Bilingual Potty Training

Our house has been alive with a new adventure these days: TheFry is finally getting the hanging of “Potty Training!” We’ve been working with him little by little for the last 7 months or so. We took the whole thing in several small steps, working only at home on weekends, then gradually introducing underwear, until he finally decided in March that he wanted to wear underwear to school and not his diaper.

However, the concern we always had about potty training was how it would work in two languages.

TheFry’s nursery school has been trying to encourage him to use the potty for the last five or six months. We had hoped that nursery school would aid in potty training success, and that the social pressure of being a big boy like his classmates would help him. However, we started potty training at home before the nursery did, and we were concerned about the confusion TheFry might feel when learning potty training at the school.

As much as I thought I might speak Korean with TheFry on a daily basis, it has not turned out that way. Most of our interactions occur in English, because the words I want to say just come naturally to me. Therefore, it felt awkward and even a little silly to try and teach him two sets of words for “pee” and “poop”. At first I started teaching him the words in English and Korean, but he seemed confused, and I was constantly fumbling over the words. Therefore, I dropped the Korean vocabulary and just trained him in English.

When he started potty training at the nursery school, I wrote in Hangeul the pronunciation for the words we used for “pee” and “poop.” The teachers were kind enough to make an effort to use the English words, but I know they were more than likely going through the same thing I just described. And, given that Dexter was used to hearing only Korean from them, it only made more sense for them to potty train him in Korean. (Furthermore, I’ve been told he actively ignores his teachers when they try and speak English to him, but that’s another story for another day.)

In the end, he learned both sets of words just fine, but now that he’s mastered potty training, he only uses the Korean words. Why? Maybe it’s because he knows I understand them. Maybe it’s because he spends a large part of every weekday speaking Korean and using the Korean words for “pee” and “poop”, and switching doesn’t seem to make much sense if he knows he’s being understood. Maybe he finds that the words just come easier to him in any case.

All this makes me wonder just a little bit how he will feel in other situations in his life. I’ve often wondered if, when he finds the one he loves in the future, whether the Korean words or English words for “I love you” will come first to his mind. Or, if he continues to worship God, which language he will feel more comfortable for worship. When he writes in his diary (if he ever has one), in which language will he write?

Though I ponder all these things often enough, for now I’m just glad to not be buying any more diapers for awhile!

English Loan Words in Korean: A Bus Stop Story

One thing I’ve noticed TheFry doing in his language acquisition adventure is categorizing loan words in a very different way than I expected.

Let me explain this further for a minute. The Korean language (as used in South Korea) is full of English loan words. Many everyday objects are words taken straight from English with a Koreanized (or “Konglish”, as many of my students would say) pronunciation. Off the top of my head, I can think of these: bus, heart, truck, pink, pizza, chicken nuggets, cheeseburger, spaghetti, taxi. Yes, many of these items are food or transportation-related nouns, and it certainly doesn’t stop there – this is just the kind of vocabulary that’s infiltrated TheFry’s life right now.

Now, as a monolingual speaker of English, I tend to recognize the loan words as being English words borrowed into the Korean lexicon, and not separate members of the Korean lexicon. As my undergraduate studies in linguistics will refresh my memory, this is not necessarily the way that native speakers of Korean, especially monolingual Korean speakers, will think of such words. Anyhow, I had neglected to remember this when TheFry’s Korean and English lexicons began to form and appear in public. One particular incident brought all of this to the forefront of my mind:

We were standing at the bus stop and waiting, as we generally do on Saturdays, to go into Seoul or grocery shopping – I don’t remember which. We were all alone at the bus stop at first, and TheFry was chirping “Bus! Bus!” as he usually does, because he can’t say a word just once and leave it at that. Soon we were joined by other would-be passengers, and one lady in particular greeted us. TheFry refused to be greeted, protesting “No, thank you! No, thank you!” and hiding his face in my neck. Then, out of the blue, he turned to the lady and shouted “beoseu! beoseu!”

I had to laugh out loud. TheFry had perfectly differentiated the two words in pronunciation and usage. One thing he has managed to do since a very early moment in his acquisition of Korean and English is to distinguish to whom he speaks each language. In general, he uses English with his family members and other people that he knows will understand English, and he uses Korean with everyone else. So, he had distinguished the English word “bus” from the Korean word “beoseu” without any trouble.

This little anecdote reminds me that TheFry, as a native speaker of Korean, has acquired what I would call “loan words” as Korean words, and they appear to fall naturally into his Korean lexicon, separate from the English words from which they are derived. Those English words, in turn, appear to fall into his English lexicon, and are separate in form, but not in meaning, from their Korean equivalents. I will need to do more research to see if this is a common phenomenon, and if it indeed happens as I think it does, so if anyone has any pertinent information, please feel free to share. ^_^

I wonder how he will come to think of such words as he grows older. I can only assume that he will come to think of such words as loan words from English, although not English words – much in the same way Spanish loan words and phrases (i.e., “burrito”, “hasta la vista”) are recognized as being not native to English by many, if not most, English monolinguals. However, there is a chance he could still see them as distinct forms of separate languages (a similar example from Spanish would be “barbecue”, from barbacoa). It will be interesting to see how he thinks about and uses English loan words as he grows up.

TheFry's Linguistic Development: Bilingual Babbling

There are a couple of things I've wanted to do during TheFry's early growing-up years.  One of them was to make a baby book, which, after about two years, I finally finished.

Another was to keep track of all his developmental milestones beyond one year, which I've neglected to do.

Yet another was to write down a list of his first words, which I neglected to do until awhile ago, and then stopped about two weeks of trying to keep up with his rapidly developing vocabulary.  I even had a list of his words written in IPA with their intended meanings, in both Korean and English.  So, you can see what a daunting task that was, and I just didn't have the time for it.

One thing that I refuse to give up on is to track his linguistic development.  As a monolingual myself, I am constantly fascinated by my son's linguistic development.  I never thought I would raise a bilingual child (without having become bilingual myself, that is - a state in which I think I shall never find myself at this rate).  I think my undergraduate studies in linguistics has tainted the fascination somewhat; when other monolingual parents of bilingual children that I know seem in awe of his abilities to switch between Korean and English, I tend to shrug it off.  However, when that new word or phrase sprouts up, whether in Korean or English, and I see his maturity coming about, I can help but be joyous - it's almost as if he has two personalities, and he's dissected them completely.  However, he is one, and he knows he is one.  He recognizes himself in the mirror and in pictures, and talks about himself using his given English name and also his Korean name.  But, I wish to talk about the bicultural aspects of his linguistic development later.

This post is about the very beginning stage of his language production: his babbling.

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Bilingual Babbling


As much as I wanted to raise TheFry bilingual in Korean and English (even though he was born in the U.S.), when it came time and he was born, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I didn’t have the special vocabulary that made talking to an infant in Korean endearing. Korean, in my mind, was a very functional language for talking with other adults. I had no knowledge of Korean “baby talk” words (you know, like how we say “pee pee” instead of “urinate” in English…), nursery rhymes, lullabies, or any such conventions. Thus, I began to raise him as a monolingual.

When he was 10 months old, we moved to Korea. It was August 1, 2009. TheFry stayed at home with his father while I took a job as an English teacher at a private after-school program in Seoul. However, my husband was looking for a job, and it soon became clear that we would not be able to swap care of TheFry and have him stay at home as we had for nearly a year in the U.S. No, it was time to look for a suitable daycare for him.

There were no English-language daycares near us that we knew of at the time, and even if we had known of the few that existed, they would have almost certainly been out of our price range. Thus, in November 2009, when our son was just 13 months old, he was enrolled in a public all-Korean daycare near our home. The price was just under 400,000 won per month (roughly $350 at the time), and we were excited about the prospect of financing a second language so cheaply. As we could not possibly rear him bilingually on our own, the cost of the Korean-only daycare was completely worth it to us.

Now, TheFry was a bit behind the curve in development in many ways. At 13 months he could not walk and was still struggling with drinking from a sippy cup. We had barely gotten him to sleep in his own bed – and that’s only because we all slept on the floor next to each other; he just got a different mattress. Also, his linguistic development was slow – he was still barely babbling, and could not even say simple words like “mom” or “dad”, or even sounds resembling them. He continued to be fairly nonverbal throughout November, but towards December he really began to vocalize more often.

Here I must pause for a moment before talking about daycare to briefly describe what our lives were like out in public in Korea. People were constantly talking to TheFry wherever we went. They played “peek-a-boo” with him, and made a number of exclamations ranging from “wow, he’s cute!”, “he looks like a doll/angel”, to “he must be cold!”, all in Korean. He responded positively to these exclamations, basking in the attention and really playing it up. But something else started to happen as a result of all this sudden exposure to Korean, and it began before he started attending daycare. At the time I thought I was just imagining it, and even now I’m not so sure of it, but I still remember thinking: He started babbling in Korean.

Before, his babbling consisted of a lot of stops, for example: /b/, /d/, and /g/ were the most common. Now, I was hearing plosives, such as ㄲ (Romanized [kk] or [gg]) and ㄸ (Romanized [tt] or [dd]. As anyone can guess, once he entered daycare, it didn’t stop there. More “Korean” babbling ensued, and in fact took over his “English” babbling to a large extent. Furthermore, when my husband and I were very eagerly awaiting his first words, there emerged Korean words when we were still expecting English. (His first word was eomma, or “mom”, which was followed quite closely by kkakgung, or “peek-a-boo”).

From that point there came an explosion of vocabulary, most of which was Korean. In fact, when I hear him playing now, at two and a half years old, I hear plenty of conversations between toys and blankets and stuffed animals that I know is Korean and that I also do not understand.

I must say that there was a brief moment of a few months in all of this where I worried about TheFry’s linguistic development, especially his English development. At 20 months he hardly knew any English words, but was saying complete enough sentences in Korean (for example, I heard him say “my, how handsome!” in Korean after trying on a pair of my sunglasses).

At present, the two languages seem fairly evenly implanted in his mind. Back in November 2009, he was attending daycare part time, perhaps 4 to 6 hours a day, three or four days a week – now he attends for 8 or 9 hours a day so that my husband can study full-time while I’m working. However, even though his hours of Korean exposure outnumber his hours of English exposure by quite a bit during the weekdays, he communicates well enough in both languages – even though his two-year-old pronunciation is generally not understood by anyone except PapaFish and I.

Recipe: Andong JjimDak in the Pressure Cooker

Last night I made this recipe for Andong JjimDak from one of my favorite Korean food bloggers, Aeri’s Kitchen.  This is the second time I’ve cooked this recipe, and it tasted fantastic both times.  The difference this time was the fact that I cooked it in my pressure cooker.

 

Not much needs to be changed for the recipe; however, there are a couple of things to consider before cooking it in the pressure cooker.  First of all, you have to make sure your pressure cooker is big enough to hold all the ingredients (mine was hardly big enough – in fact, all the steam came out of the lid, and the wobbly thing never wobbled.  But it still turned out well).  The second thing to consider is pretty obvious: you still need to soak the cellophane noodles before putting them in the cooker.  The third is that the sauces won’t get mixed all together until the very end.

 

The pressure cooker method requires essentially the same preparation as the normal method: soak the noodles, chop the veggies, mix the sauce.  In your pressure cooker, place the noodles and veggies on the bottom, and the chicken on the top.  Then pour the sauce over all of it, in addition to probably an extra 1/2 cup of water.  You can mix it together a little bit, but like I said before, it won’t really all get mixed together until the end, because all the sauce will sink to the bottom of the pot.

 

Ideally, you will only need the wobbler to wobble for 7~10 minutes before the dish is finished.  The chicken should temp at 160 degrees Fahrenheit when done.  Once the pressure has stabilized and you open the pot, mix everything together quickly to get a good coating of the sauce on all the ingredients.

 

Good additions to this dish may be bell peppers, or hot peppers if you would like the dish to be spicy.  However, the flavor as it is in the recipe is just as satisfying.  It’s really a delicious savory and somewhat sweet way to cook chicken and vegetables – TheFry and PapaFish both like it, so it’s a winner in our house!

Dorm Parents

About every four to six months I’ve been in Korea I’ve been thinking about where I’m going to go next, whether I’ll stay in Korea at all, etc.  I’m constantly on my toes, evaluating and re-evaluating my current work situation and whether or not a change should be necessary at the end of my contract.  This has caused a lot of stress for me in the past, making it that much harder for me to be content with my current situation and be thankful for the blessings I have.

 

My last workplace really tired me out.  I felt like a commodity rather than a valued employee.  I was exhausted, and not keen on moving anytime in the near future.  Furthermore, uprooting TheFry from the nursery school he had become attached to, as well as the teachers and friends that he had grown to love, was extremely difficult for me emotionally.  I didn’t want to have to do that again for as long as possible.

 

As it turns out, my current school is opening a dormitory for students in the church building next door from this coming semester (which starts on March 2).  Knowing that the church building contains 2-bedroom suites, I suggested to my boss that PapaFish and I be the supervisory “dorm parents”.  That way the school wouldn’t have to hire new staff, and there would be both a male and female adult present to care for the boys and girls, respectively.  Furthermore, I knew that the two-bedroom apartments would cost the school half of what they were already paying for mine.  The proposal was a win-win situation for both the school and my family – the former which would save money, and the latter would have more living space.

 

Well, I’m happy to say that my boss and the school board accepted my proposal, and in fact we’ve already  moved into the new place!  It’s quite a spacious apartment – much more so than our last two apartments in Korea – and has a large bathroom with a proper bathtub.  There’s a free public laundry facility in the church building, and it even has a dryer (but not the kind we’re used to in the U.S. – this one takes 3 or 4 hours to dry clothes, I’m told).  We’ll have a proper-sized fridge (we had a mini fridge before) and I think we won’t have to pay utilities for our apartment.

 

With the huge bonus of the apartment, which I never thought I’d get as long as I was in Korea, I’m also pleased to announce that I’ll receive quite a boost in my salary, depending on how many students officially sign up for the dorms.  Right now that number is estimated at six, but it could be eight by the time the new semester starts next Wednesday.

 

Because of all these bonuses, and in order to be fair to the students I’m starting out the school year with (both in the dorms and also my students at the day school), I’ve decided to extend my contract until the end of the school year, which is the end of February 2012.  I’m hoping (and praying!) that the dormitory situation will bode well for my school.  We’re almost doubling our student population this school year, but it’s hard to predict how long this success will last, especially as the school starts adding middle and high school grades, because the competitive nature of middle and high school education in Korea can be somewhat fierce, and our school will probably have to make some changes to keep our students on par with their public school peers.

 

That said, PapaFish and I are happy with our decision, and feel that we have found a real ministry here.  I am looking forward to really getting to know my students.  PapaFish is looking forward to birthday parties and “family” games.  TheFry is enjoying running circles and figure eights in the living room, and when I informed him today that there would be big brothers and sisters living near us, he shouted “Yeah!”

 

Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we plunge head-first into this new and exciting adventure, that we would do well by our students, that we would learn a lot from them, and vice versa, and that our family will be strengthened through our work.  We are simply awed and amazed by this blessing that we never could have imagined!

Perfect Pancakes–including gluten-free pancakes

It’s been awhile since I did a food post (or a post at all, for that matter), so I thought I’d combine two recipes in one post for perfect pancakes you can make from scratch using ingredients that are widely-available in South Korea.

 

The first recipe is based loosely off the buttermilk pancakes recipe on the Joy of Baking website. (link)  The gluten-free recipe is loosely based on the Delicious Gluten-Free Pancakes recipe on allrecipes.com. (link)  Both recipes produce exquisitely soft, melt-in-your mouth pancakes.  I enjoy adding a little bit of cinnamon or nutmeg to the recipe and leave out the sugar.  TheFry loves pancakes, and enjoys eating them with just a little bit of honey.

 

Recipe: Perfect From-Scratch Pancakes

Yield: This makes about 8 4-inch pancakes, or enough to feed two adults and one toddler.

Ingredients:

1) 1 Cup wheat flour (밀가루)

2) 2 teaspoons baking powder (베이킹 파우더)

3) 3 Tablespoons butter or margarine (we use the brand below – it always stays hard, so you have to melt it for this recipe)

4) 1 egg, beaten

5) 1 Cup milk

6) 1 Tablespoon white sugar [optional]

7) Cinnamon or nutmeg to taste [optional]

 

Method

1) Whisk together the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, sugar) until combined

2) Mix together the milk and the beaten egg in a separate bowl.

3) Melt the margarine in a pan until it is just liquid.  Try not to cook it too much.

4) Working quickly, pour the margarine into the milk and egg mixture and beat it together to keep the egg and milk from curdling and the margarine from getting hard.

5) Pour the liquids into the dry mixture and stir until just combined.  It will be a little lumpy.  If you stir it too much, the pancakes will be rubbery.

6) On medium-low heat, melt a little bit of butter or margarine and ladle the pancake mixture into the pan according to the size of pancake you want.  When they get bubbly on top, flip them over.

7) Eat and enjoy!

 

Recipe: Gluten-Free Perfect Pancakes

Note: This recipe makes about twice as many pancakes as the previous recipe.

Ingredients:

1) 1 C sweet rice flour (찹쌀가루)

2) 3 Tablespoons soybean flour (날콩가루)

3) 1/3 Cup potato starch (김자맛전분)

4) 1 Tablespoon white sugar (설탕)

5) 1.5 teaspoons baking powder (베이킹 파우더)

6) 1/2 teaspoon baking soda (식소다)

7) 1/2 teaspoon salt (소금)

8) 1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum (잔탄검) [this is hard to find in Korea – here’s a link to buy it on Gmarket)

9) 2 eggs, beaten

10) 3 Tablespoons butter or margarine

11) 2 Cups milk

 

Method

1) Whisk together all dry ingredients in a large bowl.

2) In a separate, smaller bowl, combine the beaten eggs and the milk.

3) Melt the butter or margarine in a pan and pour it in with the other liquids.  Working quickly, whisk the ingredients to prevent the hardening of the fat or the cooking of the eggs.

4) Pour the wet ingredients in with the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.  This batter will be quite lumpy, with large bumps in it.  Don’t worry about that – the pancakes themselves will be soft and clump-free.

5) Melt margarine or butter in a pan and cook the pancakes as normal, turning when they are quite bubbly on top.  These pancakes are fairly delicate, so be extra careful while turning them.

6) Eat and enjoy!  The sweet rice flour is a little potent in this recipe, so the pancakes will be quite sweet – you probably won’t have to add much syrup at all!

Halloween, v.2010

For the last two years near Halloween, some expat parent friends of mine have had a big get-together where everyone dresses up their children in costume, takes pictures, and generally has a good time.

 

Last year we couldn’t make it for multiple reasons, but as TheFry is 2 this year, I thought it would be fun to go.  He’s much more social (and active) now than he was a year ago (he couldn’t walk back then, either).  The get-together was at Children’s Grand Park in Seoul.  The park is huge, and admission is free.  There is also a small zoo in the park, and it also has free admission.  There are some other parts of the park – such as an amusement park with rides – that cost money, but the scope and amount of activities for a 2-year-old to do in the main part of the park is still amazing considering the (non) cost.

 

Anyhow, this year I planned way in advance of the party, and decided that I would crochet a costume for TheFry.  I chose this pattern for a crocheted giraffe costume off of Etsy.

 

I then proceeded to visit Dongdaemun Shopping Town stall A36 – one of my favorites – to purchase the yarn for the project.  However, as the yarn I chose was fairly thin, I had to modify the pattern quite a bit.  I ended up scrapping the idea for the hat, because I thought it might be too warm (I was wrong, but whatever), and instead went with a version of this cap which I made for TheFry last winter (I honestly can’t find where I got this pattern, or I’d link it here).

 

It took about two months to make, considering I really only worked on it every other week or so.  I was wise to start so early, because I still found myself at a coffee shop on October 30 for several hours making spots and sewing them on (and enjoying a pretty good Roti Bun and quiet time, too).

 

Anyhoo, this is how it turned out:

I’m too busy staring at the TV to care, Mom!

 

Side View  

 

Rear View

Close-up of tail

Isn’t that just the cutest little giraffe booty you’ve ever seen? ^_^