We'll talk pretty one day

I seem to have been unclear in my post below about Small Boy's current preference for Swiss over English; I think this sentence is the culprit: "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."

R and I do take a one-parent/one-language approach; we're quite strict about it, actually*. I speak exclusively English with Small Boy in private and in public, among English speakers and in front of people - including my in-laws - who don't understand English; R speaks Dialekt with him in Switzerland, Spain, and when we visit my family in the US. But Small Boy really only started speaking in April, and started using sentences only in June. If he speaks to me in Swiss I respond - but in English. That's what I meant by a Swiss-English combo. When he says "Mama! Look! Enteli!" I say, "Ducks? Really? Wow!" If he asks me for Brot, I'll say "You want a piece of bread? Okay. Here's some bread" but I am not prepared, at this point, to insist that he address me in English in the first place, nor do I think it's a good idea to pretend I don't understand him and wait for the word "bread." He knows perfectly well I understand Dialket and German and that I speak German with other people.

I've always assumed that we would have a "speak to Mom in English and Dad in Swiss" rule, and certainly a "respond to people in the language in which you're addressed" rule (that's just common courtesy, really), but I don't think it's fair to insist on that yet, not during this delicate stage when Small Boy is still naming his world, still getting his first taste of the wonder and power of words. His comprehension of both languages is astounding; speaking more English will come (I have to believe that). When he's older, when I think he's ready, I'll start insisting, but I don't think he's there yet. If there is one thing I understand about my son - and some days it feels like there is only one thing I understand about my son- it's that he's got his own sense of timing about these things.

I won't say it's not, as Jody remarked in comments, bittersweet. Not a bit odd to hear the utter Swissness with which he pronouces Milch. But it's a delicate thing. To take a language to heart - that's a profoundly intimate choice. It says something meaningful about how Small Boy sees himself and his place in the world and I need to respect that even while finding a way to pass on my gift to him, my mother-tongue. And not just any mother-tongue but the mother-tongue of Shakespeare and of Steinbeck and of Styron. The language of Martin Luther King's dreams. Of Willa Cather's pioneers and of Rebecca West's lambs and falcolns. I carry lightly in my hands the airy pleasure and the grave burden of passing on this heritage to my Small Boy. It's like handing him soap bubbles. If I push them on him, they pop. But if I pass them on gently, one day he'll float away on these words, words, words.

* I do use a handful of Swiss and/or German words for food. There doesn't seem to be a point to translating Spätzli, for example, even if a good translation were available (I don't consider Spätzli noodle-like); and to insist on croissant over Gipfeli strikes me as a bit absurd.