Mama-speak #3: Pepetse-petse

Pepetse-petse is used to describe a person who has no energy to do certain things. To make it short in Filipino, it is lalambot-lambot or papatay-patay. It sounds like petsay or pechay. Since petsay is a soft vegetable, my Mama brilliantly transformed "petsay" to "petse" and just added the prefix "pepetse" to it. 

Baby Talk #2: Pacham! Pacham!

Aside from "chi", my then one-year-old niece kept on uttering "Pacham! Pacham!" several times before. She would blurt that out without even thinking. I miss those "Pacham! Pacham!" days, however, I am glad her vocabulary (Filipino, English and, okay, simple Mandarin included) is improving day by day.

Baby Talk #1: Chi!

In an amusing Tagalog-dubbed Japanese animé Prince Mackaroo which was shown on local TV, there's a character named Khaki who would always end his sentence with "chi". I just remembered my niece would call herself as "Chi" before. It's neither her nickname nor her real name. If asked where she was, she would point to herself or her picture and reply "Chi!" for affirmation. But now that she has gotten over chi, she can say her nickname and full name almost clearly.