Page 3 of 269

Korean words our son uses even when he speaks English

2021/08/27 / Nic / 0 Comments

Yul’s English has been exploding lately. He is quite confident in both English and Korean. People often ask if he favours one over the other but he doesn’t really. He just chooses what is appropriate for the situation. When playing games by himself he just decides whether it’s an English game or a Korean game and will talk to himself in that language.

However, because we live in Korea and he has a lot of exposure to other kids speaking Korean, there are some words he prefers to say in Korean, even when it’s in an English sentence. He knows the word in English too, and he knows I know what it means, so he will decide to use the Korean word instead of the English word. In this video we talk about which words they are!

Our baby will be a….

2021/08/27 / Nic / 0 Comments

A vlog about finding out if we will have having a boy or a girl. Will Yul be a Hyung or an Oppa?

We have something very special to tell you….

2021/06/24 / Nic / 0 Comments

We are expecting our second baby!

Yesterday we announced that I am pregnant across social media and we’ve been overwhelmed with so many lovely comments and so much support. Thank you everyone!

It’s very exciting, although can’t wait until morning sickness is gone! It’s also why it’s been hard to make any content lately. But I will film a follow up video answering questions. The best place to leave a question over on YouTube. I’ll be talking about IVF, living in Korea and pregnancy in Korea in the next video.

We had planned to try last year, but obviously with the current state of the world we wanted to delay a bit. We had one embryo left so instead of full IVF, we just needed to do the preparation (the meds) and just one embryo transfer. We are very thankful it worked, as we’d have to start IVF all over again if it didn’t.

I’ll share more about it in coming videos. For now we just wanted to announce it and thank everyone for their support. Yul is very excited to be a big brother!

What do bilingual three-year-olds talk about?

2021/05/27 / Nic / 0 Comments

Bilingual Update video!

In this video I show conversations in English with our son Yul. Since we live in Korea, he is of course surrounded by Korean. He hears it at daycare, he hears it in the community and Hugh speaks Korean to him. His English comes almost entirely from me and hearing Hugh and I speaking to each other in English. In the future he’ll have more English exposure as we can interact more with my family and other English speakers, but he has done really well learning English naturally from me.

I hope these videos are encouraging for other families in similar situations. I know people can worry a lot about the bilingual aspect. I also hope they help Korean families where parents do speak English and they want to introduce English to their children, but find it hard to know how to speak to children in English. There can be quite a difference between knowing how to speak a language to other adults and how to help a child learn a language. Hopefully seeing these types of examples are helpful.

Marriage and small children

2021/04/15 / Nic / 0 Comments

Stop Talking!

Even while Hugh was helping me translate this comic, Yul was jumping on his back and demanding attention. And in case you think our child is starved for attention… he is not haha. He gets so much love and attention. He just doesn’t realise that Mummy and Appa need to talk to each other too, not just to him.

He has done this many times when Hugh comes home and I’d like to have an normal adult conversation and Yul puts his hands on our mouths and tells us to stop talking. It’s a good thing he is so adorable and it’s super cute.

Cherry Blossoms: Bilingual Update

2021/04/15 / Nic / 0 Comments

A walk through the Cherry Blossoms

This video is from a few weeks ago and the cherry blossoms are no longer there, but I am glad we made the most of the short time they blossom on the trees. Yul was sad when all the blossoms had fallen. We are lucky to have many cherry blossoms trees in our area. There are places with a lot more trees that people travel to, but much easier to just take a local walk. This area was also shown in the Korean drama “The Start-up”. They filmed last year during cherry blossom season and we actually saw scenes being shot many times.

This video is also a bit of a bilingual update as you can see Yul using both English and Korean and switching easily between them.

Was that Korean?

2021/03/05 / Nic / 0 Comments

Was that English or Korean?

Sometimes we can get so involved in trying to work out if something was an English word or a Korean word that we forget that little kids just babble and make up stuff themselves!

Our son is very aware that there are at least two different languages and that Mummy and Appa have different languages. There are times where he has asked if there is “Yul language”. I will reply and say that he can make up his own language if he wants, so he will try and make up some words. Sometimes the things he say is just a mix of English and Korean anyway!

My Korean Husband