Word Play and Limerick

What does a bird have to do with Chinese food? Plenty, it seems, at least to my son.

El enjoys the sounds of various words, and words that sound alike. He is able to speak English pretty fluently, some Mandarin with a sing song English accent, and some Cantonese.

My mother had been driving him to school for the past few months, but that day we had gone out earlier, so I was driving. My mother asked him whether he liked ‘dougan’, or bean curd.She had just cooked it for dinner the day before, and hoped he had eaten it.

He said he liked it, and he suddenly became very amused. After a while he said that there were two types of ‘dougan’. One was an animal, and the other was food. He started giggling.

It took me a few seconds to know what he was talking about. Thank goodness I had been reading up on some animals.

“What type of animal is the ‘dougan’?” I asked, as I turned out of the expressway.

After a few moments, he said it was a bird.

“Are you talking about the toucan?” I replied, while sneaking a glance at him who was in the backseat.

“Yes,” he said.

I spelt the word for him, just to confirm.

He must have thought both words were the same, but he understood the difference in the meanings.

So I had to explained to him how different the two words were.

Alright, here it goes. I’ve decided to come up with my first ever limerick. It could be much better.

There was a bird, a Toucan
which loved to eat some Dougan
It wanted to steal
But had an ordeal
When sadly caught by a Shogun