It has been almost 20 months since Ju came along, and sometimes I lose track of how old he is when people ask. It's now easier to go with years - one and a half!
Now that Ju can understand almost everything we say to him (I would say 80% because he catches key phrases and words, rather than the entire sentence), I find myself at a loss every day on one Chinese word or another! This morning, as he picked up Daniel's belt and gestured to me "what is this!", I started my response with: "Yeah! 这是爸爸的....."And I trailed off because I couldn't for the world find the right word for "belt".
Good grief. So I made a list of all the words I have had to look up so far, words that I found I had to use almost every day when we encountered these things and Ju wanted to know what they were.
Belt 皮带 (pi dai)
Fountain 喷泉 (pen quan)
Watering can 喷壶 (pen hu) or 喷水壶 (pen shui hu)
Kettle 水壶 (shui hu) it seems every contraption that stores or spurts water is a 壶 of some sort.
Fire hydrant 消防栓 (xiao fang quan)
Paramedic 护理员 or 护士 (nurse) I have lots of trouble with this one because we simply to not use this word on a regular basis, but there's always the paramedic in Ju's picture books....
Crane 吊车 (diao che) Took me a long time to look this one up, but there's a godawful construction site next to our building and every day as we get out or into the car, he sees the crane.
Drums 鼓 (gu)
Xylophone 木琴 (mu qin) Didn't know this one because modern day xylophones aren't made of wood! (木)
Corn 玉米(yu mi) We never eat this, so I was stumped when I tried to describe Ju's toy corn on the corb!
Stove / oven 炉子 (lu zi) or 火炉 (huo lu - gas stove) Ju spent an hour on the wooden stove at the play area at a restaurant on Sunday. We have ordered his very own from Amazon and I shall have to beef up the next few months on Chinese kitchen/cooking nouns.
Shovel/spade 铲 (chan)
Mop 拖把 (tuo ba) I should buy him a mini-mop since I can never remember this one.
Bucket 桶 (tong)
Pot / Pan 锅 (guo) Don't ask me why we don't differentiate pots and pans. Frying pan could also be called 炒锅 (chao guo, chao3 means to fry)
Sink 洗涤槽 (xi di cao) or 水槽 No way on earth I would have ever known this word!
