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LANGUAGE BARRIERS

Living in an expatriate community in Hong Kong, you have neighbors from different cultures and languages, and in my block, were 3 houses. My house was in the middle with my language confused kids; English being their first language, and Deutsch, an adopted one having had spent 5 years in Germany. On my right a French family, just moved in from Bangkok, Thailand, and on our left, a British family. My four years old son had struck up a very strong team relationship with both my neighbors kids of the same age.

It was a nice sunny day, the usual overcast, gray skies had been overpowered by the gentle winds, driving the clouds in the seas, and exposing the blue sky. One of the rare days in the humid season in Hong Kong, and it would be a waste of natural resources to let it go without the kids taking the best out of it. They always played in a Thai, thatched doll house to evade the heavy humid air, but on such a beautiful day we spread a mat on the open.

The Kids were playing car bumping with the French boy's toy cars. As we sat there, sun bathing too, we could tell they were having a blast, until one big crush bump broke my son's toy car. My son cried out, "my car is kaput!" The French Kid did not see the damage but told my son the car was a FIAT, and not kaput. My son insisted saying, "it is kaput". Annoyed and irritated to convince my son otherwise, the French Kid stood up and grabbed the car, making the bumper more loose, he screamed, "it is a Fiat!" Just when the fight was getting hysterical, confused and scared, the British girl stood up and said in a rather pitiful voice, "Now kaput Fiat, is completely broken." Then my son and the french kid both agreed and said, "yes, it is broken."

We did not know our kids had language barriers, but we realized why there was a lot of noise in that Thai thatched doll house, and we were glad they had a unifying liaison, the British girl and the British Kindergarten.

Learn more about this author, Winfridah Mcekeni.
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