Chinglish

I just googled "Chinglish" and realized that it has a different meaning from the one I've known my whole life... Growing up in a Taiwanese household but educated like any other American, I've frequently used Chinglish when speaking to my parents: substituting English words for ones that I don't know in Chinese in my sentence. I rarely speak it now because I don't talk to my parents too frequently lately. But I found myself teaching my daughter to speak Chinglish. Not on purpose of course.

For some unrealistic reason, I've always assumed that my parents would teach Scarlett Chinese after she was born. I always figured that my children would be bilingual because I wouldn't let them lose the important half of their culture and also, my parents don't speak English too well. But the truth is that my parents live too far away from us (yes, Los Angeles can feel like Timbuktu sometimes) and are too busy working to come and visit, let alone stay long enough to teach Scarlett Chinese. So it's really my job to teach her Chinese, especially during the infant-toddler years when language development is at its strongest. I don't think I've succeeded too well so far. It is great that she knows a few vocabulary words in Chinese, such as "go-go" (dog), "wa-wa" (socks), "ya-ya" (duck), and "ba-ba" (daddy) but I've come to realize that she understands me when I speak English to her but not when I speak Chinese to her. (You may have noticed that for children's vocabulary in Chinese, one typically repeats the first word twice. It's similar to adding "-ie/y" to the end of everything in English for kids, such as "duckie" or "lovey" or "mommy".) Now that she's 19 months old, I've really realized that she's learning language in leaps and bounds. I don't really know how much Spanish she knows (from daycare), aside from "aqua" and "mas", since I don't understand Spanish but I do know that she understands most of what I say to her in English and she spouts off new English vocabulary words everyday. These past few weeks, I've realized that she can recite from memory all the names of the daycare providers and her playmates from daycare. She also knows the names of most of her playdate friends. Her other new words are crayons, tail, swing, brown, green, and push (that's all I can recall for now). But she hasn't really learned any new vocabulary words in Chinese. I think I've been resorting to English more and more because I know she understands me. I've heard that the best way to teach them another language is for one parent to speak that language to them exclusively. I obviously have not done that, mostly because it's such an effort for me to consistently speak to her in Chinese and I think in English anyway. I haven't lost hope though. If all else fails, there's always the bilingual school down the street from us that we've been thinking about taking her once she's preschool age.