This week, I was talking to Michael and Julia in English (he doesn't speak Portuguese, so the family language in English, obviously), and Julia told me to speak in Portuguese with her! Amazing. She is still making an effort to speak Portuguese. When she speaks in English, I rephrase her sentences in Portuguese so she can repeat them. She is still a little gringa though, with her strong English accent, mixing feminine/masculine words, and mixing verb tenses. But she promised me she will teach Portuguese to Nicholas!
It's interesting to see how much she understands what a language is. The concept of a language. I have no idea how old I was when I realized that there was something called language. However, as both my mum and aunt were English teachers, I suppose "the understanding that there is a language named English" was somehow present in our lives from early on.
Our expatriate family life is definitely an open mind in this sense. Beyond Portuguese, English and Oshiwambo, we have playdates with families who speak primarily Afrikaans and German as well, so her exposure to other languages is getting broader. On that note, recently she's been quite keen to learn Afrikaans words. I can't help her at all, but we ask her teacher for the correct pronunciation of some words. The word of the week is Dagbreek (daybreak/dawn). It's the name of a school we pass by everyday. I was always saying da-g-breek, but it turns out we should say darr-breek. So that's it, we are now learning together!
28 February 2011
03 February 2011
Raising gringos
It's been 7 months since I last posted here - what a shame. But a lot happened during this time, so I don't feel too bad. The biggest change in life is that now I'm a mother of 2 trilingual babies. Nicholas, our cute little bug, arrived on the 2nd of December. And a quick note here – I totally share Sarah’s relief about having a second child immersed in a bi/trilingual environment. Nicholas was already born into this adventure! So, I don't need to make a huge effort again to understand how it is going to be; what the hell OPOL means; which challenges we will face; which resources are/aren’t available; how creative and persistent we need to be.
On our trilingual baby #1 – I’m happy to say it seems Julia has turned the corner and is now a more active Portuguese speaker! As I mentioned before, although she understands everything in Portuguese, she had chosen English no matter who she was speaking to. However, my mother and aunt visited us in December and: (a) we were 3 people speaking Portuguese all day long; (b) they were more demanding with her to speak in Portuguese. The result is that all of a sudden she became really interested in her Portuguese DVDs, CDs, in learning nursery rhymes (not only listening but learning to sing along), etc. Even after their departure, she kept this way and is in fact communicating with me in Portuguese more often (probably 70% of the time). I’m really proud of her. We can see this is an effort, but she keeps trying. The most fascinating aspect is that she is clearly an English speaker speaking Portuguese.
The most obvious thing is for example of pragmatics, where the order of words appears the other way round:
• Where is my brown bear? / Cadê meu marrom urso? (In Portuguese, should be “urso marrom”, as generally adjectives come after nouns)
• It is not raining. / Está não chovendo. (should be “Não está chovendo”)
She also gets confused with verb conjugation (but probably native speakers do as well?). For example, she says “Eu te ama” (I love you – should be Eu te amo), mixing different conjugations (amo/ama) for different persons (I/she). Since I tell her both sentences: “Eu te amo” (I love you) and “Mamãe te ama” (Mummy loves you), she naturally gets confused. Likewise, she says “meu bolsa” (my bag), when it should be “minha bolsa” (minha is the feminine form of ‘mine’ and meu is the masculine form), and bag… for some reason… is feminine. I suppose this is a normal mistake for Portuguese speakers as well, to learn the gender of words, but of course if you are not a native speaker this is a more significant challenge. In her case, I hear Julia’s Portuguese acquisition as if she were in a point in between. She is not 100% immersed in a Portuguese environment, but has been exposed to the language since birth. The result is that she speaks totally as a gringa (a foreigner), as we would say in Brazil…
And then here comes my train of thoughts…
So she speaks as a gringa…
but she is not a gringa…
or is she?
How will it be when we move to Brazil, will she be considered Brazilian?
Will her friends tease her saying she is a gringa?
Surely she will overcome the grammar challenges. But if you think of bi/tri/multilingual kids as being not only exposed to more than one language but more than one culture...
Oh my!
Who could imagine that I would ever be a mother of 2 gringos?!
Me… an extremely proud Brazilian… mother of 2 gringos.
Life is definitely full of surprises!
On our trilingual baby #1 – I’m happy to say it seems Julia has turned the corner and is now a more active Portuguese speaker! As I mentioned before, although she understands everything in Portuguese, she had chosen English no matter who she was speaking to. However, my mother and aunt visited us in December and: (a) we were 3 people speaking Portuguese all day long; (b) they were more demanding with her to speak in Portuguese. The result is that all of a sudden she became really interested in her Portuguese DVDs, CDs, in learning nursery rhymes (not only listening but learning to sing along), etc. Even after their departure, she kept this way and is in fact communicating with me in Portuguese more often (probably 70% of the time). I’m really proud of her. We can see this is an effort, but she keeps trying. The most fascinating aspect is that she is clearly an English speaker speaking Portuguese.
The most obvious thing is for example of pragmatics, where the order of words appears the other way round:
• Where is my brown bear? / Cadê meu marrom urso? (In Portuguese, should be “urso marrom”, as generally adjectives come after nouns)
• It is not raining. / Está não chovendo. (should be “Não está chovendo”)
She also gets confused with verb conjugation (but probably native speakers do as well?). For example, she says “Eu te ama” (I love you – should be Eu te amo), mixing different conjugations (amo/ama) for different persons (I/she). Since I tell her both sentences: “Eu te amo” (I love you) and “Mamãe te ama” (Mummy loves you), she naturally gets confused. Likewise, she says “meu bolsa” (my bag), when it should be “minha bolsa” (minha is the feminine form of ‘mine’ and meu is the masculine form), and bag… for some reason… is feminine. I suppose this is a normal mistake for Portuguese speakers as well, to learn the gender of words, but of course if you are not a native speaker this is a more significant challenge. In her case, I hear Julia’s Portuguese acquisition as if she were in a point in between. She is not 100% immersed in a Portuguese environment, but has been exposed to the language since birth. The result is that she speaks totally as a gringa (a foreigner), as we would say in Brazil…
And then here comes my train of thoughts…
So she speaks as a gringa…
but she is not a gringa…
or is she?
How will it be when we move to Brazil, will she be considered Brazilian?
Will her friends tease her saying she is a gringa?
Surely she will overcome the grammar challenges. But if you think of bi/tri/multilingual kids as being not only exposed to more than one language but more than one culture...
Oh my!
Who could imagine that I would ever be a mother of 2 gringos?!
Me… an extremely proud Brazilian… mother of 2 gringos.
Life is definitely full of surprises!
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