These people must be dense! ~ Steph

We often wonder what Li Lin must think about our family.  As she listens to us try and talk to her with our limited half-Mandarin-half-English garble, she must think that she’s fallen into a Chinese speaking family that is full of people that either:

1. Have horrible pronunciation
2. Half the time do not know the meaning of basic words
3. Have an incredibly limited vocabulary
4. All of the above in a healthy dose!

I have mentioned before and will mention again – I think that Sara having learned Mandarin before us adopting Li Lin was a very helpful thing.  I would strongly encourage anyone considering international adoption (particularly those adopting toddlers or older children) to spend some time learning their child’s native language.  It helps the child feel more comfortable more quickly.  It helps to decrease the frustration that the child feels if they are not understood.  It increases the chance that the child will be able to maintain some level of fluency in their first language, which is good on a variety of levels.

Sara’s Mandarin is pretty good.  In fact, I think it is absolutely awesome!  She can communicate at the level of a preschooler with relative ease!  Of course, with a language like Mandarin, there is a large gap between useless (pretty close to where I am) and awesome.  Sara would fall somewhere within those boundaries.  The problem with Mandarin in our family is not Sara’s awesome though somewhat limited vocabulary, it’s the rest of us who are the problem.  I had a few lessons as well.  I learned how to fluently count, give dates and times, order food, ride a taxi, introduce myself and tell people how many kids I have, what their ages are and what their names are.  Li Lin is not particularly interested in any of that information.

Our children were all able to count to ten fluently.  They could say ‘hi’, ‘I’m fine’ and ‘I Love you’.  Shortly before heading out to China Sara taught us all a few more phrases.  Once we got Li Lin, Sara was the main communicator since she had her Mandarin.  The rest of us spent our time telling her ‘wo ai ni bao bao’ [I love you baby], or ‘wo ai ni mei mei’ [I love you little sister].  She must have been thinking we were a bunch of broken records!  Not being able to talk to someone is a big deal to those in our family... there is rarely much free air time!  So, instead of speaking English to Li Lin to help her learn this new language we are all fluent in, we started speaking to Li Lin in a cross of Mandarin, made up words that sound like Mandarin words, and Mandarin words that are completely mispronounced or misused!  The kids and I picked up our Mandarin from listening to Li Lin and Sara talk.

The few words we picked up quickly were ‘bu’ [no], along with ‘bu yao’ [don’t want].  Li Lin was quickly taught to say ‘duibuqi’ [sorry] and we also learned ‘shuo’ [say].  So Li Lin was inundated with ‘wo ai ni’s during her happy times.  When she got upset or angry and hit, she would get a ‘shuo duibuqi’ [say sorry]  I’m sure at some point she must have thought, “These people are so dense.  They look old enough to have more than a dozen word vocabulary!”

Yesterday I called Li Lin to come eat lunch so I asked her to come for ‘cha’ [tea] while doing the eating motion.  She looked at me quizzically but came.  As we were sitting at the table, she was full so I asked her if I could ‘he’ [drink] her eggs!  She looked at me and laughed.  Sara clarified and so I then asked if I could ‘chi’ [eat] her eggs, and she gladly agreed!

If we don't figure something out soon, we'll have a Li Lin who will be able to speak 3 languages... English, Mandarin and Parent.