I’ve notice that it’s quite common practise in Chinese family that when they speak to a baby or a young child, the use alot of “baby language” (a self invented words of things)
For me, I carry out a conversation with my kids as if they are adult. Just the normal way that I would have talked to any adult. I believe that by doing so, it can help on their language development and learning new words (verbally).
With JS, I can only remember using one or two “baby words” – “chut chut” = pacifier and “ng ng” = passing motion. I don’t remember using the words “mum mum”= eating, “oin oin”= sleep. Now JS don’t use these “baby words” anymore. When she wants to pee, she said ” xiao bian” and she wants to pass motion, she said ” pang sai, berak, ta bian”
With WH also the same, I use “nen nen” to differentiate between cow’s milk and breastfmilk. If I use milk, he would be confuse with the milk his sister has and the one he’s having. When I instruct him to do something, I talk as if he can understand each and every single words. Our list of baby language is very limited.
But one think I do is that almost everything has got a friendly name. i.e spider = incy spider, crab = crazy crabs, bee=bumbo bee, sun = Mr Sun and the list goes on. In a way I think is good, because it can also train them to be creative and ability to describe things.
