Pok-pok? Bye-bye? Apa?

Was crapping with my colleagues during lunchtime about the languages that our kids are using.

In Singapore education, we need to take a mother tongue plus English. And with parents fe-li-feh-leh, speaking to their children in English, Chinese seems to be so alien to some kids who have little exposure to the language.

Rainie speaks both English and Mandarin... in broken sentences. She mixes English and Chinese in her sentences, like "Mummy, help me 拿" or "我的toy在哪里?" Coz my MIL likes to "practice" her lousy English on Rainie despite us telling her to just speak perfect mandarin to her. And with Rainie spending most of her time with my MIL, its not surprising she picks up such broken English/Chinese from her. Sigh...

And the funniest part in the conversation is when I told my colleagues that my MIL refers to the vagina as "pok-pok" like how one of my colleague's mother refer the penis as "bird-bird". Coz Rainie calls her vagina "pok-pok" too, as learnt from my dear MIL. Then everyone of us started to recall the word that were taught to us when we were young on our genital part. Mary said she recalled that she was being taught "nud nud" and when I said I was being taught as "bye-bye", everyone burst out laughing. *shrugz* So when I say "bye-bye" to you, it could be really a "goodbye" or I'm simply scolding you... LOL

I guess the older generation were to shy to call the proper name. Also, I think it sounds rude in some language. I was grown up in a Hokkien speaking family, I can't imagine my mum telling me "girl... ji eh si kio CB..." *翻白眼* T_T|||||