Wow, I’ve neglected writing this stuff down for a while, and now it’s getting hard to keep up! Not only do I hear Alana saying new things all the time, but I also hear about stuff from SS or the nanny. There’s a lot! I’m going to start grouping by topic, because for the most part, Alana seems pretty equally bilingual. Shanghainese is definitely losing out, now, and seems to be confined to the words and phrases I’ve mentioned before. So I’m not going to keep bringing up Shanghainese much, unless there’s an interesting development there.

Counting Alana is pretty good for numbers 1-9, but doesn’t really get zero or ten yet. She has trouble remembering “nine” and I don’t think I’ve ever heard her say “five” or “seven.” In Chinese, though, I rarely hear her say “si” (four), but she’s pretty good at the others.

Alana sometimes starts counting off “1-2, 1-2…” in both Chinese and English, while “marching.” She sometimes does “1, 2, 3” as well.

Letters Alana is pretty good at letter recognition now. I’ve never heard her say “W,” but it seems like she knows most other letters (although lower-case can be a little confusing at times). Today she spelled out the words “tone up.” on my ChinesePod shirt, and insisted that I tell her how to call the ”.” as if it were just another tiny letter. (I like that attention to detail!)

She also reads off sings like “B2” when she sees them around. She spelled an “EXIT” sign today as “E-X-1-T.” Not too bad!

Family Today, finally, Alana started saying “Grandma.” So now she can say everyone’s name! We got a video of it, which I’ll try to upload this weekend.

Animals Alana is picking up so many animal names through apps, books, and this “interactive audio poster” SS got her. She can’t say “alligator” but she knows the Chinese “eyu.” I’ve never heard her say “snake”; she calls them “eyu.” She also knows “hippo” and “lion” and “tiger” and “bear” and “wolf” and a bunch of others.

Communication One thing Alana says in Chinese that she doesn’t in English is the question, “zhe shi shenme?” (“what is this?”). She uses it to mean “what is this called?” as well as “who is that?” and “what’s that person’s name?” Alana sort of goes into an “English mode” with me sometimes where she doesn’t use any Chinese, but rather than asking the question in English, she just points and asks with her eyes.

By far, her most favorite sentence patterns are:

• This is a _______.
• This is Daddy/Mommy _______. (she occasionally gets the ‘s, but usually not)

Tech & Misc. I’ve mentioned before that Alana used to call the iPad “pod,” and then later that became “pad.” Now she’s got the full name “iPad” down, and she also knows “phone” (but not “iPhone”). My cell phone is “Daddy-phone” and SS’s is “Mommy-phone.” She can’t say “computer” but knows what it means, and she’s taken the “puter” part of “computer” and turned it into “peela.” So her baby word for “computer” is “peela.”

She can say “beer,” but she can’t say “coffee,” even though she hears it a lot (in the sentence “babies can’t drink coffee”). Her word for “coffee” is “effee.”

She especially takes notice of “water” and “light”s, and points them out whenever we go out. She often points to ladies on the street and proclaims them an “ayi” (auntie), which is usually charming.

She knows a bunch of household words too, of course, like “shoe,” and “book.” She knows body parts like “eye,” “nose,” “ear,” “foot,” “hand.” She knows the words “pee-pee” and “poo-poo,” but the Chinese word for “fart” is “pi,” which sounds just like “pee,” and that can confuse her, I think.

For a while she thought the word for “car” was “mommy-car” because she heard it too often in the context, “this is Mommy’s car.” She now finally knows the word “car” and likes to point out cars on the street, often calling attention to the occasional “big car.”

Like I said, there’s too much to comment on… I realize now that trying to even semi-completely chronicle a child’s language acquisition would be a full-time job. It’s amazing that so many linguists have attempted it… I have no aspirations of any kind of record that would even remotely be considered “scientific.” Just trying to make a few cute linguistic memories here!