Linguistic Resolutions: I will not be my father & the art of acquiring spanish neologisms

Posted by Multilingual Mama

I stay away from resolutions like the plague. Basically as soon as I resolve to do something, I am pretty much guaranteed that I won’t get it done.

So I want to be clear: This year, I will speak less French with my children and I will most definitely not be fluent in Spanish after my epic two month trip to Mexico.

I will speak less French because when we needed to move to Asia for work, which conveniently put us in a country where neither my husband or I would now have to clean the toilet –a move I am quite certain ensured the success of our marriage– it never dawned on me that I would end up switching to English so our terrific helper Cherry wouldn’t feel excluded.

It was one of those things; I stumbled at first, managing to speak French to the girls and then translating to English for Cherry’s sake. Then my stumble turned to a slow roll down the hill. I would only speak English when Cherry was around and switch to French if we were out of the house. Before you knew it, I was rolling down the hill at full velocity, bulldozing everything in my way. When I managed to peel myself off the ground at the bottom, I was unable to recall the last time I spoke any French at all.

Bam, damage done. But I had a great relationship with my helper, who ended up as Cinderella and now lives in a palatial house in Austin. Woohoo (Hi Cherry!)

I have been paying for the mistake I made in trying to be inclusive. This happened when my eldest P was two and a half. She is now rapidly approaching 6. I need to stop and breath deeply here as that thought brings me to the precipice of a full on anxiety attack. I’ve been slowly clawing my way back but her French suffered tremendously. As a result, her sister’s is even worse, especially since she didn’t have the benefit of spending a few months in a French-speaking school.

Now that I am homeschooling, I’ve repeatedly failed to adequately prepare lessons to allow me to seamlessly talk about stuff in French. When it comes to math and other scientific stuff, I don’t even bother trying as I just handle complexity much better in English. Have you seen French conjugations? There’s just no way I can swing the uncertainty of science and getting the right ending for irregular verbs.

I’ve had to shell out some serious dosh to increase the time the girls hear quality French. They both go for an hour, twice a week to my friend Amelie’s house for French activities and conversations. This January, I also decided to send P, my eldest –little C won’t be of age until September this year– twice a week to the Acacia Language club to reinforce her French. It’s working but crickey, I could have saved myself a lot of trouble and money if I’d just been a bit less worried about others for once.

Now on to Spanish. I should speak it fluently. Really. I have no excuse. My mother speaks it. One of my brothers speaks it. I took it at school –until I forged my mother’s signature at the start of year two and switched to Italian. My father claims to speak it along with any other number of languages but in his own words, he is full of bullsh**. He is in fact the perfect example of what I don’t want to become linguistically. Here’s an example:

Excerpt from my childhood.
Setting: living room, after dinner, saturday night.
People: Father, mother, brothers and me.
Conversation in French between mother and children:

Shall we go to the beach tomorrow? Why yes I’d love to…Oh not me, I can’t because of this… sure you can you can just change that….wait but is there a concert at the beach? No I don’t think there is a concert at the beach. But how would we get there? Oh well your father would rent his taxi but take a few hours off and drive us there. Hmmm that could be good, the beach is so lovely at this time of year. Oh yes, I love it when the seagulls swoop down and steal my sandwich – And how the lifeguards like to perv when you take your bikini top off – must you do that? Mom I am french of course I must. Ok so it’s settled: all in favor of going to the beach say Moi. Moi, Moi, grumpy brother… oh alright, moi too. It’s decided we are going to the beach!

A nano second of silence. My father opens his mouth:

So would anyone like to go to the beach tomorrow?

Ya Pop, the day you speak French is the day Putin decides to run Russia democratically.

So, you see, I really need to speak Spanish. I had a Spanish boss for a number of years. He employed his Spanish wife and sister, both of whom spoke little English. I had spanish assistants and spanish customers. I met and married a Mexican –a real one, not a Chicano–and lived in New York City. I’ve signed up and taken a number of Spanish classes. I was always the best student in class and then something gets in the way, I don’t sign up for level two and my Spanish get stuck like an old vinyl record, me forever speaking in the present. This is truly unacceptable.

I can get by in Spanish. I have to. My Suegra only knows the following English: It’s your mother, I just called to say I love you and it’s been so long since we had an answering machine, I am not even sure if she remembers that. I don’t know how she understands me. I can only speak in the present but I am always talking about the past and future. I was once left by my husband on my own to explain to his mother –the catholic woman I hoped would like me enough to encourage her son to marry me– that I had actually already been married and was finalizing a divorce. To this day, I am not sure what I actually managed to tell her.

Similarly, I can only capture a small portion of what she says because you see my Suegrita is way cool and she uses a lot of slang. The kind of slang my numerous books on tapes don’t cover. Sometimes, it’s not even slang. She is linguistically creative my Suegrita, which is fabulous, unless I actually need to know what she is saying to me.

Suegra: Javi…. spanish spanish spanish… some word I don’t recognize… spanish, spanish.

Me to J: What was that word? J: I am not sure. Me: What do you mean you are not sure?! J: My mother makes up words. Me: I am screwed aren’t I. J: Pretty much, yes.

So this year, I will most definitely not be rocking Mexican Slang nor chock full of neologisms from my Suegra. Now where is my lanita as I seriously need a couple of caguamas.

This post was written for the fabulous Raising Multilingual Children Carnival hosted this month by Open Hearts, Open Mind. I’ll update the link once it’s up. Please check it out!

Pinning My Linguistic Hopes on More Travel.

Posted by Multilingual Mama

This post was written for June’s Raising Multilingual Children Carnival hosted this month by All Done Monkey. This month’s theme is Multilingualism and Travel. If you would like to participate, host or simply learn more about the carnival, please visit Piri -Piri Lexicon’s Carnival Page.

I haven’t been home in two years. Wait, that’s wrong. I haven’t been home in three years but I am not sure anymore what home really is. I haven’t seen my parents in two years. The last time we saw each other, they flew from New York, the city where I was born and raised, to meet us in France, where I grew up spending my summers. Two years ago, they met our second daughter for the first time. She was 10 months old.

Prior to the trip, I was brimming with anticipation as I was sure, once immersed in the language, that my daughter Pea would flick a switch and start speaking French fluently. I felt like I’d read about this a thousand times, children who understood a language simply needing some time in the country to make the linguistic leap to actually speaking.

I was so very disappointed when it didn’t happen. Truth is we weren’t there long enough. We were also surrounded by people who understood and could speak English and who were all too keen to do so despite my begging them not to. I was reminded once again that there are no quick fixes when it comes to multilingualism. I did console myself with the idea that she had been immersed in lots of lovely French culture and, in a bid to try and view the glass half full, wrote a post on the topic here.

One of the reasons we chose to move to the other side of the world was the idea that we could afford to send our kids to a French school. I knew from friends’ experiences that spots in French/English immersion programs at public schools in New York were nearly impossible to come by, and private schools in the US are utterly unaffordable for us mere mortals. At the time, my daughter was attending a local Singaporean school but, after that trip, I was more determined than ever to get both our girls into French or bilingual schools and our upcoming move from Singapore to Bangkok was going to make that a reality with a more affordable French Lycée and an amazing little French/English bilingual nursery called Acacia conveniently near our new digs.

The first year was pretty much everything that I’d hoped for despite some major bumps in the road that caused me no end of neuroses -oh how I need to learn to think long term and not panic at every short term setback. But I digress… English is still the dominant language in our house but the girls’ French is fluent and I know progress has been made when, despite being an ‘English day’ at school, Pea comes home and choses to speak to me in French. My wee one, little plum already happily switches back and forth. They both love their schools and it’s all been a great success.

So why am I pulling them out?

A year in and I’ve realized the choice is really between private schools or tickets home to see family so in the end, I am opting for the latter. I’ve often preached about sticking to your heritage languages but what exactly is the point of my kids speaking French and Spanish if they then can’t go see their Mexican and French extended family? And really, since el Jeffe works all the time and all our funds go to the French school, Spanish is barely hanging on in our household.

What I will lose in giving up their formal French education I hope to gain with the ability to take more trips to France and Mexico in order to deepen their cultural connection and truly live their languages. Right now the girls don’t really get why Spanish is important but I know once they spend a few months with Abuelita and meet their cousins, they will want to actively add this language to their linguistic arsenal, as will I.

And let’s face it, I really miss good tortillas and ceviche.

Puppets as Linguistic Catalysts

Posted by Multilingual Mama

What to do when your child won’t speak their minority language.

A word before we start. This post was written for the upcoming Raising Multilingual Children Carnival hosted by The Piri-Piri Lexicon. The fact that my last post was also for the carnival indicates that I am nothing if not consistent with failing miserably to post more often. The Carnival comes out the last Monday of each month. Please check it out!

When Pea started pre-K nursery in French, she understood every word but had seldom spoken anything other than English. Within a few months, she was chattering away and I was over the moon – especially given the large chunk of money I’d handed over to enroll her.

—break for a personal gripe:

Expat schools make the assumption that everyone has a company with deep pockets paying tuition fees so they demand ridiculous sign-up sums. We paid THB100,000 or nearly USD3,500 just to enroll her and when a few months later, we thought we had to leave the country, we were told no portion would be refundable, which proved a great incentive to find work in Thailand.

–End gripe.

Pea joined Petite Section (1^st year pre-K) at the end of February and only had a few months of class before they determined she could move into the bilingual pre-K the following year. I was a little apprehensive since they had previously insisted she would need to stay in the purely French track. But if the professionals thought she had progressed enough, then I would go with the flow.

I’d also heard a rumor that, ironically, the bilingual English/French class had an overall better French level than the full French class due to the number of Franco-Thai children whose maternal language was Thai.

One month into Moyenne Section (The second year of Pre-K) and Pea no longer wanted to speak any French at home. I felt like her language was receding and began to regret my decision. Instead of speaking French all the time at home, I compromised. We agreed to alternate days as she followed at school. She still wanted to respond to me in only in English. At first I lost my temper and insisted she repeat everything in French ’til I got great advice from her teachers. They told me to lay off and try not to stress about it as Pea would pick up on my frustration and it would only be detrimental in the end. Instead, I was to persist with my own French and she would eventually respond as well.

They were right. So you should be wondering what do Puppets have to do with any of this?

Well it turns out puppets act as great catalysts. You see your child likely knows that you can in fact speak or at least understand another language. Alternatively, perhaps they are just being spiteful little creatures —I’m hoping on the former but not discounting entirely the latter. The truth is, a really awesome cuddly puppet who ONLY speaks the minority language works wonders. Now I am not talking about those lame-o sock puppets -Lambchop except you sweetie you are the most awesome sock puppet in the world.

Lamb Chop, forever in my heart.

We are talking about unbelievably cute and lifelike —in a stuffed animal kind of way— creatures that even manage to ignite my own maternal feelings.

The Germans already know this and frequently use them in kindergarten for language teaching. My daughter’s amazing English teacher knew about this and brought back two puppets to Bangkok for Pea’s bilingual class.

Please meet Gloria – the fire-red English speaking dragon and wait for it… Jeanette, the apple-green frog. How much do I love that they chose a Frog for the french class!

Pea’s teachers decided to try out having the kids foster the puppets over the weekend. It was and remains a huge success – so successful in fact that they sign up sheet was filled up within the first day and they had to extend the program. This is when I discovered that I could get Pea to speak French constantly. My sweet girl didn’t want to leave Jeanette out.

Now that French is gaining momentum again in our household and armed with this new information, I am determined to find a puppet who only speaks Spanish. Here’s to hoping they have a nice stuffed Chihuahua…