Growing up, I never thought I would teach my kids Chinese, primarily because I didn't speak it myself but also because I myself was born and raised in North America where it is not commonly used. Even in late high school and college when I started learning to speak Asian languages (Taiwanese/Hokkien/Fujianhua and Mandarin Chinese) and found it a lot of fun (even when people laughed at my accent or other gaffes), I don't think it crossed my mind that I would speak to my kids in Chinese. When Jadon was born, I concentrated on English and Spanish (in the Inland Empire, there are a lot of Spanish children's books at the libraries) especially as I myself was learning Spanish. Even in spite of my family being around, I avoided speaking Chinese to him, in part to avoid teaching him "broken Chinese." Now that we're teaching Evangelina Chinese (in spite of our broken abilities), it's funny to see the effect learning Chinese has on her ENGLISH, which can be seen here with her wrong use of articles, a part of speech that is absent in the Chinese language. (Incidentally, there have been some visible effects of Jadon's Spanish learning on his English as well, most commonly in his misspelling of words in a decidedly Spanish way.)
