Shen's language usage is really interesting. He has learned, and uses, a lot of English. He has the essentials of course: "no", "that's mine", "all done", "more". But he hangs onto his Chinese too: he always refers to himself as "wo", Kai is "ge ge", dogs are always "gou". But a lot of the time he babbles away in pure gibberish. We've had a number of native Chinese speakers confirm it's NOT Chinese. Usually when he does this he's just "play-talking" (it sounds like Ewok to me), but he has a few "words" he's made up that he insists on using. The best example of this is what he often says when he wants a drink. He says, "Wo yu gwo fi." Now, "wo yu" is "I want", but "gwo fi" isn't anything. Again, we've had a couple different native Chinese speakers, hear him say it, and confirm for us that, no, "gwo fi" is not a word in Mandarin. But he insists on using it.

The other one he started using is "go jee". This is what he calls his favorite stuffed animal - a large plush monkey. Monkey in Chinese is houzi. We call it monkey, and we call it houzi. Shen insists on calling it "go jee". But then Tina had a flash the other night and realized that why he is most likely calling it "Go Jee" is because this is how he says George. As in Curious George. PBS has a morning TV show based on Curious George and the boys watch it every day. So this isn't one of his made up words after all, it's a name. Meet Go-jee, Shen's equivelant of Stinky Mouse.