Eamon can TRY to get out the word for "thank you", but it doesn't come out very well.

And he just flat out refused to say it despite my asking him to, silly boy.
My MIL is of the opinion that you do NOT teach children the old language. She thought it confused kids, and won't admit that she was wrong, even though all the experts say that early childhood is the BEST time to help kids become multilingual.
But at the same time, she has never made an enormous effort to learn English. So at home DH and his sibs learned "Konglish", which made things very hard for him growing up and in school. His brother was born in Korea and moved here at 9, and is fluent in both languages. DH speaks Korean at around a 3rd grade level; he can understand it a bit better, but can't translate directly, nor can he translate quickly, so at gatherings I just sit there not knowing what anyone is saying until she calls him Deiji (pig) or an aunt calls me "ippuda" (beautiful...the aunts are very nice to me, LOL).
Since DH's dad was away at least half the year (military, merchant marines, then shipping companies) and was much older than most dads, he didn't talk much to his kids, so DH really isn't 100% fluent in English either...it's really hard! He still doesn't get the nuance of spoken English, b/c he grew up in a halfway-land of languages.
Since MIL refuses to really speak Korean around "Americans", despite us nearly begging her to, it makes it hard for Eamon to learn it.
But he did get a traditional Korean 1st birthday, which was stressful on me and DH (MIL was beyond angry with us even before we got there) but DS had a grand time and wore the cutest little outfit EVER.
picture and
picture