Preston has had unique language environments. He grew up in a bilingual house, with English and Chinese. He did spend a lot of time in Taiwan, although most of his time has been in the USA.
Preston lived with us from the time he was a baby. One of the earliest language things I can remember is when he was one. He randomly stopped one day, bowed his head, crossed his arms, and said some gibberish words. It was his imitation of praying.
At sixteen months, he and his parents went to Taiwan for a few months. When they came back three months later, in June 2006, he had inherited some Chinese. Although I wasn't there, apparently one of those early days when they had come back my mom went to a store and brought him. He kept asking for something, but it was Chinese and they didn't understand. Then he saw some drinks and reacted to them. He was really thirsty and was asking for water in Chinese.
However, most of the time he spoke his own language. His gestures and intonations indicated that he knew exactly what he was saying--but it wasn't English or Chinese. He would even make sounds that I cannot imitate. It was really funny.
The only word I could decipher from his language was "ba." That referred to candy or other sweet things. We had a dish of leftover Valentine candy (and I mean really leftover, like four or more months) sitting on top of a shelf. He knew it was there, and he would sometimes point to it and say "ba! ba!" I think he also called Otter Pops "ba," so I wondered if it came from "pop" and he overextended it to everything sweet. But I really don't know.
He did know some words, like ball. I think that at that point he actually knew more Chinese words than English words.
One interesting phrase he inherited was "I'm done," which he said as "I duh," with the vowel nasalized. He used this not to mean "I'm done" but rather to mean "that's enough" or "I'm unhappy." So if, for example, I were spinning him and it got too fast, he would say, "I duh!" It was an interesting phrase in itself, but it was especially interesting because he actually inherited it from Allie. I think those are the only two kids who would ever use "I'm done" to mean what they meant.
He also liked Baby Einstein videos, which he called "Baby dah," with the vowel nasalized. (He said it the way you would pronounce din in French.) He also inherited this from Allie, who called them "Baby Stein." "Baby dah" was his attempt at saying "Baby Stein."
Ya-ping was teaching him to say please in Chinese, which sounds something like "bye toe" if you were to terribly anglicize it. He would say "bye boe." Whenever he saw an airplane in the sky, he would wave and say, "bye bye!" in a cute high-pitched voice.
They moved to Nashville in August 2006, and Ya-ping and Preston came and visited the following November. At that time he called me "Marsh."
In April 2007, we went to Nashville. One day we went to a park that had a big train sitting in it. If we touched it, he would get really mad and yell "Nooo!" at us.
Here is a video from that summer. I wasn't there for this, but it's a good illustration of his very own language. You can understand him say "Hello" and "yeah," and there may be some Chinese in there, but most of it is his own language.
In August 2007, they came out to visit, but since I was working swing shift at Walmart, I didn't get to spend much time with him. We went camping one day, and he was standing on the edge of a firepit (with no fire in it) and going, "Whoa, whoa!" as if he were falling in--but he wasn't. It was really funny. On that same trip, he got annoyed with me protecting him from doing "fun" things, so he would blow raspberries at me.
He would keep saying, "I want to go home." Ya-ping told me he would say that even when he was at home.
Since I barely got to see him on that visit, I went out to Nashville in November 2007, right before I left on my mission and right when he was turning three. When I walked into the house, the first thing he said was, "Grandma?" Not because he thought I was Grandma, but because he knew that I was always with her.
He was really funny that trip. He used the phrase "talk to me" to mean chastise or reprove. Once in the car I told him he needed to do something, and he said sadly to his parents, "Shu-shu talk to me!" (Shu-shu was Chinese for "uncle.") When Ya-ping would chastise David, he would say, "Mommy! Don't talk to Ba-ba!" (I know that Mommy" is not the proper spelling for the Chinese term, but it's close enough for my purposes.) On another occasion I was playing with him and I put a coin on my forehead. He thought that was funny, so he started putting it all over his face. When he put it in his mouth, I got serious and told him he couldn't put it in his mouth. He stormed out and apparently told Ya-ping that I had talked to him.
He had watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, in which Mike Teavee says "Die! Die! Die!" when playing video games. He inherited this "Die!" from the movie. Once he was watching a Land Before Time movie, and the mean dinosaurs came on. He said, "Die!" to them. Once we went to a playground in the mall. There was another kid playing where he wanted to play, and he didn't want to share the area, so he kept saying "Die!" but I don't think the other kid could hear. One day Ya-ping went to a Relief Society activity and I went with Preston into the nursery. A little girl, probably three or so, came up and said, "It's Preston!" He turned around and said "Die!" to her. She seemed quite taken aback. (I still feel bad I didn't reprove him for that and apologize to the girl.)
He liked to sing "Happy Birthday." On his birthday, we sang it to him, but he wanted to sing it as well, and sang it with his mom's name.
He liked to say nightly prayers, sometimes multiple times. His prayers went something like, "Ba-ba, Mommy, Shu-shu, go home, Ba-ba, Amen!" The "Amen" was especially dramatic, adorable, and hilarious.
Once he was shuffling around the kitchen and Ya-ping asked him, "Are you a penguin?" (She asked in Chinese, and I was pleased I could understand it.) He responded quite seriously, and almost defensively, "No, I'm Xiang-an." Once he took a flying bellyflop onto my air mattress, and David said, "Are you Superman?" Again, he seriously said, "No, I'm Xiang-an." I think he said, "No, I'm Xiang-an" a few other times as well.
My last night there, I sprained my ankle. While I was waiting in a waiting room, Preston saw a comics page with Peanuts on it. He said, "Is that Charlie Brown?" None of us knew that he knew Charlie Brown's name, and none of us knew where he learned it. I had to get a splint and bandages around my ankle, and in the car Preston became quite concerned that I didn't have my shoe. He kept saying, "Shu-shu shoe!" He kept asking, even though we explained that we had it. At one point Ya-ping made an exasperated sound because he kept asking, and he started crying. I left on my mission, but I heard that shortly after that they were in the hospital parking lot and he mentioned me hurting my leg.
I came home from my mission, and they came to visit for a long time that December 2009. He was no longer a three-year-old, so his speech had shifted to that of a five-year-old.
He would ask lots of questions, especially when watching movies: "What's happening? Is that the bad guy?" When you would answer him, he would say, "Why?" He still asks questions like that, but not as much.
When he didn't get what he wanted, he would say an overly dramatic and angry "Uh uh!" Both Franklin and Allie inherited this.
I also learned that although he used the pronoun "her," he didn't understand the use of "she." I first learned this one Sunday that December. Allie had gotten some clay at church, and suddenly she realized that she had left it out upstairs, so she needed to go up and put it away. At the same time, Preston headed upstairs, and for some reason she thought that since she was thinking about her clay, he must have been too. She called out "Don't you dare touch my clay, Preston!" and they both raced upstairs. Preston came down later and said, "He hit me, and I didn't do anything." I didn't know what male person would hit him, so I asked "Who?" When they told me Allie, I got confused. I didn't know he had pronoun problems.
I encountered this same confusion nearly two years later, in August 2011. I was cleaning up my apartment in Provo before moving out when Ya-ping called. I couldn't answer the phone, so I called her back. Preston answered, so I asked him about school. I asked him if he liked his teacher. He said, "He is so nice!" and told me some things about his teacher. I said to him, "Oh, so you have a boy teacher?" He said, "Umm...nope." Once again I was really confused, until I remembered his pronoun problems.
In December 2010, we visited Nashville for Christmas. I taught Preston the card game of War, which he called "Army."
Today he will ask "What is it?" when other people are laughing and he wants to know why they are laughing.
And a development he just barely started is overuse of the word "awkward." Yesterday I was at my house looking at the Cake Wrecks website, and Preston was looking over my shoulder. He kept saying, "Who are these awkward people making these cakes?"
And just as with Allie, I know I will remember more stuff after I post this.
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