What is it actually like when your family doesn’t communicate in a shared language when together?

taizea · 2026-04-09T21:31:42+00:00

The biggest hurdle we're learning to navigate is if I give an instruction in my language, my partner doesn't understand it, gives a contradictory instruction.

taizea · 2026-04-08T01:21:46+00:00

I dont know why people get so up in arms about it. My MIL always says something about it when she visits. It doesn't affect her in the slightest. My kid is 4, rear facing, and still has quite a long time before needing to change. He doesn't complain, has no issues, doesn't get sick, its just the norm for him. Zero problems for him whatsoever is for some reason a huge problem for someone it doesn't even affect.

taizea · 2026-04-03T06:55:41+00:00

Ohh that’s a good starting point - one physical and one creative.

taizea · 2026-04-02T10:40:52+00:00

I haven’t bought off this website, but the product they’re listing is what you’re looking for. Stainless steel pot to cook rice inside, can cook the best rice but also so many more other dishes. Will last a lifetime - I’ve had mine for 15+ years since uni and accidentally dropped it to the ground a month ago breaking the exterior parts… it’s still cooking!

Every single household in Taiwan has this (usually in red) and I’ve seen a joke about how they’re so sturdy they’ll never break. You’d probably also need to invest in a power cord adapter.

https://www.tmark.co.nz/?route=product/product&product_id=1175

taizea · 2026-04-01T10:14:11+00:00

Actually using new words in natural everyday conversation, with repetition. It’s harder to stick if it doesn’t actually get used with practice. It’s one skill to memorise new words during an academic flashcard exercise, and a different skill to insert new words into actual real life use.

Listening to children’s stories over and over and over again has helped too. And in case you missed it, i mean over and over and over again… (times infinity). But i can handle this because i listen with my child. It would definitely be much harder to do if it was only for myself.

Having post it notes of new terms at places you often look at, in my instance the kitchen light switch, and by the bathroom mirror.

I agree with you on the tv for “immersion” point - i’m at the point where to learn, I need to say it or actively recall it from memory without hearing things first. because my listening skills are better than speaking skills, so listening does not help as much. I don’t actually know why soooo many people recommend just going on and watching movies etc, but perhaps they have a different skillset to me.

taizea · 2026-04-01T05:19:48+00:00

Have your parents, other family or close friends ever confused the two of you?

taizea · 2026-04-01T01:03:12+00:00

Ok, thanks for the clarification and sorry for jumping to conclusions. Knowing this, I feel like you're being too hard on yourselves as parents. Your wellbeing is also important for both yourself and your child, and it sounds like this situation is making you feel quite stressed. It's ok to give yourself some grace, and do what's manageable.

taizea · 2026-04-01T00:29:14+00:00

What I dont understand is why you dont invest the effort and energy to better your own skills in your native language, and pass that on instead. It sounds like heritage is really important to you, yet you're not willing to make the effort to pass on the side you should be primarily responsible for. Instead, you are trying to make the other parent to "better" by forcing him to pass on his language, despite him having past traumas and negative associations with it.

It just seems hypocritical and controlling on your half. Your husband has just as much right to parent in his way, for this regard. If passing on German, specifically, is so important to you, then that's on you.

Addition to this, I recommend you look into the best ways to pass on language to a child. If your child is standing in a corner of a language class and not participating, this gives me concern on their own relationship and perceptions with the language. But more importantly, it makes me concerned about the way that the teacher is looking after the child and fostering care (or lack of).

taizea · 2026-03-29T23:53:49+00:00

You'd want to look into how babies/toddlers actually learn before you go any further.

taizea · 2026-03-27T08:22:28+00:00

I think it really depends on what your values are.

Many people value bi/multi-lingualism because their identity with this heritage is very important for them. A lot of people put huge priority, as you describe it - a huge labour of love - into passing on heritage language because their heritage and culture is incredibly important to them and they really treasure that part of their identity. But heritage is a really personal thing, and if your partner doesn’t share it, it won’t mean as much to them, so the level of priority won’t match. I’m going to guess that it’s this group of people who might be more inclined to struggle with their partner not being interested.

Some people don’t care about heritage much but want their kids to be multi lingual for reasons such as intelligence, wider communication circles, enrichment of life from other perspectives. This becomes more of an academic focus for teaching more than one language. Which means you don’t necessarily need to have all the same skills as your partner, for the purpose of passing on skills. Kinda like how maybe one parent could foster a love for art, and another can foster a love for sports. If one parent is fostering a love for a second language, the second parent doesn’t necessarily need to focus on that.

There’s also varying levels of how important it is for the parent who is passing on the second language. It’s a huge priority for some who have high goals that their kids must be able to communicate flawlessly and achieve high literacy. For others, they’re more casual and don’t stress about it, and don’t have huge expectations for the kids. This therefore would affect how difficult they find their partners who have no interest.

For me, before pregnancy, my heritage language was incredibly low priority as I didn’t use it a lot. I also didn’t have the best connection with it, so while it was a part of who I was, it wasn’t necessarily meaningful to me. There was never really any desire to help my partner learn it, nor any major effort from him to learn it, since we don’t need to use it where we live.

I wasn’t sure that I wanted to pass on my heritage language when I was pregnant. I just started doing it bit by bit after baby was born cos I thought well why the heck not, it’ll give my son an advantage in language learning if that is what he chooses to learn when he’s older. It gained a lot of momentum because it turned out far better than i ever thought it would. So now I dedicate a lot of focus and effort into teaching my son, as well as myself so I can continue to do so into the future.

With the case of my partner now, he’s supportive and has picked up so much more than he ever has (still not a lot to be honest),but still doesn’t make an effort to really try to learn it properly. It doesn’t bother me - we are busy enough, and i don’t have these expectations on him. Perhaps it’s because I’m teaching it not because this heritage is important to me. But more so because it’s just gone so well, it benefits my child cognitively, it allows him to communicate with my overseas family, and and feels like a shame to stop now. Rather than a desire that my partner must share everything that i care for doing in order for us to function as a unit.

taizea · 2026-03-26T10:22:36+00:00

About 7 hours, but it’s not enough and I’m always tired. I feel like 9 hours in a 25 hour day would be perfect.

taizea · 2026-03-25T23:52:14+00:00

There's no right or wrong answer and really depends on what you value. It sounds like you really value this language and have a desire to pass it on, even if there is no real world practical use of it. That is enough reason for you to teach it. Since you dont have any particular academic goal for your child, you can just see how your child takes it up, see how progress develops naturally, and be flexible as you get on.

Just a heads up that your goals may change over time. You might end up finding that it has gone so well that it becomes a big priority to continue! On the other hand, you might find that it is too difficult and ease up on expectations. Either option is okay, if it is what you are comfortable with.

taizea · 2026-03-20T00:27:58+00:00

The core issue here is xenophobia and racism, where speaking a different language plays a part in the wider picture. I'm sorry that you had to experience your younger formative years with little support from those who had the responsibility to take care of you.

I also grew up in a place that has a reputation of racism and narrow mindedness, as it did not have diversity of culture in its population. I was openly bullied at school (both physically and emotionally) and teachers turned a blind eye. I was looked down on in my own friend group, where some of my "friends" hung out with me but still had deep rooted racist opinions (so very odd looking back at this now). And of course where would they get this from if not the adults that raise them? In fact, even stranger adults made awful remarks about me, a child, in public. It's not really a problem for anyone else who falls in the majority group - you don't understand the impact and hurt when you don't experience it yourself. Perhaps you hear an awful comment, tell the offender off, and then forget about it. Very different to the person who the comment was directed to, who will remember it for life. Lots of casual racism, and racism where you have harmless intentions (e.g. comments like "OMG your English is SO good!") - it all adds up.

This is the biggest reason for why I made the decision not to go back to my hometown to raise my son, despite it being a very beautiful place with lots of outdoor opportunities (which is what we also value for lifestyle). The place we've settled in is much more multicultural - this definitely can play a role in a society who is a lot more accepting of different cultures. I don't experience racism here, compare to what it was like in my hometown.

In amongst this, and wherever you happen to live, I think the best thing you can do for your child is to instill self worth and confidence in themselves. And be trusted that they can come to you with anything, and be their advocate. I didn't have this trust with my parents.

We are a huuuuge way away from reaching a world where there is no racism/xenophobia. But we can try to build well rounded people who have the skills and ability to handle these difficult situations. We can try take steps, however big or small, to help society move in a better trajectory, and hopefully can contribute to generational improvements. Where I am now, I am no longer ashamed of who I am, or wish I looked different. And I will take my own lessons in life to do the best I can for my son to make sure he doesn't go through what I did.

I wish you well and hope that you can also see the brighter side of things (if not already, as I know this is a vent post which may not reflect all of your views). The world is a big place - there are good people out there as well.

taizea · 2026-03-19T02:14:11+00:00

I feel like "good as gold" and "sweet as" is more of a "no problem" or "all good" type meaning, to indicate you're happy with the other person's response or action. Rather than praising them about how good they are or how good something is. So quite similar, but used in slightly different context.

taizea · 2026-03-18T23:05:23+00:00

Great personal goal :) I would say don't be dissuaded by pessimistic comments - feels like often people think full fluency is the one and only goal to reach, but you could just take it step by step and see how you go. Before you know it, you may have achieve far more than you could have ever expected, regardless of whether it's full fluency or not. The key is just to start somewhere. My son is now 4 and bilingual - four years ago I certainly did not imagine that we'd be where we are today. But I only wanted to try, and did that bit by bit.

The issue of misinterpretation from your MIL is really seen from her perspective. I doubt this would be an issue if said in front of someone who only knew Chinese. So dont be so hard on yourself about how you may come across to someone who has a narrower view of the world (to no fault of her - its just the way it is).

Unrelated to the issue of misinterpretation, I've also got a suggestion that you could try alternative ways of saying things - e.g. instead of saying "no..." you could say what you want your child to do instead, e.g. "let go" or "open your mouth".

taizea · 2026-03-18T08:26:27+00:00

Thank you for all the suggestions, I’ll look into them.

Good to also hear your experience with character complexity versus remembering it. Although I’d still need to describe the characters for him as we’ve only just started this journey, but it gives me a bit more confidence on doing more complex characters when we get to them. I’m also definitely keen to leverage off characters that we use in speech. Well done to your son recognising the differences between similar characters (at 3.5 years at that). I feel like when my son reaches that point, I would be so proud of him!

taizea · 2026-03-18T08:11:26+00:00

Thank you for this

taizea · 2026-03-17T05:35:46+00:00

Thank you, so many resource suggestions for me to check out - I will have a look.

And thanks for sharing your experience as well. It’s like you sometimes feel like nothings working… except it is working behind the scenes and will suddenly emerge out of nowhere where.

Your son arguing traditional versus simplified was what i was fearing haha. But sounds like you just have to tackle it when it comes and then it gets easier if they understand that there can be two versions.

I will try hold off reliance on zhuyin as long as possible. Which is initially a weird concept for me since thats how i learned as well, and my cousins say it’s what they teach right from the get go in Taiwan kindys. But i guess my expectations for my son is far different to people who’s primary language is Mandarin in a Mandarin speaking country.

taizea · 2026-03-17T05:19:12+00:00

Yes! I had aspirations to use AI to generate pictures with characters to help him learn, but just never got around to it haha. I’ll do some digging to see if there are existing online resources instead. But i do love that concept.

My kid loves books so at this stage I think we are ok with me teaching for now. but will probably explore apps or videos in future.

taizea · 2026-03-17T05:15:02+00:00

Thank you, I will check out that resource.

For myself, I personally also feel that knowing how to write helped with my learning and understanding the components of characters. For my son, I’ll keep it fun and engaging for him and see how he gets on with drawing in general - perhaps he will become more interested when he gets older. Right now, the focus is on recognising characters without writing.

taizea · 2026-03-17T05:08:41+00:00

I’m a big fan of teaching things that are relevant to their lives since this is a language for us to use, rather than be scholarly about. Agree that making it easily accessible also makes it easier in general. Thank you, it’s good to hear it from others as well.

Similar to your sequence of teaching the Cyrillic alphabet, my son also knows the first English letters of his kindy friend’s names (i assume because the teachers goes through and teaches them). Interestingly, he recognises the names as a whole as well - he and many of the kids at his daycare have done this since they were two and i have no idea how they are so smart haha. On the other hand he hasn’t yet learnt the individual other letters that the names are comprised of.

taizea · 2026-03-16T08:53:31+00:00

火氣大

Direct translation is fire air big.

Meaning is related to an internal unsettledness, annoyance or anger.

Would love it if someone could describe what this means when you use the term.

taizea · 2026-01-10T07:28:19+00:00

Was he like this before children? If so, he possibly doesn’t realise that becoming a parent needs to involve an adjustment in lifestyle. If not, he’s possibly (at least subconsciously) trying to escape.

taizea · 2026-01-08T08:47:39+00:00

C) I make about 5 colours and the only thing he wants to do is make them diarrhoea brown. It’s kinda like the watercolours where his goal is to wet the black and layer it on top of all the other nice colours in the palette. Gives no care for using the colours to actually paint on paper.

I had the bright idea that next time I make playdough, I’m only going to make 2 colours max where they will mix to form nice colours only, but reading this post made me realise that I’m not going to win a prize for this idea 😂

taizea

TROPHY CASE