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A Happy Fannish Birthday to a down under drplokta.

Miles-blogging #16

   
Miles is a year and one month old today. He's got a bit of a cold going on at the moment (as well as a very mild case of cradle cap) and he's a bit grizzly, especially when we say "No!!" to him opening the fridge door and emptying onto the floor everything that he finds inside. He certainly understands plenty of English words now and a few Thai ones as well, and we're putting it on record that his first actual word was "key". It's not his favourite word – that's "geeya", whatever that means, closely followed by "beeya", which is a bit worrying in one so young. Conversations go something like this:

PY, pointing to a car key: "Miles say 'key'."
"Key."
"Key."
"Geeya."
"Key."
"Geeya."
"Okay, how about Miles say..." pointing to ceiling, "...'fan'."
"Fa."
"Fan."
"Fa."
"Fan."
"Beeya."
"Fan."
"Beeya." (Miles wanders off to the fridge presumably in search of a beeya.)

Some other words have made a very brief appearance, including "grass", "car", "moon", "shoe" and "dog", only to disappear as quickly as they came. I think it's a confidence thing, or perhaps a short attention span. If he sees a dog he'll gently pant like one with his tongue out – "ha-ha-ha" – in fact when I show him any picture of an elephant, a horse, a pig or a sheep (not that he's ever likely to see a sheep in Thailand) he'll still pant like a dog. His word for milk has changed from "na-na-na" to "mam", and he does a passable 谢谢 ("xie-xie", a Mandarin "thank you") – again, we've no idea where that came from.

I've heard it said that kids who grow up learning two languages do it a little slower than kids with one language, but they get there eventually. At home we talk English, but when Miles is at his grandparents every other month for a few weeks he's mostly surrounded by Thai. We'd like to enroll him in one of two local English/Thai schools where they have an English education track. Hopefully in a few years the language thing will be more interchangeable when I've finally got my lazy ass in gear and learned quite a bit more Thai.

Miles is also slowly making friends – kind of – with a Thai/German boy his own age called Frederik, who lives a few doors away. Frederik's very shy indeed and a full-on Miles would probably have him for breakfast, so it's just as well that so far they've only met in the street while we're out walking. I'm looking forward to him starting at a local playgroup eventually, to see how he plays with other children on a regular basis. Gently, I hope.