Half Indian Toddler Problems

A toddler's life comes with many difficulties. People don't let you do whatever you want, discipline your younger siblings, eat cookies all day, and the worst of it all... they don't always understand what you're saying so clearly. Now, try being half Indian and half White on top of it!

We've been slowly teaching Liam and Levi little Telugu words. I only know the ones Joel and his dad have taught me. I've tried to look a few up online, but I was only met with hysterical laughter after I used one of my internet taught words. They were either completely wrong or I was using them in the wrong context. Joel sure got a kick out of it. 

As we started to teach Liam some of the Telugu words, we ran into a problem. So many of them sounded like something else in his toddler vocabulary. 

Annum

Rice is served with just about every Indian dish so we have a lot of it around here. When we told Liam what the Telugu word for rice was he just looked at us and laughed. 

"Mom, this isn't annum, it's rice!"

He thinks it's hilarious because he calls our cousin Autumn, annum. When we tell him he's eating annum, he thinks we're teasing him. 

Thatha

Obviously, the "th" is always hard for a kiddo to say. Liam calls Joel's dad Sasa instead of Thatha. It's never been a problem until this weekend. I gave him chips and salsa for lunch. He asked me what the salsa was. No this is not the first time he's ever had salsa, but it's the first time he's actually paid attention to it. I told him it was salsa. He just stared at me. 

"If you say I'm eating my Sasa one more time, I'll tell daddy."

I tried to explain the difference between Thatha and salsa, but he told me to go into time out for not listening instead....

Naan

Naan is the delicious Indian flat bread that we always find an excuse to make around here. It. is. delicious. We didn't make it with an Indian dish one time for my family and they all looked at us like we were insane. Naan is definitely not a hard word to say. However when you're family is always making naan jokes, it gets distorted quickly. What are naan jokes you ask? Oh, let me tell you. 

As a response to someone asking you if you had any naan. "Nope, I've had naan." 

"I'll have naan of that." 

You can see where it goes. It's one of those jokes that happens at least a few times during all of our Indian dinners. Even Liam is doing it! He has no idea why it's so funny, but he loves saying naan while running around the house laughing. 

I wonder if Indian families sit around the dinner table making naan jokes during dinner. Oh yeah, that's probably only something us whiteys do...