My little girl has become a chatterbox. Anything you say, she will repeat. For a while now, she has been saying the names of every single child in her class, including their surnames.

Some weeks ago, while looking in the mirror, she pointed to herself and called her name. Her full name. It was the first time that I heard her mention her surname. And she butchered it.

You see, she had learnt her name from her teachers in school. And they obviously couldn’t pronounce our surname properly. When I mentioned this to my wife, she did say that they asked her to teach them how to pronounce it just a few days before. She did her best, but left them still trying and not succeeding.

But what can we do? She spends over 9 hours a day at the nursery, so that is where she has learnt most of her speech, and we have tried to teach her the correct name, but she seems to prefer her pronounciation.

All of a sudden, I feel useless. I’ve seen African kids who can’t pronounce their own names, in fact, I know a few (I might be related to some). And I’ve seen a few who speak with Birtish accents, but when it comes to their own names, they get the pronounciation spot on. I was hoping our little girl would be in the seond category, but it’s looking very unlikely.

So, is it a bad thing? I don’t know. But I guess this is what happens when you decide to raise kids in a foreign country. And I’m sure this is the first of many similar situations I’ll have to face over the next few years.