Renzo's Mandarin...

My father has highlighted to us a few times regarding his concerns about Renzo's chinese, since the primary language we use at home with our little boy is english.

I discovered that Renzo has strong interest in chinese when he was around 4 - 5 months of age, and indeed about 1/5 of his first 50 words are in chinese also. Somehow he picks up chinese faster and easier than english, although he articulates better in english most of the time.

After his "achievement" of reciting 《悯农》 last month, he progressed on from that 20 words poem, to 45 - 48 characters chinese song and even "san zi jing" (no...not the vulgarity).

A song my lovely mother used to sing to us 30 years back - 《小白船》
**Texts in Cyan are what Renzo could sing on Feb 7, 2011


A famous farewell song derived from some classical chinese poetry - 《送别》
**Texts in Cyan are what Renzo could sing on Feb 7, 2011


And lastly the most famous "Three character classic" which introduces some basics of Confucian morality and many more things such as elements of Chinese history - 《三字经》
**Texts in Cyan are what Renzo could recite on Feb 10, 2011


Well the first 2 songs are two of many chinese songs I sing to Renzo almost everyday. I seldom sing english songs to him because my maid and mother-in-law both sing to him in english often, all his educational books, DVDs, flash cards, etc are mostly in english, we speak english to him 90% of the time, and most importantly, the lack of true meaning in most english lullabies makes both Win and I prefer chinese songs better.

As for "San Zi Jing", we both could only recite about 1/7 of the whole thing, and amazingly our boy could recite about half of what we could remember. We recite this for not more than 5 times in a months to Renzo, usually only when he is super cranky as somehow it seems to sooth him a bit. So we were absolutely shocked when Renzo started reciting it a few days ago considering the fact he didn't have too much exposure to it.

By now he could sing these 2 songs and recite his "san zi jing" pretty fluently all on his own, although his words are not that clear still. Unfortunately it is never easy to video him in action, but we are very confident to convince my father that we do not have to worry too much about Renzo's chinese, at last not now! Anyway, guess the above 3 audio clips are the best gift we could give to our one and half years old boy, yes he just turned 18 months, TODAY!!