Learning to speak within — and with — our own world

My 3-year-old son started talking a while ago, but only recently in English.

Most people who encountered the blond-haired, blueeyed boy during his recent summer vacation in the rural United States figured he was babbling, rather than attempting to converse with them in Mandarin.

Strangers in northern Michigan would hear me responding to Sagan and, at least sometimes, presumed we were foreign.

Fair enough.

But they were seemingly left guessing at what language we were using, since, when it comes to Chinese, we don’t look the part, to say the least.

In other words, their eyes and ears would seem to disagree.

“So,” a few asked, “where are you from?”

“Here,” I’d reply.

Their question purposefully didn’t exclude the provided answer.

I’d then explain we live in China where both kids were born and are being raised, and we were making our annual visit home to see family. Their faces settled into nods, seemingly as much as an affirmation to themselves as to us.

“Well, that makes sense,” I imagined them thinking.

Otherwise, it really wouldn’t make much sense in the woodsy communities we were visiting.

Home.

But understanding Sagan was still a guessing game for family members, who knew the rules but not how to play in his mother tongue.

“Wo xiang he nai! (I want to drink milk!)” Sagan would announce to my mom.

“Are you sleepy?” Grandma would reply in English.

“Hungry? Need a new diaper?”

When she’d correctly guess “Milk?”, Grandma wouldn’t understand his affirmative response without translation.

After two months in the US, including a birthday, Sagan returned to Beijing speaking English, mostly separately.

Still, days after we were reunited, he tugged my sleeve, pointed to the sky and declared: “Baba (Dad), hai you yi ge (there’s another) airplane flying. Look!”

I’d just pointed the first out to him, using only English.

His 7-year-old sister, Lily, also learned Chinese first and then mixed until she, also around age 3, unglued the languages, both of which she speaks like a native.

The only deficiency in her Putonghua (standardized spoken Mandarin) is a Beijing accent in which growling “er” sounds unfurl the end of many syllables.

Our family has made a point of circumnavigating a regret many immigrant families in the US, including Chinese friends, repeated to us about raising their kids abroad — that is, allowing the parents’ native tongue to become foreign to their kids. Or, at least, we’ve tried to. My wife, daughter and I sprinkle commonly used Chinese words into overwhelmingly English sentences at home.

Sure, environment is part of the reason our kids picked up Chinese first.

But another feature of the language seems to be a major underwriter; that is, Mandarin is easier for beginning speakers to pronounce.

That’s because tykes who are just starting to talk initially can’t enunciate consonant sounds at the end of syllables. Putonghua has only three — n, ng and ’er — but most syllables instead end with vowels.

So, “horse” is nearly impossible for a nascent chatterbox to pronounce in English.

“HO’wuh” is about as close as our kids came, initially. That pesky “rse” ending kicked them in the lips.

Ma? No problem.

But environment’s role in language acquisition recently became clearer as our daughter completed her first month of first grade in a local school.

Her Chinese reading and writing will soon surpass her English. I’m, frankly, both delighted and dismayed.

Could there be a linguistic trade-off in becoming better than almost all nonnative readers of multiple languages but not as good as most native writers of any one?

Or, will our kids claim the best of both worlds, linguistically and culturally?

Only their lives will tell.