Thursday, November 12, 2009

What are they teaching him?

My son goes to a Spanish immersion preschool and comes home singing these cute little songs in Spanish. I've started taking an adult Spanish class through the school to refresh my own Spanish.

Yesterday, he was singing: "quieres pera mi mama", which roughly translates to "pear like my mom".

As he's merrily singing in the background, "I am NOT a pear," I mumble, furiously typing into my Google translator, moving letters over to see if I could decipher this. "Those CAN'T be the real words", I beg.

"quiere spera mi mama?" = my mom wants spera. (That's not it. I don't even know what spera is.)

Then it hit me: "que espera mi mama" = waiting for my mom. Aha! "Do you sing this when you sit on the rug waiting for the teacher to open the door at the end of class?" I ask him. "Yes!" he says. Whew! My Spanish classes are paying off!

So then I made the mistake of telling my 5yo comic genius the real way to say it, and the reason the other way was wrong. He thought me being a pear was hilarious and now sings "quieres pera mi mama" with even more enthusiasm. *sigh*.