dolfinho

We have just spent 3 weeks in Australia and Julia's vocabulary and control of English has expanded so much! She spent most of her time with her cousins (4 and 7 yo) and of course she tried to copy everything they did or said. "Excuse me", "don't!" and "nothing" were quickly introduced to her by them. She is now more emphatic with "please" (when she really wants something that one is not giving her). Australian animals are now mentioned daily: kookaburras, platypus and cockatoos. Dolphins, however, comes mixed with Portuguese (golfinho). She says "dolfinho".

Interestingly, she spoke quite a lot of Portuguese with me when we were there (sentences normally mixed with English). She only spoke in English with me when she didn't know the word in Portuguese. She didn't speak Portuguese with anyone else, but likewise sometimes could say a word in Portuguese that she still didn't know in English (and once she learnt it, she would swap to English). However this is pretty much the same reality here in Namibia, as I'm the only one speaking Portuguese. I'm curious to see how it will be when we go to Brazil in February.

When formulating sentences in Portuguese, she normally mixes both languages - particularly if she wants something. Most of the time she says "I want" in English and the rest might come in Portuguese (if she is speaking with me). Sometimes she says "Eu quero" (= I want), but not as a rule. She will tell me "I want to sentar aqui", and if I don't address it soon, she will turn to Mike and say "I want to sit down here". My guess is that there are 2 reasons for her difficulty with formulating sentences in Portuguese: it is the minority language and words can be very long. And oh lord, she is only 2 years and 2 months, what else would I want? :-) I'm a proud mother.

On a final note, many people in Australia were really amazed with the fact that Julia is learning 3 languages (and is already quite functional in all of them). Australia is a geographically isolated country and bilinguism/multilinguism (and the multi-cultural family) is something relatively new. Inevitably, this reality seems to be changing. We spent a couple of days in a caravan park on the beach where I saw 2 little girls (+- 8 yo) teasing a third one because she didn't know how to count up to 10 in Italian. They were doing it out loud and telling the poor girl that "she should know how important it is to know a second language".