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.

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!

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.

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 ;-)