Big P’s Hanzi
November 14th, 2009 
Chinese 
Chris
My daughter big P (who is 4) has a strange relationship with Mandarin. Basically, she doesn’t like to admit that she knows any (which, after 5 months in a total immersion Chinese kindergarten in Beijing is impossible) and she gets annoyed when I try to use Chinese words now and again in sentences to see if she still remembers what I know she knows. Usually I catch her and don’t say anything, like the other week when we were in a diner and I asked her if she could find the fuwuyuan (service worker) and without missing a beat she looked around and then made a hand signal to the waitress to come over.
For whatever reason, lately she’s turned around, and now she volunteers words without being prompted and even reminds me from time to time that I’m not saying a particular Chinese word right (I have no doubt she knows better than me). The other day, really out of nowhere, she decided she wanted to learn how to write some hanzi. Below the fold is her first attempt, which, considering that she can barely write English, is really not too bad.
She was particularly interested in learning numbers, and words that she likes. The translation key from left to right (from the top row down) is:
[first row] si (four), ren (person), huo (fire), nothing, nothing, si (four), ren (person),
[second row]: da (big), huo (fire), yi (one), er (two), san (three), yi (one), si (four), [
[row three]: shi (ten), no idea!, no idea!, jiu (six), jiu (six), shi (ten), no idea!
I should also add that I have no idea what the hell she wrote in “Name”. She knows how to write her name, so I don’t have a clue what she put in there!
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