His Chinese Name

For those of you who have been following our blog, you'd know by now that I (Sally) love the chinese language. :) And I am particular about the meanings behind the characters used for our kiddos' names. Megan, thankfully, has inherited my ability to pick Chinese up rather smoothly. Credit has to be given to her granny who never ceases to speak patiently with her, teaching her and correcting her with such gentleness and love. Think the opposite of those grumpy, frumpy, irritating primary school chinese teachers from our time :P

However, our son Joseph, is a worry, in this department. Since he started understanding us, we've been using a mixture of both languages conversing with him. But he has quite naturally leaned on the English side. He fully understands what his grandparents are saying to him, but will simply answer in English. It's funny at times, to hear him speak Chinese with an English twang. And I know it's still early times yet to wonder if he'll ever get a C6 for his Chinese papers. But yeah, I just worry. A bit like Daddy, you ask? Haha. Perhaps. Although I must also give credit to Alan for really making an effort to speak good Mandarin and learning to use the idioms and all. So much so that when he heard a DJ on 938Live saying, "Hua yi Cool" instead of what it should've been "Hua Yu Cool", he could laugh at her. haha...

One of the things Joseph has to master in K1 is to write his chinese name. This was what he showed me yesterday.




This was the final and best attempt after trying for many times (poor boy). And for the first time in his life, I did wish we had chosen easier characters than what we had, esp the 2nd one. READ: Yi4

And if you look close enough at the surname SHEN3, the top two strokes to the left have circles drawn in too. He said they're so boring, so added satay. HAHA. That's my boy!