Silent Scream

So, there's really nothing silent about life with kids.  But seriously...

I've noticed, with some sadness, that K.C. has almost completely stopped speaking Cantonese.  He had been almost equally fluent in both English and Cantonese until around the time he turned four, at which point a couple of things changed in his linguistic world.  The first was that he started in a Mandarin immersion preschool.  The second factor was that I started speaking more English (and thereby less Cantonese) with him, because I was hitting the limits of my capabilities.

While both of our boys seem to have handled two languages effortlessly, I speculate that maintaing three languages, despite the similarities between Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese, might have been a bit too much.  K.C. still understands a lot of Cantonese, and I keep up my efforts at bilingual parenting as much as I can.  He will respond to questions in Cantonese (in English or Mandarin) and will make comments or ask questions (usually in English) when we listen to Cantonese stories or watch Cantonese TV.  In fact, he recognizes this situation himself.  We recently had a new babysitter, who speaks Cantonese, and K.C. told her (in English) that he understands Cantonese but does not speak it.

I am hoping that he is going through a form of "silent period," like the one that learners of a new language often experience, in which he is absorbing Cantonese but still working out the skills to forrm the words.  In this case, I suspect that the similarity between Mandarin and Cantonese is actually working against him; that he starts to say something in "Chinese" (of some flavor), and it usually comes out in Mandarin.

Time will tell if his Cantonese comes back.  I hope it does.  While I know that all the practical arguments are in favor of learning Mandarin, Cantonese is still the sound of "home" to me.

By the way, what is K.C. really doing in this picture?  We had just tried Beard Papa's cream puffs, and he was yelling out on a quiet Waikiki street, "Come try Beard Papa's!"  Hey, our whole family was a little sleep-deprived after trying unsuccessfully to adjust to Hawaii time!