Language

I have been a bad adoptive parent. I'm beginning to get the idea that parenthood is really one long negotiation involving equal parts frustration (because they never do what you want them to do) and guilt (because you never wind up doing what you should be doing). One of the things I feel like I should be doing - one of the Big Important Things for internationally adopted kids - is signing Daughter up for Mandarin lessons. She's four, she's brilliant, and she's taking ballet. She likes ballet. She does well at it. But when she's 24, I wonder if she'll have built up a tremendous reservoir of resentment over not having any real mastery over the language of the country of her birth. I know… [more]

Oddly, I've just had a cluster of Mandarin language stuff hit my inbox, in the form of two useful web resources and one fascinating (and inspirational) bit of research. Resource #1: Professional Mandarin tutor and Chinese translator Samuel Chong, from Beijing and Los Angeles, has provided a list of adoption related phrases in Mandarin Chinese. They're mp3s and they're free. Yes, he works in LA - you're getting the same service used by Chow Yun Fat and Jackie Chan (and, for that matter, Rupert Murdoch... but let us not dwell on such things). Ain't the internet grand? There are eight sets of phrases, with (apparently) plans to add a few more. Each set is really just… [more]