Sounds Like Cussing, But It's Not

In an effort to raise the kids to be bilingual, we have a (sometimes theoretical) rule that we speak Japanese at home. This rule was taken for granted by all, and much easier to enforce right up until a few months ago when some kind of switch flipped for Izumi. English started gushing forth from her lips and hasn't really stopped ever since. When we ask her to change over to Japanese, she sometimes looks blank. Or says that she can't--in Japanese.

Another thing that happens is, she'll put out an English sentence but not know all the words she needs. In that case, she'll plug a Japanese word into the appropriate hole. Imagine my surprise when I recently fielded the following request:

"Mama, can you fook the table?"

HUH?!

Ah...there's a Japanese verb "fuku," that means "to wipe": she spilled something. Phew. I know I ever so occasionally fail to restrain my mouth way I should but I don't care to drop F-bombs ever, so I was relieved to find she hadn't brought one home from somewhere else either!

On the subject of the Japanese language, I'm sure at some point our family will be affected for better or worse by the evolutions mentioned in this article. We already have in a way: Aogu's dad wrote this (called "Eden no sono ni ikiru" or "Living in the Garden of Eden") on his cell phone and uploaded it chunk by chunk to a computer; now it's a book for sale on Amazon!