Thats mean you understand! Congrates!

I would consider myself lucky. I was born into a family that speaks English at home. I was then brought up in Canada… so I would say that my spoken and written English can be considered ‘excellent’… Please don’t think that I’m vain… I’m just repeating what others said. I wouldn’t say my English is perfect… in fact, I don’t know a single grammar rule! Everything just ‘sounds right’…

Just now, I was helping my son with his homework (my son’s only in kindergarten, but he seems to have a truckload of homework every day), when he suddenly used the phrase “thats mean”… I almost blew a gasket…

For those who don’t know why I was so upset, the proper phrase should be “that means”… but it seems that half of the country gets it wrong… it’s embedded in Malaysian culture… culture is something that is the hardest to change… and I would say your culture will depend on where you’ve spent the most of your ‘learning years’… mine is a mixture of both Canadian and Malaysian culture (making me weirder than most…)

I’ve tried to make sure that my son doesn’t pick up these ‘unsavory’ aspects of Malaysian culture… I’ve always spoken to him in proper English… he only watches shows on Disney Channel, etc… My family speaks to him in proper English… you would think he would be well versed by now…

Unfortunately, I can’t keep him in a bubble his whole life… he has to go to school and be exposed to naughty kids, germs and viruses and of course, bad grammar...

I’m starting to feel that I send him out into the world to learn new things and gain new experiences, but at the same time, I wait for him to come home so I can undo the negative aspects… be it the flu virus, or the occasional bad grammar.

I know I can’t protect him forever… I just hope that I can provide him with enough of a foundation for him to take care of himself in the future…

On a lighter note, my son has been sitting beside me while I write this post… he asked what I was doing, so I told him that I was writing about him in my blog… took me a while to explain what a blog was… his conclusion – “I’m going to be in a novel?”

Soon, son...