Aug 20 2005
Tata = Gong-gong (Grandpa?)
There is another thing about Ian’s speech.
Since quite sometime ago, around 13 month old, he was already able to call ‘mama’ in a very correct Mandarin pronunciation Ma4Ma3 (妈妈). And he was able to call ‘daddy’, ‘popo’, ‘Shell’, and etc too.
Though some of the other things he cannot pronounce correctly now, they are quite closed and we can guess. These are something like:
‘Ner-ner’ for McDonald’s
‘Sek dak’ for sit-down
‘Sek dak’ or ‘Sar’ for star
‘pu pu’ for Winnie the Pooh
etc
But, when it comes to calling his grandfather ‘Gong-gong’ (公公), Ian has great problem in it.
He always calls him ‘TaTa’. We really puzzled by this. No body has ever referred to his grandpa as ‘tata’, from where did he learn to call him ‘tata’?
I tested Ian.
“Ian, say ‘Oh What’”
“Oh wad”
“OK, now say ‘Oh no!’”
“Oh ner!”
“OK, good. Now say ‘Oh gong!”
“Oh….” Silent, and turned away.
or “Oh… DA!”
Someone told me that the Indians call their grandpa as ‘tata’, so teased me that Ian is a little Indian! Is it true that Indians call grandpa ‘tata’? I don’t know!
wah, moved to WP oredi aa? sorry didn’t come by so long.
i think you should seriously consider changing templates, a lot of ppl using this standard kubrick…
yup… tata is the tamil word for grandpa… some indian friends once taught me this phrase “tata kunci yilek”. Don’t ask me what it means
Prolly Grandpa – Pa = ta .. for Ian..??
My son can repeat any word with one syllable only. If we give him more than that, he will only repeat the last one. I have similar feedback for McDonald, Apple etc.
To sit down, we teach him in cantonese “Chor Chor” pulak.
hah?
…ini macam test also can ah? think after sometime he will call correctly lar.
simon:
Hehe, actually I wanted very badly to change my template. But I am super idiot with this html thingy, so I’ve stucked for a while. I actually can’t find a template I like so far, so am trying to just modify the current template myself – aiyoh is tougher than I thought! Give me a couple of weeks more har… 
Lee Wye Jon: thanks for visiting my blog!
Hmm… so it confirms har? Tata is grandpa – where does he learn it from har?? puzzled…
BigBok: welcome back to my blog! Actually we never use ‘grandpa’ with him, all the while we said ‘gong-gong’. :p
egghead: Very fun isn’t it, seeing babies talk like this.
TM: hahaha! Actually just want to know whether it is the ‘g’ that he can’t pronounce mah! :p