Cantonese vocabulary: Vehicles and modes of transportation

Why have I not made this list earlier??

BIL’s fiancée was over one evening and E wanted his bedtime reading from a Search & Find book and I was flexing my vocabulary muscles trying to find new things to point out and teach him new words even if there is no story to those images. I found myself with no words for fairly basic objects like saddle, tractor and wheelbarrow in a farm scene.

I could describe what a saddle, tractor and wheelbarrow are for but it grated on me that I couldn’t give him a word yet I knew there was an English word he would love and that would enrich his life. Instead, I was using the same old words to describe a concept (which isn’t that bad either). I was feeling truly remiss that I’m not increasing my vocabulary in response to his curiosity.

As I’ve noted in my bilingualism updates, there are words that E knows he was introduced to in Chinese first and doesn’t come across quite as often and so it seems the Chinese word becomes established. I’m quite proud of those words. For vehicles, he has so many English words but it’s not too late for him to learn there’s another word, a “private word” for me and him, that I can switch to.