Saturday, October 15, 2005

Chinese Immersion

I have read quite a bit on kid development and how little baby's brains are just sponges ready to absorb anything and everything around them. Case in point - just utter the word "holy shit" once and it is a permanant part of their limited language. Funny how every word coming out of Nicholas' cute little mouth is almost impossible to decipher, except those he knows damned well he shouldn't be saying in the presence of his older brother's preschool teacher.

I think I have mentioned before that my sons both understand quite a bit of Chinese, even though they don't speak it. It is quite amusing to watch my in-laws talk to the boys in a language that makes absoultely no sense to me, and yet they understand it perfectly. What is even more amusing is when they "forget" that I am caucasian, and speak to me in Chinese for several sentences before they figure out that I don't understand a thing coming out of their mouthes. Believe it or not it has happened more than once. I kind of think of it as a complement really, I have blended in pretty well with the family. I think it must be my chopstick handling and ability to inhale every single Chinese food item my mother-in-law sets in front of me. So I had to chuckle the other day when I came across this photo.




Apparently, this dog's owners up and left, and the SPCA soon figured out that this dog's first language was not English. He was raised in a Chinese household, so the typical "sit" "stay" and "don't shit on the neighbour's lawn" means absoultely nothing.

2 comments:

Anna said...

I have heard that the police train their dogs in German so that the average joe who is getting roughed up can't tell the dog to back off...not sure if that is true or not, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Anonymous said...

Too funny Anna!!! It's true about police dogs being trained in German. Makes perfect sense to me.