Chinese Lesson #1

There's a website called www.chinasprout.com and it has all kinds of information about China plus gifts, clothing, and jewelry. I was rummaging around the other day and found what Grandmother and Aunt were in Chinese. “Lao Lao” is for maternal grandmother. I believe it's pronounced kind of like "l-ow l-ow"and the ow is like wow and you don't pronounce it as two syllables. Does that make sense? Paternal grandmother is “Nai Nai,” pronounced like what a horse does, that's a little easier! I also found out that Ni Ni is for maternal aunt and Gu Gu for paternal aunt. So, Sue, Lyndal's mom is Nai Nai Sue, and my mom is Lao Lao Marcy. Angie, Amber, and Gaye are Ni Ni and Michelle, Lyndal's brother's wife, Cathy and Mary are Gu Gu. Alright, stay tuned who knows what I will come up with next!
The Chinese language is complicated because it has different tones and different tones can make a word mean different things. I think there are four tones. There are also different dialects of Chinese - Mandarin, Cantonese, and others.