Monday, December 3, 2007

a bilinguist he is alright!

. . . or is he? Haha . . .


Big Z was just lying down on the bed, mainly talking to himself. And then he wanted to know the equivalent of some Malay words in English.


Started of very promisingly with the Malay word 'ayam'. To which he confidently shouted out 'chicken' as the English equivalent. Yes, very good. And then it pretty much ended there - all promises of a good thing. I offered the next word, 'nasi', to which he enthusiastically offered the word 'goreng'. *LOL*


I couldn't help but laugh, and told him that 'nasi' is rice and that 'goreng' means fried in English. So, after chicken and rice (incidentally, a combination of the two calls for a pretty yummy treat .. hehe), it basically went down hill ...
'gajah' - his reply was "hey ... this is too difficult, Mummy"
'bunga' - his reply was "err ... I don't know laaa"


That sums up Big Z's sense of humour at 4 years old. I'd rather think he was just being super-cheeky and plain lazy really, as opposed to thinking he hasn't quite grasped the 2 languages. Separately, he knows these words and what they mean in each language, but when asked to give the equivalent word in the other language, well, a right answer we do not get.

5 comments:

zie_naz said...

Good that Zarif can speak both Malay&English :-) Umar can speak Malay now to our surprise, the final week we'r in S'pore/M'sia..he started to converse in Malay.(There was no intention at all fr us, the parents for Umar to be able to speak Malay, we just want him to understand it for a start)His Malay sounds funny & sometimes terbalik..'pedas kerepek..'.N'mind..We r so happy & we encourage him, so now we also speak lotsa Malay to him! So that he can continue speaking both :-)

Nadia said...

Nasi... goreng! Hahahaha! Irfan so far understands both language. But he utters more English word than Malay. Oh well, as long as they aren't Greek and the likes, I ain't complaining! LOL!

Mom-On-The-Loose said...

I must agree with Nadia... the nasi goreng part is so cute!! Kids really DO say the darnest things kan?? Hani?? She talks mainly in English but your entry makes me want to try and see what her answers would be!! will make an entry out of it if it's funny enough!!

i just wish her father would talk to her in klata-nese more so she can pick that up as well. Rugi je tak blajar!!

lyn said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
lyn said...

aiyah... terdelete the previous post lak! nways

my sons.... not only cant they speak, they cant even understand simple malay words.

i have to one day teach and speak to them in malay coz otherwise, they will never pick it up and in the end, diorang gak yg rugi.