"tio, bor?"

Direct translation = "correct, no?"

At least, that's what my limited grasp of Hokkien understands it to be.

I've been trying to teach V some Mandarin and Cantonese and she understands some of it, since the oldies in my family side will talk to her with that. The hubby is from the Khek dialect group, but he cannot speak the dialect at all, so there isn't anything he could teach her that I couldn't, or so I thought.

Then this morning, he was getting her to sit in her car seat and they had some exchange of conversation, and then suddenly I heard "tio, bor?" I looked up and asked, "did you just say '"tio, bor?"' to her???" The hubby looked surprised and then he processed the fact that he just spoke Hokkien to her. I can't speak Hokkien at all, so we never converse in Hokkien at all. I guess the brotherhood at the recent IPT sessions have awoken the sleeping "Hokkien peng" in the hubby ;P

The helpers also recently told me V seems to understand some Tagalog too, without them teaching her.

Hmm, maybe if only I could get her to learn some French and Japanese too ...