Why my child says I talk like a toddler

My 6-year-old thinks I’m a baby - at least when I speak Mandarin.

“I like it when you speak Chinese,” she recently told me.

“It’s a little awkward. It’s like a baby. And I like babies.”

Chinese is the blonde, blue-eyed girl’s first language. Lily, who was born in Beijing, started to speak English later, after mixing the two tongues. (Her mother isn’t Chinese.)

“Baba (Daddy) eats jirou (chicken). Baba looks at xiongmaode (the panda’s) hand."

By age 3, she’d separated the languages.

Her 2-year-old brother recently acquired his first several words - nearly all Chinese.

He nai (drink milk), baobao wo (hug/hold me), jiejie ku (sister is crying).

He uses both “ball” and its Chinese equivalent, “qiu”.

“No” is one of his few - and favorite - English words. It’s worth noting, Chinese doesn’t have a direct equivalent to “yes” and “no” but uses other grammatical constructions to affirm and negate.

My Chinese is perhaps less like a toddler’s and more like an immigrant’s (a concept my daughter hasn’t developed. She must soon to explain her parents.)

I’m certified as intermediate in reading and writing, since I passed the national Chinese Proficiency Test’s Level 4 before Lily was born. (Level 6 is the highest.)

And my spoken Chinese is multiplications better than my character proficiency.

I can converse about, say, (basic) economics but with grammatical flubs, tone errors and a funny accent. The second two are common among native Chinese with less-than-perfect Putonghua (standardized Mandarin).

There’s a theory that language shapes how we perceive the world.

I’ve observed, for instance, that after using only Chinese for a period, two things happen.

First, I start to think simple thoughts in Chinese. I notice because I sometimes talk to myself. Say I’m traveling and haven’t spoken English in days - I’ll mutter “Wode shouji zai nali?” rather than “Where’s my phone?”.

Second, I think about the world differently in such ways as, in my mind’s eye, “opening” rather than turning on the light - a direct translation into English that retains the Chinese language’s conceptualization of the phenomenon.

I was wondering how this works for Lily, since she’s a native speaker of both but acquired Chinese first.

She says she only thinks in English and translates in her head.

She claims to never dream in Chinese, which I sometimes do.

That seems counterintuitive.

She told me in English the other morning: “I’m not afraid of the cold. I’m afraid of being hot.”

This is a direct translation into English. Chinese typically conveys an aversion to temperature extremes using the word for fear (pa), rather than a synonym for dislike.

And I’ve noticed how our family mixes the languages at home.

I’ll ask my wife: “Mind if I kai (open) the kongtiao (air conditioner)? Did you mai (buy) the piao (tickets)?”

My daughter only calls me Baba- never Daddy - whichever language or mix we’re using.

That said, I’m still a baby to her.

Perhaps I am -in the way of rediscovering the world like children do, through another language. It’s like “opening” the light that illuminates a new perspective.