Swiss Boy
Small Boy shows a marked preference for speaking Dialekt over English. (Yes, we've gone from "is this child ever going to talk" to having a distinct language preference over the course of a summer. Oh, and people coment on what a total chatterbox he is.) I've got a few different theories on this, ranging from gender identification (Dada speaks Dialekt, Mama speaks English) to picking the easier language. I think Dialekt is a very forgiving language; the grammar is more basic than English or High German and the pronunciation is round and muffled and the endings of words are commonly lopped off. For example in English to say "man" you really need to pronounce the final N; the German "Mann" also ends with a hard N; in Dialekt one just says "Ma." "Shopping" in German is "einkaufen" (pronounced sort of like "eye-n-cow-fen") but in Dialekt you can just say "iekaufe" (pronounced sort of like "ee-cow-fa"). (I have no idea how to spell in Dialekt - and anyway, the rules there are kind of loosey-goosey.) He hears a lot of Dialekt, from R and the grandparents and the Tagesmütter, but given the total number of hours he spends with me, I'm sometimes surprised that he doesn't show a bias for English. They call it the mother-tongue for a reason, you know.
And yet he appears to identify with Dialket. Even when we're home alone, just the two of us, he might ask me for something in Dialekt. The other day I made him chicken nuggets for lunch, and I asked him - in English, I only speak to Small Boy in English* - if he would like a honey-mustard sauce for dipping,** and he looked up and said "Oooh, ja, merci! Das ist ganz liebe!" ("Oh, yes thanks! That's really nice!"). I almost always understand him, so there's rarely a situation where I can't answer his question or grant (or deny) his request or respond to his excitement over the latest doggie, bird or tractor to cross his path. (And that's really my ultimate theory on why he speaks so much Dialekt: everybody in his life understands Dialekt, but his grandparents don't understand English. If he asks for oppis zum esse no matter where he is, he'll get something to eat; if he asks for something to eat at The Farm he'll get confusion.) Usually we just go through our day bantering back and forth in this Swiss-English combo; I'm used to it; it's just the thing we do.
But every now and then I can taste the beginning of something Mausi wrote about in the context of expat parenting - I can't seem to find the post now, so I think it might have been in a comments thread, and I'm going to paraphrase here and my apologies if I got the sense wrong. Mausi once said that for her the big negative to expat parenting was that no matter how much English she spoke with her boys and now matter how many vacations to Canada they took, her kids would never be Canadian the way she's Canadian, the way you're Canadian if you grow up there. Culturally, you really have to be there to get it, to really get it. I think that's true, that you only really get the culture if you absorb it day in and out in your daily life, through growing up and sharing country-specific events and news and ways of looking at the world, though the movies and your friends and the pop-culture all around you. Take this post: every US-American of a certain age totally gets it, the rest of you are probably like "Huh?" If you grow up in Germany your touchstones are more likely to be German than Canadian no matter how many Canada Days you celebrate with your mom. And if you grow up in Switzerland...
Small Boy is probably going to be more Swiss than American. Certainly once he starts going to school - the way things stand now we plan on sending him to Swiss public school - the Swiss influences will really kick in. Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with that (I married the Swiss guy, after all) but it's odd sometimes to have this face - this face that so strongly resembles my side of the family - look up at me at night and beg "Mama blieb do! Mama blieb do!" ("Mama stay here! Mama stay here!"). In the dark infertile days I hung on to what I thought it would feel like to hear my child say "I love you." It never occurred to me that he might say "I ha di gärn."
Love is love, but sometimes I want the words I grew up with. Sometimes I want the Small Boy to say the things I want to hear. I'll always let him choose, I would never force a language upon him or set one above the other. I'll always let him make that choice for himself.
But sometimes I want him to choose me.
* Although sometimes if I'm saying something to Small Boy that I think a non-English speaker also needs to understand (say, I want a parent at the playground to know that I'm addressing some behavior of Small Boy's) I'll say it in English and then repeat it briefly in German.
** Speaking of honey-mustard sauce, has anybody noticed that when you mix honey and mustard the resulting sauce is thinner than either of the individual ingredients? Any kitchen chemists want to explain how that works?
Labels: about a boy, bilingual baby, the expat files
8 Comments:
I think that would (will?) be hard for me. I remember when my boyfriend's cousin's American wife told me about the time her children found out that they were 'foreign' because their Mom was American and they cried. They refused to speak English and of course at that special age that requires more than anything that you fit it, I can see that they wouldn't want to be singled out for that. I met another American woman at a weddind and her son spoke very good English but the daughter very little and was shocked how that could happen. I guess the place has more influence than any one person - for something that is gained, something else is lost in a multicultural family.
Mausi is very strict with her boys about only speaking English to her and she only speaks English to them. It appears to have worked well for them, so perhaps that's an approach you might consider once he starts school and the preference for Dialekt grows even more.
Oh yes, I am VERY strict. :-) :-)
I don't remember when I made that "being a Canadian" comment either, but I do vaguely recall it and I still feel the same way. Language isn't all there is to culture, but it's part of what I'm able to give my kids living here so we stick with it. I want them to know how important it is to me.
Of course it's entirely your choice, but if you want the little guy to speak English to you, you need to speak English back to him even if he is totally adorable and you understand everything he's saying in Dialekt. I found translating what my kids said to me in German and parroting it back to them in English or saying things like "Yes, that's how Papa/Oma/Tante Heidi says it, but how does Mummy say it?" or even "Would you like a cookie? How do you ask Mummy for it?" were really good in getting them to stay on track. After a while they get it straightened out as to who speaks what and can change back and forth at lightning speed. When we were all together, say at teh dinner table we sometimes played the "Mummy says/Papa says" game where they'd shout out no/nein, banana/Banane etc. I also spoke (and still speak) English only to them in public (ignoring the stares!) and translated for others as necessary.
Having said all that, the "Oooh, ja merci! Das ist ganz liebe!" is just SO darn cute!
I so very rarely cry when I read something, anything, and yet "In the dark infertile days I hung on to what I thought it would feel like to hear my child say "I love you." It never occurred to me that he might say "I ha di gärn" made me instantly choke up.
If I were in your situation I'd take Christina's advice. And also marvel at the cleverness of kids.
It's something we've got to look forward to. Thanks for sharing your experiences on raising a bilingual baby; they're very insightful.
My main concern is accents. I don't care if A has got a crappy Polish accent, but I know (in my own snobbish way) that his life will be easier with a good (i.e. non-Polish) English accent. So, I want N to speak to him as much as possible. As A will probably grow up in Poland, surrounded by Poles and his Polish-speaking mother, he'll probably identify more with Poland. That's sort of fine with me. Just as long as he's got a nice English accent.
My priorities are skewed, aren't they?
That would be bittersweet for me, too.
We have expat friends living here who only speak to their children in their native language, even in front of us (unless it's a group conversation). I find it very awkward, but the children of course speak perfect English to us, and the mother wants her children to sing the lullabies and say the I-love-yous in the language that she knows in her heart, and bones.
Great post!
I agree with J and Christina about the importance of consistency and following the "one parent / one language" policy.
S and B are now 7 and 5. And they've both gone through phases in which their English was rusty or they just didn't want to speak it. But eventually they either just pulled out of it on their own or gravitated back after being immersed in English when my parents come to visit.
Sometimes it also bothers me to realize that, although they speak fluent English, they will never sound completely American. And that by not living in the States they will miss a lot of the cultural cues that the rest of their generation gets through television shows or pop culture. They will probably never truly "fit in" there.
On the other hand they have a heightened sensitivity for other cultures and are flexible and diplomatic, which is a major plus!
I so envy Small Boy and his ability to speak / understand three languages without ever having to memorize a vocabulary list or diagram a sentence! What a gift!
It's also great to hear that he's made so much progress this summer! I look forward to following along in your blog and seeing how his language preferences develop further...
Michelle - I figure Small Boy will go back and forth at different ages about wanting and not wanting to speak English. As long as he learns it.
J and Christina - I do only speak English with Small Boy, in public and in private (with the exception of a handful of words, generally food related, that don't really translate. Spaetzli, for example). When he says "Mama, look! Enteli!" I say "Ducks? Really? Where?" Ultimately I've always assumed we would have a "respond in the language you're addressed in" rule, but since Small Boy only started using sentences in June I don't think it's fair to impose that on him yet. If he asks me for Brot, I'm going to give him a piece of bread while saying "Sure, you can have a piece of bread." I'm slowly figuring out that Small Boy takes his own time on a new skill, and when he gets it it's gangbusters. But when I think he's grasped language differentiation I am going to expect him to differentiate. But I don't want to push that too soon.
Kinuk - Christina (Mausi) is my go-to blog on bilingual kids. Most of the Swiss-American kids I know sound very Swiss when they speak Swiss and very American when they speak English. I think kids are really good at picking up their parents' accents.
Jody - I sometimes feel uncomfortable speaking English to Alex at his grandparents', because they don't understand it, but R and I are quite strict about the one-parent/one-language approach. It's a great gift we can give him even when it is awkward.
Betsy - yeah, apects of US culture will always be missing. All the vacations in the world just won't be the same. I'm still figuring out what things are the most critical to pass on.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home