back and quickly shook her head. Don't make a big fuss about it was her silent reply.

Children take a gleeful delight in doing things that upset their parents. When we tell our son not to jump on the sofa, he of course will find every opportunity to jump on the sofa. If we ask him not to bother his sister while she's doing her homework, he'll become inseparable from her workspace. So if we ask him not to say the word fucket, he would wind up repeating the word often enough to get expelled from his preschool. So now I've learned my lesson. No more word games with words that rhyme with bucket, or buck, or hit, or ham. Complicated, raising children is.

Shame Of Being Monolingual

One of the burdens of being a Chinese-American is that everybody you meet expects you to speak Chinese. Relatives at family parties, friends of friends, total strangers all assume you speak an Asian language just by your face. My wife has to constantly remind acquaintances at parties that I don't speak Mandarin, which always leads to a quizzical look, an embarrassed laugh, and the inevitable question, "Why not?" There have been countless times where I've walked into a store or restaurant and the greeter starts speaking to me in a foreign tongue. The sense of inadequacy is much more acute when I go to Asia. When a Caucasian or other non-Asian goes to China, naturally nobody expects him to speak Chinese. But when I go there on vacation, the waiters and store clerks start conversing to me in their native tongue, which is not native to me. When I look at them blankly, they instantly assume I'm retarded or hard of hearing. When I try to pretend I understood what they just said and simply nod, the acute humiliation this entails for answering incorrectly just makes the situation worse.

Why don't I speak Chinese even though I'm Chinese-American? Why should I? I live in the United States of America. I'm definitely more American than Chinese. My parents moved here when I was just a toddler. They didn't speak Mandarin at home so I promptly forgot all the pre-K Mandarin I knew. Things weren't so bad while growing up in the Midwest as hardly anybody there were Asian. But once I went to college and then moved to the cosmopolitan Southern California, suddenly the inability to speak what by all appearances should be my second language became an embarrassing liability.

I attempted to relearn the language. I even took two years of Mandarin in college. However those lessons just didn't stick. I can now speak Jin tian hen hou, but anything more complicated than that leaves me stumped. Frankly, despite the dishonor to the race, I don't really understand why I should know the Chinese language. Sure it will come in handy someday when China dominates the world and we are all working for some Chinese mega-corporation, but in the meantime I am still living in a Western country. Isn't it kind of racist to expect all Asians to speak a native Asian language? After all, when I see a white person, I don't expect him to speak German or Italian or Irish. I would be shocked if I met an African-American and he knew Kenyan. So why should I feel such discomfiture for not being able to speak Mandarin?

In the meantime, we are determined not to allow our children to suffer the same embarrassment that I've lived through. We take them to Chinese school every week, which they hate. They take summer vacations in China every year, which they love. Now their mastery of Mandarin far surpasses mine. So now I also have to suffer the indignity of them talking about me behind my back to their mother while I'm standing in the same room because they know I don't understand a single word they're saying. Oh the shame.