Door-2-Math Blog

So this is what happened on this Monday morning while dropping off my 5-year old to his school: ‘Mommy, can we do math in Spanish?’
‘Huh?’ I just wasn’t expecting him to put a fresh twist on our daily routine of 5-minute of mental math in the drop off route.

Being a good logical debater he is, Byron proceed with ‘well, this way, I can teach you how to count in Spanish, and we can still do math like we always do.’

What can you say to that!

Making a quick mental confirmation, I figured that how hard could it be to humor him and just learn ten odd sounds? I mean, after all, I didn’t ‘sink’ but ‘swam’ when, at sixteen, my family’s immigration threw me into a into a local high school — in Brookings, South Dakota out of places!

Off, within minutes, I learned ‘uno (oo-noh; just like the card game), dos (dohs; 2 dogs without the ‘g’),tres (trays; 3 trays – I’m hungry), quatro (kwah-troh; equilateral has four sides), cinco (seen-koh; seen 5 aunts all named ‘koh’), seis (says, 6 says six), siete (syay-tay; 7 sounds like a festival), ocho (oh-choh; 8 is ultra cool) and Ooh la la, we came to number 9. For the life of me, I could not hear what I said ‘ne-wa-wei’ to what it’s supposed to sound ‘nueve (nway-vay)’!!

Patient as he was, Byron started to raise his voice, as if, making it louder would help me to understand it better!! (hm…I wonder where he picked that up?!) Frustrated (and embarrassed I’m sure), I said, ‘well, that’s good enough!! Ne-wa-wei or whatever you say, it doesn’t make any difference! You know I mean 9.’

“But, Mama!” Byron protested. ” You said that I shouldn’t give up learning swimming just because I’m frustrated. I’ll let you take a break until tomorrow and we’ll try again.”
Oh! Sometimes, I think I taught them too well!

Later on that day, while relating my frustrating morning battle of Ne-wa-wei/nway-vay to my husband, he reminded me that to this day since he’d known me (for 12 years now), I still make ‘bunion’ to ‘bunny’. Just then and there, I realized that how fortunate I had been – the seemingly betrayal of my Chinese tongue taught me never ever underestimate two things: 1. Kids are listening. They listen a lot. 2. If, within 5 minutes, a five-year old can find what an adult is so helpless in, isn’t the opposite true? If we try, we can find what our kids are good at, failed math or not, book smart or not, responsible or not, clean room or not, homework turned in or not, dishwasher emptied or not.

Twelve years of secondary training in mathematics, a ‘bunion’ is still a ‘bunny’!

Happen Zen Math!!

PS. Just for references…

1. To say ‘one,’ say ‘uno’ (‘OO-no,’ same as the name of the card game, rhymes with ‘Juno’).
2. To say ‘two,’ say ‘dos’ (like a ‘dose’ of medicine).
3. To say ‘three,’ say ‘tress’ (except that the ‘r’ is pronounced with a flap of the tongue against the roof of the mouth}.
4. To say ‘four,’ say ‘cuatro’ (‘KWAH-tro,’ but again the ‘r’ has a distinctive sound that is unlike English’s).
5. To say ‘five,’ say ‘cinco’ (‘SINK-oh’).
6. To say ‘six,’ say ‘seis’ (‘SAYSS,’ rhymes with ‘trace’).
7. To say ‘seven,’ say ‘siete’ (roughly ‘SYET-tay’ with the first syllable rhyming with the Russian ‘nyet’).
8. To say ‘eight,’ say ‘ocho’ (‘OH-cho,’ rhymes with ‘coach-oh’).
9. To say ‘nine,’ say ‘nueve’ (roughly ‘NWEHV-ay,’ with the first syllable rhyming with ‘Bev’).
10. To say ‘ten,’ say ‘diez’ (‘dyess,’ rhymes with ‘tress’).