And now he wanted to speak Mandarin!
Officially, Darrius only attended school for 2 weeks but I have noted quite a lot of improvements beside the fighting and sharing part. For once, he told me he wanted to speak Mandarin and not ‘words’ as in alphabets! It started just 4 days into school when he came and asked me…
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Darrius: Mommy, what is ‘jo-kai’?
Me: ‘jo-kai’ means ‘Go away’. Why?
Darrius: The boy told me to ‘jo-kai’ just now.
Me: You disturb your classmate ah? That’s why he asked you to ‘jo-kai’?
Darrius: Silence
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Now he will greet us ‘Mama jao-ann’ and ‘Papa jao-ann’ when he wakes up and ‘Mama wan-ann’ and ‘Papa wan-ann’ when we tuck him in at night. He will always ask us what is the word in Mandarin when we spoke to him in English.
We are very pleased with his initiative to learn and the best part is, he is will try to answer us in Mandarin now! Not bad for someone who has not been spoken to with Mandarin for the past 4 years… this is indeed a great improvement that we can see after he attended this kindy. Even Madam Leong once feedback to me that Darrius is trying to speak Mandarin during lessons.
On most nights when we have our short chit-chat session before tucking him in, he will ask us a few words and want us to translate them into Mandarin words. He sure learns fast!
Now when I asked him to do something and if he refused he will tell me ‘wo-bu-yao’ (I don’t want) Or when I threaten him with the cane, he will tell me ‘wo-bu-you-teng-pian’ (I don’t want cane).
He will flip on the Chinese work sheets every now and then and will point the word to me and ask me how to read. We hung a simple Chinese characters poster on the wall and he will go there very often and look at it and tell me this is ’sui’ (water) or ‘di’ (ground).
Last night Darrius had this conversation with PiggyBeng…
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Darrius: Daddy, I want to play ’sui’. How to say play in Mandarin?
PiggyBeng: Play is ‘wan’. So you say ‘wo yao wan sui’. Understand?
Darrius: Daddy, wo yao wan sui (cheeky smile)
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Things are looking positive. At least one of our expectations is achieved… earlier than expected. We just need to guide him more (at the same time both of us are learning too) and hopefully he will be able to converse in Mandarin fluently in no time…
Way to go Darrius boy! 
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he sure love to learn …
cute to see our lil one speak “foreign” language hor…
does his mandarin have the ang mo slang..?
Darrius is good at languages! Lucas is getting slightly interested too but he pronounces Mandarin words with an ‘ang moh’ accent (pengsan)
so cute!!! good to know he is practicing/using what he learned!