Perhaps you’ve been there done that.  You might have someone in you life who corrects you constantly.  I know I do.  But something deep inside of me wants to dismiss the constructive criticism and just ignore the correction and move on.  My son does not.  I should not.  But I’m an adult.  I said it differently ok, I said it in a creative way, ok I can say it my own way.  It was wrong, sure but I just want to be understood!  I don’t have to speak so eloquently!  Wrong.  I need to learn from what my 4 year old does.  If he says something wrong, MX will correct him and sure enough each time, without our prompting, he will repeat the correct way of saying it and then move on with the conversation.  It’s really amazing and I have noticed it.  He does the same in English too when I correct him.  ”Did Mommy sleep this afternoon?”  He responds, “Yes, Daddy, Mommy sleept.”  I correct him.  ”Mommy, slept this afternoon?”  He notices I said it differently and then corrects himself.  ”Mommy slept this afternoon.”  Nice.

One of things that he is constantly doing at 4 years old is asking questions.  I think I’m up to 1,269 questions and counting.  Kidding.  But he has so many and sometimes I can predict a question, sometimes I cannot.  Sometimes he surprises me with a poignant question about life or God and sometimes I prompt him to ask me a question.  Nevertheless, the boy asks constantly.  But he has learned in his short 4 years that by asking a question he’s going to get a response.  By getting a response he will gain understanding.  By gaining understanding he will learn how to describe something, talk about something and also learn about the social taboos surrounding the thing he asked about.  He asks us lots of questions in Mandarin also and we say “因为” or “because” a lot.  Asking questions as an adult learning Mandarin though is sometimes daunting or also could seem immature.  Who cares.  You are learning a language not showing off your maturity.

One interesting aspect of being a child and learning a language as opposed to being an adult: There are questions that our boy asks, that as an adult I know through social cues, to not ask.  For example: I made some comment about something one night at dinner and MX started to cry.  Our boy seeing his mother cry asked the logical question, “妈妈，为什么你哭了？“ or “Mommy, why are you crying?”  The answer of course produced so many social and cultural issues that the boy learned so much in just that answer, what makes mommy cry, what daddy shouldn’t have said, which gender cries more often, etc etc.  Now, as an adult, that question and thus all that learning would never have taken place since socially and culturally an adult knows to mind their own business when it doesn’t involve them.  The point being: Start learning languages when you are young so that you can ask rude questions!  It’s fun!

It’s interesting that our son has learned math addition words in Chinese first 一加一等于二 1+1=2 thanks to MX.  (Math in Chinese to me is my worst nightmare.)  And he has learned all his “playing with cars” words in English thanks to me.  For example: CRASH!  BOOM!  WATCH OUT!! etc.  From time to time there is something that our boy really wants to tell us and if we are both with him he will sometimes slip from Chinese into English or vice versa.  But the point is, he’s using his language, he wants to speak about something that matters to him and he has two languages to help him express himself as effectively as he can.  He doesn’t get excited when talking to Mx’s parents on SKYPE about what he learned at school, but he is excited and wants to talk about his friend at school and also his favorite subject in school: Snack time!

You can keep up with our son’s use of Chinese on our Twitter account.  I hear him say funny stuff and I put it up there!

There are many Learning Mandarin Comics and posts on our site! Check them out!