Vocalization and First Babbling stage: birth – 9 months
Helping a baby shoot grow
At the time when J began to vocalize at the age of 4 months, I saw a TV programme on the benefits of teaching babies word cards at an early stage. I bought packs of word cards and started the practice, flashing the cards one by one in front of him and pronounced the words clearly in a firm voice, copying the way it was done in the programme. J’s first reaction showed that he was deeply annoyed and started to cry bitterly. Mummy might have sounded unbelievably cold. In spite of this, there was a good deal of vocalizing, especially whenever he was in an amiable mood or saw me come home. Strange noises sputtered out from his lips and were accompanied with a broad grin.
The Breakthrough
Three months later, J was found playing with a small calendar card for a long time. It was a plain small calendar card that people usually kept in wallets. He held the card tightly in his hand this way and that and fixed his eyes on it. It was time to introduce the word cards again. And J took to them immediately.
A month later, only a Spot series story book was able to stop his crying fit in illness. The next stage saw J sitting by himself leafing books and cards and reading for half an hour. It was also at this stage that he started the first babbling stage. He uttered sounds like 哎呀 and 爺爺. Most of them were short. But they resembled Cantonese. This stage ended with J being able to recognize a number of objects like lamp, fan, dog etc. and he would point at them when asked to without fail.
Second Babbling stage: 10 months
Lexical pairing
J’s utterances were getting longer. They sounded like run-on sentences and he was talking a lot to himself when he was alone. He could recognize more objects, adding a new one to the list every day. The most remarkable achievement noted at the end of this stage was: one day, rain poured splattering against the window pane. He looked out of the window for a while and eagerly ferreted out the word card 雨 from decks of cards scattered nearby and pointed at it.
Stage I: holophrastic stage, 11-12 months
Feline lover
The first word appeared. He uttered an ‘l’(/iːaʊ/) sound whenever he saw a real cat or one on a card. This was followed by 車, 馬, 爸, 媽, 魚, 樹, 蛋, 巴士, 燈, 得(meaning ‘clock’), 雀, 筆… The list in Cantonese grew quickly consisting mostly of nouns.
At the same time, he could recognize the word cards of these things and read them aloud to himself. Now he had become so familiar with his books and cards that he could tell whether they were held upside down.
He had at this stage developed a reading habit; he refused to nurse or eat without a book. So Mum had both her hands full at meal time.
Stages II & III: two-word utterances and developing grammar, 13-18 months
Grammar construction
The two stages appeared at almost the same time with the first one elapsing into the second without our noticing it. Even before 13 months old, J was already saying two-syllable words like 獅子, 老虎 and ‘auntie’. Then at 14 and a half months old, he would come to tell us 蚊蚊咬頭, nana (banana) 食, 火車隆隆隆 and the like. He was sociable and empathetic then. A neighbour boy of his age was heard crying in the garden. When this little boy came inside, he greeted him by saying “Kiki(a) 喊吖?” His sentences were telegraphic in form consisting of mainly content words and they invariably began with a noun.
Word fascination
Between 13-14 months, J was no longer satisfied with the drawings in the books only (perhaps he could tell all of them by then). Instead he pointed at the letters of the alphabet persistently demanding to know what they were. He learnt the alphabet quickly and began reading more complex books like picture dictionaries. Names of colours and shapes opened up new horizons. Between 15-16 months, he could distinguish between a pale purple from blue and the names of 6 other kinds of colours, and 6 different shapes.
He had developed a most discerning eye for things in printed form. He would point at a tear or sweat that a character on a page shed, or a stroke that signified his movement or the volume of his voice, and all punctuation marks of course, for their meanings. If he had taken liking to a certain phrase, sentence or nursery rhyme, he would demand it to be read aloud over and over again. Books became torn and pages were falling off. Mum tried to salvage them by using long straps of adhesive tape. She didn’t realize that a piece of lint with the size of a full stop was caught in between when the tape was fixed. So as usual, J pointed at the lint and asked with urgency, “eh? Eh?” It was the question form he used at this stage.
At the same time, he was also reading Chinese books of kindergarten level. Somehow he figured out the character appearing on a page was related to the drawing next to it. Soon he was reading out the same Chinese characters that appeared elsewhere and reciting those words in a sing-song manner to himself. 
From 17 months onwards, his sentences were getting longer and longer, like “落地行行著鞋鞋; 婆婆屋企有海, 船, 大廈屋; 爸爸放工返嚟玩玩; 媽咪返學, 讀書寫簿簿ABC. “ Some of these were what he had heard from adults, but the last one was definitely his own invention. I might have told him that I was leaving home for school, but never having to write copy books! It could have sprung from his secret wish to be able to write like us - 4 months earlier, he had already drawn a number of straight lines on Mum’s journal without help.
At this stage, he also knew that Chinese and English were two different languages. Then there came a question form which lasted for a few months – 雞, 英文? 蛋, 英文?
Stage IV: Near adult grammar, 19-32 months
At 19 months, he could use serial verb sentences pertinent to Chinese grammar. Looking at a photo, he said “嫲嫲抱住J睇小跳豆”. As time progressed, he talked in a way very much close to adult level. In his speech, one would notice the use of modifiers, prepositions, comparatives and quantitative words: 慷慨, 自私, 驕傲, 怕羞, 多到不得了, 啲咁多, 大, 中, 小, 又, 仲有etc. And he talked about assumptions 如果 and actions accomplished. Occasional analogies were also found, e.g. “好似瓜瓜咁苦” (the taste of bitter gourd not yet acquired).
But he had not forgotten his English study. Whenever he overheard something said by Mum to the helper in English, he would ask the meaning of words that he didn’t understand. For example, Mum said, “Give me noodles.” He asked, “乜嘢係noodles?” In talking to English speakers, he made real efforts to speak their language and worked out English translations for words he only knew in Chinese, e.g. calling火山 ‘fire mountain’.
While his language ability was acquiring more proficiency, over-learning and metalinguistic features appeared.
Over-generalization
At 18 months, he was read a story about a lion that fell into a trap. He asked, “陷阱係?” Mum explained briefly that it meant ‘一個窿’ thinking the drawing there might be self-explanatory enough. A few days later, he was presented with his first pair of sandals. He pointed at the peep holes on his sandals and said “陷阱” to demonstrate his newly acquired knowledge.
Conceptualization
At one time, it seemed that he was concerned with accuracy and clarity instead.
Examples:
“媽咪抱J睇屋屋house” – both Chinese and English equivalents were used in the same sentence.
Mum said, “唔好爬地下.” He corrected it immediately, “唔好爬地氈.”
Common names were added to the end of words – 大廈屋, 亭屋, 教堂屋; 茶樹,杜鵑花樹; 輪船, 艇船.
Classification
As his vocabulary increased, he exhausted the list of words he knew and asked,
“乜嘢係傷心, 開心, 同埋愛心呢?”
“乜嘢係甜, 鹹, 酸, 香, 辣, 同埋味呢?”
“乜嘢係太陽, 月光光, 星, 雲, 雨, 雷, 同埋閃電呢?”
Simplification
He shortened ‘爸爸’, ‘媽咪’, ‘Jason’ to ‘爸媽J’ by his own doing. From then on, ‘J’ has been the name used by Mum and Dad in calling him.
Rhyming
At bath time, he sang as water was splashed around, “沖涼缸, 梁梓綱, 黃克剛.”
Mum said ’rat’ first, then asked him the word for ‘帽’ in English. He gave the answer ‘hat’ and taking up the cue immediately, added ‘cat’. 舉一隅而以三隅反 – what joy to newly-turned-teacher-Mummy!
Entering tones入聲
Accidentally he stumbled into entering tones in the Cantonese dialect and made it a game. For a short while, he turned everything he said into entering tones. For example, instead of saying 爸爸, he said 伯伯；then擘滅for媽咪 and 直食 for Jason. Then he reversed them, “唔係伯伯, 係爸爸” and so on and so forth.
Written word form wonder
Once he learnt that some Chinese words were made up by pairing single characters, he found another game. He successfully broke down words like 雷＝雨+田；子＝了＋一；天＝二＋人；even for小, he ingeniously said it was a ‘J’+2 ‘1’s. However same as other careless Chinese learners, he fell into the most common language traps; he thought that晚 was made up by 日+兎.
In the use of English, he had found a new game of pairing the capital letter with the small letter or supplying a missing initial letter of a word or pairing a word to a picture. He even attempted to spell and could do a few words right.
Phrase construction
Repeated recitations did reap rewards. He could now construct phrases in standard written Chinese and they showed the initial elements of regularity and evenness in structure found in the Chinese language, e.g. 長長的火車, 長長的菜, 矮矮的菜, 雪糕和雪條.
Double negative use
Not even words could be fun. So could sentence structures. When he was rebuked by Mum for messing up things, “搞嘢係唔乖㗎！” He answered back, “唔搞嘢係唔乖㗎！” followed by “唔爭嘢係唔乖㗎！” and then “爭嘢至乖㗎！” It seemed he could master double negatives in and out. He even carried such knowledge over to the use of English. One day, he asked Mum, “小心英文呢?” Mum’s reply, “Be careful.” Then came his second question, “咁唔小心呢?” Mum answered briefly, “Careless.” He said immediately in English, “Don’t be careless.” Mum suspected that he knew the word ‘careless’ already and was just showing off.
Epilogue
My journal entries stopped when J was 32 months old, by which time, he knew more than 100 Chinese characters, could tell the time by the clock, read out numbers with 2 digits and use opposites accurately. He was actually speaking like an adult. Perhaps that was why I didn’t record his speech any more.
I had never been a teacher by profession and never wanted to be one. Neither did I ever want to influence a person’s life. I prefer to read quietly by myself and sometimes think it might be fun to interact with a like mind. So I had been buying a lot of books for J since birth and thought he might do the same. At that time I had no idea that as a baby, he demanded to be taught full-time and the story Three Little Pigs had to be told at least 3 times in a day before sleep for as long as 3-4 months.
Gone are the days of incessant babbling, reciting, wh-questions. Also little did I know then he speaks less and less as he grows up and loves to write stories and essays that are vague and tortuous and contain words that test my vocabulary. I begin to wonder: was I like him when I was a baby?