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What it meant when my tween daughter started speaking in ‘Samoan’
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Children who disengage repeatedly with a response like “I don’t know” may be trying to assert their independence.
ST ILLUSTRATION: CEL GULAPA
Raymond Goh
SINGAPORE – I am not one to brag – being nothing if not unpretentious – but I recently had occasion to suspect that my nine-year-old daughter is a bit of a linguist. How else could I explain the fact that just a few weeks ago, I heard young JJ speak a smattering of Samoan?
I had casually asked her a question in perfectly proper English (“What would you like for dinner tonight?”). To my surprise, she replied in a language that was not immediately familiar to me.
