"Mamma, the sky is asshole!"
Admittedly, it had been raining for a few days - it still was - (we do live in the Pacific North West, which is, to put it mildly, rather wet) but this is not the language that I was expecting from my three-year-old, especially not when I am driving.
Trying to inject a commonplace, calm tone in my voice, I asked her, "Where did you hear that?"
Pat came the reply; "At school. My teacher said to me, the sky is asshole."
O-O-K.
"She said the glass is velde."
Relief dawned on me like a slow, lazy sunrise. Combine a pronounced lisp ('l' for 'r') and bi-weekly Spanish classes and presto, the sky is azul, the grass is verde and so on.
Come to think of it, I am still translating American into English after nearly a year of moving, but more of that over here.
Since K had only spoken in Hindi before we moved to the US (and we wanted to keep it that way at home) we do try and speak with her, and each other in Hindi, which she is increasingly reluctant to do. It gives birth to certain gems like this one.
"Aap ko lunch mein dosa chahiye ya paratha?" (Do you want a dosa or a paratha for lunch)
"Let me soch." (Let me think)
And the literal translation of "ganda" to "dirty" means that her favourite abuse for me, when I am not her loving 'Maaamee' is "you are a dirty mamma!" Initially, I wondered how she'd figured out that I had skipped a shower, till I eventually got there...
And so the conversation continues...
