PRIMER

the girls are growing by leaps and bounds... their speech has just blossomed overnight.  but there are a few strange things we fostered in their vocabulary that we just can't seem to reverse. much like my chinese speaking grandmother who raised us, (there was a language barrier, and we created and spoke this half chinglish which only my siblings and my grandmother understood)the girls are creating words of their own to help them communicate.  

here's a primer on some words no one but bc3 and i would understand....

wahyer= water...easy to figure out...

bee= any type of bug, be it flying crawling, ant, or fly.

escowie= spaghetti- again, you can kind of see where this came from.... if you were smoking crack...

gai gai= going out, going anywhere, mainly getting in the car.  gai is literally chinese for "street."  

ginkie-ah = binkie

this gets screamed all the time.. we haven't decided when the binkie fairie is coming for them, but it better be freakin' soon!

moomie= movie=nick parks "wallace and gromit-the wrong trousers"

don't think you can say you'll put on a movie, and pop cinderella into the dvd... oh no! prepare to be assauted by pleas, whines, and outraged screams.... movie IS wallace and gromit.  we have it on a dvd on perpetual loop... they could sit and watch it all day if we let them, which has tempted me on occasion. 

noggin= (aka every mommy's best friend and babysitter, channel 123) is not the preschool channel we all know and love.  noggin = jacks big music show, which specifically is the episode where a rather toolish "scat cat" comes to visit, and steals mels affections from jack.  it also features a pretty creepy cool trio of singers, laurie berkner singing about a doomed cat.. you get my point.  it is this specific episode which they equate to "noggin."  thank God, Buddha, and Allah for tivo.

gookah or nai nai= milk in a sippy cup.  don't even ask me where this one came from.  it's a wonder we knew what they were talking about in the first place.  nai is chinese for milk.  

hot tea= anything in a mug, but in their world, hot tea is also ice cold herbal tea which we give them so they can pretend they are drinking hot tea like their daddy-ah.  they ceremoniously blow into the "hot" tea, blowing it to cool it.

mommy-moo or mommy moe= this is a rather endearing term they created just to melt my heart every time they say it....i think it's their way to get me to pick them up when they are screaming in the middle of the night.  otherwise, my sleep addled brain would just ignore them and let them cry it out.  it's darwinism at it's finest.

apple= any round fruit, regardless of color, religion, or creed.  

blue= any color.. ie when asked what color that red apple is, their reply will be blue, without fail.  fortunately they always get the color of the daytime sky right.  

mum mums= food- dinnertime, lunch time, breakfast... cultivate by us.  i guess it's one of those chinglish terms which parents use with their babies.  it's not mine, more my mothers.  

dah doo= thank you.. that's a good one.  very cute.  

just as an aside, here are a few words from my childhood chinglish dictionary-

popcorn= all types of cereal.  don't ask me what popcorn was called.

miu see= chinese direct translation for cat shit= puffy and crunchy cheese doodles.  

a favored snack by my brother, sister, and i- in our childhood.  if you think about it, crunchy cheese doodles do look like cat shit.  my brother has even created a cheese doodle review on his blog which is rated by cat shits instead of stars... (see here)

poo poo= grandmother.  our back country dialect actually refers to the grandmother on the maternal side as poo poo.  that's why shit, in our house is called doo doo.  you can imagine the strange stares we get when we ask for "happy birthday poo poo" to be inscribed on the birthday cake, and even at the well heeled tiffany's when POO POO was to be permanently engraved on a sterling silver heart... they never quite ask, but i can see the hesitation in their eyes.