Ok, so it's been another two months between posts, but hey, it was three between the last two so I'm actually getting better ;)
At the moment we're celebrating Christmas (Jul) at my parents' house and as ususal there is a grand mix of Norwegian and English in both spoken word and customs kept. We hung our 'julestrømper'/Christmas stockings on the night before Christmas Eve (because in Norway we do of course exchange gifts on Christmas Eve and not Christmas Day) and then we waited for Santa (aka 'nissen') to come fill them with sweets/'godteri', which he did since we had all been so good. :) On Christmas Eve we got dressed in our finest threads and went to church.
We then had dinner and after that... whaddyaknow, Santa showed up again! Because in Norway the man himself will come knocking on your door and invite himself into your living room to dole out the pressies :) The kids, my own three (Ben, Nic and Christi) plus my niece and nephew Linnea (3) and Marcus (9), out of which one and a half actually still believes in Santa (Ben (5) says he doesn't, but was extremely polite to Santa even so, just in case) were all very good. (Though Nic (9) who professes not to believe anymore hid behind the sofa...) They were all very handsomely rewarded indeed!!!
I don't quite know what to say about the language in general. As per ususal when we are visiting people we keep to Norwegian more than we do at home. There is still a good deal of English spoken here, especially as the children more often than not will instigate English conversations particularly when they have been away from school for a few days. I don't know whether they consciously miss speaking English or if it is in some way sub-conscious. It is normally Ben who is the quickest to ditch Norwegian, and he very rarely calls me 'mamma' anymore, but will rather go straight to 'mum' (perhaps as he knows that will get my attention quicker...). After him follows Nic, while Christi is pretty much on and off, but will talk at length to me in English, especially when we are on out own. I find myself very lucky in that all three of my kids are very willing to chat to me in English when none of them have been raised bilingual from birth. :-) I know there are people out there who struggle to get their children to reply in the non-native language, while mine seem to relish the fact that this is something we have in common.
I have also noticed that my nephew speaks a lot of English when he is around my kids, and he is really good at it too! What is even cooler is that my three year old niece speaks "English" when she's with us. She doesn't know many words but will make them up as she goes along, all in a flawless English accent. LOL I think she is quite influence by Ben, and have taken to calling her mother 'mum' too! She will probably be starting the same International School my kids attend in August 2012 and I'm very much looking forward to following her progress. Because there can be a squeeze to get in I've offered to tutor her a bit to improve her English before school starts in order to perhaps better her chanced of being admitted.
Now, as for the Spanish... Mine is getting along quite well but dragging the kids with me has been...well, a drag. I've not been very successful at all but because I'm still hoping that they will one day come around and actually want to become tri-lingual (to some degree) I won't make a giant fuss just yet. Instead I've decided to celebrate the small victories. Christi is still in Spanish Club at school. One lesson a week is surely better than none, and so what if she can only name a few colours and remember about three of the days of the week. Again, that is still better than nothing, right?! :) And Nic might not learn a lot of Spanish but he does remember a lot of what he has learnt. We were watching a show on Disney Channel the other day called Special Agent Oso and I asked Nic why he thought the agent was called Oso. Nic was sure it was cause he was a bear and in Spanish bear is 'oso'. That made me very happy. Small victory! Yay!
My own Spanish had flourished with the use of various iPhone apps, my flash cards in particular. I only wish I could find something that was as addicitve to the kids as those flash cards are to me. They've played a bit with the apps I have for kids on my phone but not enough to learn a great deal, and they never have to use it. I suppose the best bet is to go back to what we did during summer where breakfast was designated Spanish time. They all still know what 'que quieres' means and the difference between 'leche' and 'jugo'. As I am typing this I realise they remember because they had to actively understand it and use it and therefore that would definitely be the way proceed... It would be weird to start now because we're still at mum and dad's and it weird enough speaking English without me making us seem like complete nutters by mixing it up with Spanish as well :) They already find me very amusing with my Spanish apps and me listening to Spanish radio in the kitchen while cooking dinner. Jajaja :)(<- Spanish laughing cracks me up!LOL)
Wednesday, 28 December 2011
Sunday, 2 October 2011
Carro grande, carro pequeño :)
So how are we doing with our three languages?
This summer we spent 10 days in the UK. I was hoping the children would find opportunities to practice their English while we were there but as they always had their sibling to rely on there wasn’t much need for it. I’m not fussed about that because I know that they do have ample opportunity to use the language at school and with me. I do think it was a special experience for Ben who expressed surprise on discovering that “everyone in England speaks English!” LOL
In my last post I wrote quite a bit about our plans for learning Spanish. Over summer it became a bit difficult to keep up to be honest. The books I got them stayed unread on the shelf as both Ben and Nic felt it took too long to read them in both English and Spanish, and reading them just in Spanish meant they wouldn’t understand anything. The few words we did practice, usually at breakfast, did stick though. Ben came home from school the other day and proudly told me that he had told the kids in his class what agua means. :-) I asked him how it came up and he told me that he’d said he was “going to drink some agua”. Code switching already! Normally code switching could pose a problem but right here it just shows me that; a) he retains the Spanish he’s learnt and, b) he’s proud to show off his language skills, which to me are signs that he is ready to learn more.
Ben’s little story prompted Nic to start a spontaneous game of carro grande, carro pequeño on the ride home, sorting all the passing cars into big cars or small cars, thereby showing the same signs I see in Ben. When we came home there was a digger outside our house and because we didn’t know what it was called we had to look it up so we could sort it together with the cars. It turns out it was an excavadora. And just like that we had all learnt a new word!
This experience made me decide to make more of an effort with the Spanish again, and I’ve been spending the last few days looking for more resources. After hearing so much about Speekee I decided to sign up for the 2 week trial yesterday. I watched it first and didn’t really like it. I don’t like the way Speekee looks, I think the production looks annoyingly cheap and I sort of hate the singing. BUT, and as you can tell it is a bit but, I didn’t want to discard it without letting a representative of the target audience review it first, so I asked Ben (5) if he would mind watching it. He did and he LOVED it! :-) He has asked me two or three times since yesterday if he could watch it again, so I guess the people behind the show know their audience.
I’m also very lucky in that I have made a friend online who has been so kind as to provide me with some everyday expressions I can use with the kids. I plan to keep up with my initial idea of doing Spanish at breakfast and while we, before summer, were only throwing in the odd word like leche or jugo, I’m now asking them in Spanish what they would like to eat. They don’t have to answer back in Spanish though they do when they know the words. If I say quieres leche o jugo? they’ll answer with leche or jugo, but if I say que quieres para desayunar they might just answer ‘the same as yesterday’. Nic is normally the one who will try the hardest to answer back in whatever language I throw at him. He’ll go tostada…with Nugatti!
In addition to the Spanish we do at home Christi is now going to Spanish Club at school for one lesson a week. It’s not much but I think it’s still good practice for next year. She has also told me that the teacher only speaks Spanish to them, which I think is terrific. So far they have covered talking a bit about themselves, the colours and Spain. Last weekend one of Christi’s friends came hiking with us. She is in middle school and has to decide whether to study Spanish, French or German. Christi spent most of the trip teaching her friend Spanish words and phrases, like me llamo … and soy de Noruega. Needless to say this was good practice for both Christi and her friend.
Ok, I could ramble on forever about all this but I might save some for the next post.
Hasta pronto :-)
This summer we spent 10 days in the UK. I was hoping the children would find opportunities to practice their English while we were there but as they always had their sibling to rely on there wasn’t much need for it. I’m not fussed about that because I know that they do have ample opportunity to use the language at school and with me. I do think it was a special experience for Ben who expressed surprise on discovering that “everyone in England speaks English!” LOL
In my last post I wrote quite a bit about our plans for learning Spanish. Over summer it became a bit difficult to keep up to be honest. The books I got them stayed unread on the shelf as both Ben and Nic felt it took too long to read them in both English and Spanish, and reading them just in Spanish meant they wouldn’t understand anything. The few words we did practice, usually at breakfast, did stick though. Ben came home from school the other day and proudly told me that he had told the kids in his class what agua means. :-) I asked him how it came up and he told me that he’d said he was “going to drink some agua”. Code switching already! Normally code switching could pose a problem but right here it just shows me that; a) he retains the Spanish he’s learnt and, b) he’s proud to show off his language skills, which to me are signs that he is ready to learn more.
Ben’s little story prompted Nic to start a spontaneous game of carro grande, carro pequeño on the ride home, sorting all the passing cars into big cars or small cars, thereby showing the same signs I see in Ben. When we came home there was a digger outside our house and because we didn’t know what it was called we had to look it up so we could sort it together with the cars. It turns out it was an excavadora. And just like that we had all learnt a new word!
This experience made me decide to make more of an effort with the Spanish again, and I’ve been spending the last few days looking for more resources. After hearing so much about Speekee I decided to sign up for the 2 week trial yesterday. I watched it first and didn’t really like it. I don’t like the way Speekee looks, I think the production looks annoyingly cheap and I sort of hate the singing. BUT, and as you can tell it is a bit but, I didn’t want to discard it without letting a representative of the target audience review it first, so I asked Ben (5) if he would mind watching it. He did and he LOVED it! :-) He has asked me two or three times since yesterday if he could watch it again, so I guess the people behind the show know their audience.
I’m also very lucky in that I have made a friend online who has been so kind as to provide me with some everyday expressions I can use with the kids. I plan to keep up with my initial idea of doing Spanish at breakfast and while we, before summer, were only throwing in the odd word like leche or jugo, I’m now asking them in Spanish what they would like to eat. They don’t have to answer back in Spanish though they do when they know the words. If I say quieres leche o jugo? they’ll answer with leche or jugo, but if I say que quieres para desayunar they might just answer ‘the same as yesterday’. Nic is normally the one who will try the hardest to answer back in whatever language I throw at him. He’ll go tostada…with Nugatti!
In addition to the Spanish we do at home Christi is now going to Spanish Club at school for one lesson a week. It’s not much but I think it’s still good practice for next year. She has also told me that the teacher only speaks Spanish to them, which I think is terrific. So far they have covered talking a bit about themselves, the colours and Spain. Last weekend one of Christi’s friends came hiking with us. She is in middle school and has to decide whether to study Spanish, French or German. Christi spent most of the trip teaching her friend Spanish words and phrases, like me llamo … and soy de Noruega. Needless to say this was good practice for both Christi and her friend.
Ok, I could ramble on forever about all this but I might save some for the next post.
Hasta pronto :-)
Saturday, 9 July 2011
Reading
Last week I bought two new books for Nicholas, which Christi read first and loved and I'm sure Ben will come to enjoy too eventually. The books about Mr Gum are absolutely hysterical. I had intended for him to read them alone but I enjoyed them so much that I ended up reading (most of) them to him.
Today I went back to the book store to find book 3 and ended up getting book 5 too (unfortunately they didn't have book 4). On the way there we swung by the library to look for some English - Spanish childrens books as well.
One of the books we took out was Floppy's friends/Los amigos de Floppy. I wanted to read it to Ben but he insisted on English only so I ended up reading the Spanish bits on my own. :-) Nic and I read My Daddy is a giant/Mi Papá es un gigante together; he read the English part and I read the Spanish one. He would stop every so often to compare the words and at the end he went 'aha, so corazón is heart?!'. That kind of thing is exactly what I was hoping for. :-)
As a bonus we found two additional Mr Gum books at the library too, so now we have enough to tide us over for the next week.
Thursday, 7 July 2011
Today has been a very good bilingual day for us, or even trilingual :)
I started out 100% English, much helped by the fact that my husband left for work today, which meant that there is no-one in the house I feel like I have to speak Norwegian to. I’m home ‘alone’ with just the It boys now as Christi is staying at Mormor and Morfar (maternal grandparents) for a few weeks.
Ben will answer me in English about 50% of the time when I speak English to him, while Nic will probably do it 75% of the time. Nic will often slide into Norwegian mid-sentence if he is struggling to say something, while Ben will either start out in Norwegian to begin with or just go Norwenglish all the way, borrowing Norwegian words where he lacks the English ones. LOL It was mostly for Ben’s grammar’s sake that I started this project although I’m sure Nic’s vocabulary will benefit from it too.
Today I realised Ben uses ‘to do’ a lot. If I say “I saw you playing with Nic” he’ll respond “I did see you too”. Or (me:) “Have you found your socks?” – (B:) “I did find them”. It seems to me like he does this simply because he’s not sure how to conjugate the verbs. In Norwegian he’d say “I saw you” and “I found them” but he hates being wrong and by applying ‘to do’ he can use the verb in the form he knows is correct. Of course this also shows that he knows how to use, as well as conjugate the auxiliary verb, which to me is really quite impressive, so I’m not worried. I just repeat his answer the easier way to sort of remind him that there are several ways of saying the same thing.
The reason I said the day ended up trilingual is that we started the morning by learning a new Spanish word. After visiting Italy in April, and well before I decided to study Spanish, I started calling apple juice ‘succo di mele’ just because I thought it sounded fun. Now the time had come to find the Spanish word for it. I found two words for juice; zumo (used mainly in España) and jugo (basically used everywhere else in the Spanish speaking world). I decided on which to use by the ‘most hits on Google’ method and landed on jugo de manzana as word of the day.
We also ended up speaking quite a bit of Norwegian later on as friends of the kids came by, some of whom aren’t too comfortable speaking English yet.
We also went to the lakes for a swim as the weather was gorgeous!
I started out 100% English, much helped by the fact that my husband left for work today, which meant that there is no-one in the house I feel like I have to speak Norwegian to. I’m home ‘alone’ with just the It boys now as Christi is staying at Mormor and Morfar (maternal grandparents) for a few weeks.
Ben will answer me in English about 50% of the time when I speak English to him, while Nic will probably do it 75% of the time. Nic will often slide into Norwegian mid-sentence if he is struggling to say something, while Ben will either start out in Norwegian to begin with or just go Norwenglish all the way, borrowing Norwegian words where he lacks the English ones. LOL It was mostly for Ben’s grammar’s sake that I started this project although I’m sure Nic’s vocabulary will benefit from it too.
Today I realised Ben uses ‘to do’ a lot. If I say “I saw you playing with Nic” he’ll respond “I did see you too”. Or (me:) “Have you found your socks?” – (B:) “I did find them”. It seems to me like he does this simply because he’s not sure how to conjugate the verbs. In Norwegian he’d say “I saw you” and “I found them” but he hates being wrong and by applying ‘to do’ he can use the verb in the form he knows is correct. Of course this also shows that he knows how to use, as well as conjugate the auxiliary verb, which to me is really quite impressive, so I’m not worried. I just repeat his answer the easier way to sort of remind him that there are several ways of saying the same thing.
The reason I said the day ended up trilingual is that we started the morning by learning a new Spanish word. After visiting Italy in April, and well before I decided to study Spanish, I started calling apple juice ‘succo di mele’ just because I thought it sounded fun. Now the time had come to find the Spanish word for it. I found two words for juice; zumo (used mainly in España) and jugo (basically used everywhere else in the Spanish speaking world). I decided on which to use by the ‘most hits on Google’ method and landed on jugo de manzana as word of the day.
We also ended up speaking quite a bit of Norwegian later on as friends of the kids came by, some of whom aren’t too comfortable speaking English yet.
We also went to the lakes for a swim as the weather was gorgeous!
Tuesday, 5 July 2011
Español
The apparent success of my endeavours to raise my children bilingually may have made me greedy, or maybe greedy isn't the right word. I don't know. All I know is I really love learning new languages and my kids seem to be the same way. .
As for Spanish we are now about two weeks into it and some of us are more motivated than others. It was my idea so I am probably the most enthusiastic out of the four of us (my husband is not participating).
I'm studying the grown-up way, most of the time. I got hold of a Pimsleur course that I listen to on my phone. The course I have is in Latin American Spanish and though I appreciate the lack of lisping the talk of pesos and dollares is getting a bit annoying for this European.
In addition I have started watching Mi Vida Loca (on BBC's website). It is very good! I'm up to episodio 5 now. I am trying to get Christi (12) to watch this with me because I believe she would get more out of this than by doing the standard audio course, simply because the audio course is boring.
For Ben (5) I have gotten some Dora the explorer episodes in English/Spanish. In the Norwegian version Dora speaks Norwegian with English mixed in but now that Ben understands English watching the original is a great introduction to Spanish. Just like when he started learning learning English he is very eager to show me how much he knows. It makes me really proud too!
I have also found some great language apps for my iPhone :) For myself; the MosaLingua SRS (flashcards) which helps me build vocabulary, and for the kids; 123 color a colouring in app teaching the kids the names of the colour and the numbers (as well as the letters but I am reluctant to let Ben use the latter, because he has only just started learning the names of the letters in English and Norwegian, and I don't want him to get confused) and Play2learn Spanish - a great vocab builder for children with pictures and the option to listen to either European Spanish or Latin American Spanish pronunciation.
Finally, I ordered some books. I love books! I got the Easy Spanish Reader for myself. It consists of three simple, through progressively more complex texts in Spanish and numerous exercises after each chapter. I only got it yesterday and I really like it! I am chuffed to bits that I know so much after only two weeks worth of studying that I was able to read the first 10 chapters without much effort at all!
For the boys I got three bilingual English/Spanish books, Puss in boots, Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks. They may be too childish for Nic (9) but I still think he'll like them because he loves being read to and we often read books together, taking turns reading aloud. I ordered them last week so I hope they arrive before the weekend.
As for Spanish we are now about two weeks into it and some of us are more motivated than others. It was my idea so I am probably the most enthusiastic out of the four of us (my husband is not participating).
I'm studying the grown-up way, most of the time. I got hold of a Pimsleur course that I listen to on my phone. The course I have is in Latin American Spanish and though I appreciate the lack of lisping the talk of pesos and dollares is getting a bit annoying for this European.
In addition I have started watching Mi Vida Loca (on BBC's website). It is very good! I'm up to episodio 5 now. I am trying to get Christi (12) to watch this with me because I believe she would get more out of this than by doing the standard audio course, simply because the audio course is boring.
For Ben (5) I have gotten some Dora the explorer episodes in English/Spanish. In the Norwegian version Dora speaks Norwegian with English mixed in but now that Ben understands English watching the original is a great introduction to Spanish. Just like when he started learning learning English he is very eager to show me how much he knows. It makes me really proud too!
I have also found some great language apps for my iPhone :) For myself; the MosaLingua SRS (flashcards) which helps me build vocabulary, and for the kids; 123 color a colouring in app teaching the kids the names of the colour and the numbers (as well as the letters but I am reluctant to let Ben use the latter, because he has only just started learning the names of the letters in English and Norwegian, and I don't want him to get confused) and Play2learn Spanish - a great vocab builder for children with pictures and the option to listen to either European Spanish or Latin American Spanish pronunciation.
Finally, I ordered some books. I love books! I got the Easy Spanish Reader for myself. It consists of three simple, through progressively more complex texts in Spanish and numerous exercises after each chapter. I only got it yesterday and I really like it! I am chuffed to bits that I know so much after only two weeks worth of studying that I was able to read the first 10 chapters without much effort at all!
For the boys I got three bilingual English/Spanish books, Puss in boots, Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks. They may be too childish for Nic (9) but I still think he'll like them because he loves being read to and we often read books together, taking turns reading aloud. I ordered them last week so I hope they arrive before the weekend.
And thus it began...
My name is Linda and I am an anglophile. There, I've said it. I have always been in love with the English language and the culture, and so it was that I decided, many moons ago, that when I had kids I would raise them to be bilinguals (Norwegian/English).
When I had my first child, Christiania who's now almost 12, I realised that speaking to your baby in a foreign language, no matter how much you love that language, just feels very awkward. I gave up within a week...maybe half a week even. Instead I ended up reading to her in English and letting her watch English children's shows (God bless BBC). Although she never showed any signs of even passive knowledge of the language I like to believe that her little brain got so used to the sounds of English that when I finally enrolled her in Reception Class at our local international(/immersion) school she took to the language like a duck to water.
When Christi was 6 years old we moved to York, England, for a year. Having spent two years in English school made for a smooth transition and she started Y2 at a regular school in England without any problems. Her brother Nicholas who was 3 had a rougher time of it when he was sent to nursery without knowing the language at all. I had read to him in English as well but nothing could really have prepared him for the shock of having to spend 6 hours a day in a place where no-one understands what you're saying and vice versa. It is true what they say though, nothing speeds up the process of learning a language like the need for it. He understood almost everything people said to him after only two months but it took him a few more to start speaking. When we left for Norway the following summer he insisted in a flawless British accent that he was 'an English boy now'. LOL.
Since we returned both Christi and Nic have attended the local international school, and last Autumn our youngest, Benjamin, started too. Two weeks ago he finished his first year and like the others he has built an impressive vocabulary over the past 10 months. As with Nic and Christi I have read books to him and made him watch English tv. Well, I haven't had to make him do the latter really because his older siblings tend to decide what to watch and they often choose to watch Disney Channel with the audio switched to English, having become 'purists' (aka haters of dubbed shows) like their Mum. In addition to the books and the tv the amount of English spoken around the house has increased over the years simply because it's the natural language to use when discussing homework and school assignments with Christi and Nic. I suspect Ben has been pining to actually learn so he could get in on the fun or at the very least find out what we were talking about. He is to date the only one who has insisted on using English at home of his own accord from day one. Even when he only knew a few words he would use those instead of their Norwegian counterparts when talking to us, and what's more he started calling us Mummy and Daddy.
As you can tell from this I have not always been a non-native in the OPOL sense of the word. This is a very recent thing. I only decided when school was out for the summer that I would try it over the holidays to keep Ben's English alive and kicking 'til Autumn and perhaps to strengthen his grammar a bit. His vocabulary is good but he stills tend to use Norwegian grammar structure.
Right now I feel very comfortable doing the OPOL thing, speaking English most of the time (maybe 90%) and I can see myself keeping it up for longer than two months if I feel there is a need for it.
Also, if all goes well, I hope to introduce them to a third language, providing I can manage to get a basic grasp on it myself, namely Spanish. Don't worry though, I have no plans of creating trilinguals while I'm at it, just to help lay the foundation for learning a language they will have to study at school in the future. But this is really a story for another day ;-)
When I had my first child, Christiania who's now almost 12, I realised that speaking to your baby in a foreign language, no matter how much you love that language, just feels very awkward. I gave up within a week...maybe half a week even. Instead I ended up reading to her in English and letting her watch English children's shows (God bless BBC). Although she never showed any signs of even passive knowledge of the language I like to believe that her little brain got so used to the sounds of English that when I finally enrolled her in Reception Class at our local international(/immersion) school she took to the language like a duck to water.
When Christi was 6 years old we moved to York, England, for a year. Having spent two years in English school made for a smooth transition and she started Y2 at a regular school in England without any problems. Her brother Nicholas who was 3 had a rougher time of it when he was sent to nursery without knowing the language at all. I had read to him in English as well but nothing could really have prepared him for the shock of having to spend 6 hours a day in a place where no-one understands what you're saying and vice versa. It is true what they say though, nothing speeds up the process of learning a language like the need for it. He understood almost everything people said to him after only two months but it took him a few more to start speaking. When we left for Norway the following summer he insisted in a flawless British accent that he was 'an English boy now'. LOL.
Since we returned both Christi and Nic have attended the local international school, and last Autumn our youngest, Benjamin, started too. Two weeks ago he finished his first year and like the others he has built an impressive vocabulary over the past 10 months. As with Nic and Christi I have read books to him and made him watch English tv. Well, I haven't had to make him do the latter really because his older siblings tend to decide what to watch and they often choose to watch Disney Channel with the audio switched to English, having become 'purists' (aka haters of dubbed shows) like their Mum. In addition to the books and the tv the amount of English spoken around the house has increased over the years simply because it's the natural language to use when discussing homework and school assignments with Christi and Nic. I suspect Ben has been pining to actually learn so he could get in on the fun or at the very least find out what we were talking about. He is to date the only one who has insisted on using English at home of his own accord from day one. Even when he only knew a few words he would use those instead of their Norwegian counterparts when talking to us, and what's more he started calling us Mummy and Daddy.
As you can tell from this I have not always been a non-native in the OPOL sense of the word. This is a very recent thing. I only decided when school was out for the summer that I would try it over the holidays to keep Ben's English alive and kicking 'til Autumn and perhaps to strengthen his grammar a bit. His vocabulary is good but he stills tend to use Norwegian grammar structure.
Right now I feel very comfortable doing the OPOL thing, speaking English most of the time (maybe 90%) and I can see myself keeping it up for longer than two months if I feel there is a need for it.
Also, if all goes well, I hope to introduce them to a third language, providing I can manage to get a basic grasp on it myself, namely Spanish. Don't worry though, I have no plans of creating trilinguals while I'm at it, just to help lay the foundation for learning a language they will have to study at school in the future. But this is really a story for another day ;-)
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