The monolingual family problem

In our own little pleasant bubble at home being bilingual, and learning a third language, isn’t a problem. Within the family we have reached an agreement without really ever discussing it, that speaking Norwegian and English works for us. We don’t have a strict OPOL deal, seeing as none of us are native speakers, although I speak a lot of English with the kids and DH speaks mainly Norwegian but will also speak some English when it feels natural. In fact whenever someone speaks English around him he tends to just flip over without thinking about it. In our world there is nothing wrong with that. In fact it is normal. If no-one ever spoke a different language it would seem strange.

In addition to our two main languages there is now also Spanish. We are still at a stage where it is more of a hobby. We are learning together. I will admit that the whole thing was my idea, and still it is I who is the most motivated and who is racing ahead. Still, I meant to share this with the children in particular, and I didn’t even (wrong as it may be) ask my husband what he thought of it. He just came home from work to a house full of Spanish labels and a wife who would ask his children what they wanted for breakfast in Spanish. He didn’t make a fuss. Maybe he thought it would blow over. Maybe he was genuinely interested to see where this would take us. He did make it clear, however, that he had no intention of learning Spanish. I said fine. A month later I asked him a few questions:

Me: How do you say kitchen in Spanish?
Him: Cocina
Me: And living room?
Him: Sala. (pause) Taza is toilet because I’m always staring at that label. Is lavabo soap or sink?
Me: Sink… Soap is jabón.
Him: Oh, I see. It’s just the label was next to the soap and I thought the drawing on it was a soap dispenser.

So much for not learning Spanish! And apparently I teach Spanish (even subliminally) better than I draw. The point is that at our house it’s normal to play around with languages, learning new ones and using them. The problems lie with the extended family.

My family might think I’m slightly weird for raising the children bilingually, but they are very supportive of the idea of sending them to English immersion school. - Now as for the other side... not so much. But there is a good reason for this. My husband’s parents do not speak English, while mine do. They can read a few words but they are not able to read a longer text or follow a conversation, let alone be part of one. We were visiting them over the half term break and I/we got told off for speaking English. It was not so much a “would you please refrain from speaking a language I don’t understand” as an accusation that we no longer knew how to talk Norwegian.

I kind of understand how it could come across a bit rude to speak in a language my MIL didn’t understand but at the same time this conversation, between me and Christi, took place in a different room when she just happened to walk in. I wouldn’t sit down in front of them and chatter away in English, although if the kids ask me a question in English I will usually answer back in English before switching to Norwegian. To me this is just how we speak in our family, but to them it is akin to an insult, something we do deliberately to keep them in the dark. I don’t quite know what to do about this now. I would like to just keep doing it like we do it at home, but curtailing it a bit during meal times when we are all together. Or we could simply speak Norwegian for the whole time while we are here. It’s not like the kids will forget English within 4 days. I’m sure that would be the best thing to do, but I would like them to know that our desire to have our kids grow up as bilinguals doesn’t grow out of a wish to be better than others, which is what it seems to imply to them.

Exposing my kids

I recently made a new acquaintance in the multilingual sphere, a Finnish mother of bilingual children (French/Finnish) and educated in the field of multilingualism to boot. She is currently collecting the experiences of parents raising bi-/multi-lingual children in order to construct what I am sure will be a very warmly welcomed guide for parents in the same situation, or people considering following the same route. I received the survey the other day and question 2 had me stumped:

“What languages are the children exposed to in the home?”

At first I thought this was quite straight forward, Norwegian and English. Then I decided that I might put down Spanish as well, seeing as I am actively trying to influence the children to learn, even though I don’t have any goal of making them fluent. But then I started thinking and it dawned on me that if I were to answer truthfully, naming all the languages that my children would be exposed to at home during, let’s say a normal week, the list would not end with Spanish. The top three languages are merely the ones they will hear their parents use. Watching TV they will likely be exposed to several European languages.

The most commonly heard languages (in addition to English and Norwegian) would be Swedish, Danish, German and French, and of course Sami. While the children will hear enough French and German from TV and films by the time they’re 7 or 8 to easily recognize the languages, they will not be able to understand much without studying them actively. They know the odd word in German or French, but that’s simply a result of having a language loving geek for a mother, who will not stop going on about the relationship between languages and the etymology of words.



As for the other Scandinavian languages there’s a different story. Ever since I can remember I have been able to understand spoken Swedish and Danish quite well, and reading them poses no problem what so ever. I actually believed that all Norwegians would have the same degree of understanding without even practicing the languages simply because the Scandinavian tongues are so similar both in grammar and vocabulary. When I had my children I was shocked to discover that young Norwegian kids, at least mine, didn’t understand Swedish. Norwegian television has always aired a lot of Swedish children’s shows, particularly films and series based on the works of Astrid Lindgren. When my daughter watched these shows she paid attention but when I asked her whether she could understand what they said she answered that she only recognized a few words. As she grew older her ability increased, and now at 12 she has no problems understanding all but a few words of Swedish. Danish is harder, but probably mostly due to the fact that there aren’t as many Danish programmes as there are Swedish ones. Most people I know find reading Danish easier than reading Swedish, because the written languages of Denmark is closer to standard Norwegian (bokmål), but they understand spoken Swedish better than spoken Danish.

So, how to class these languages? In Norway you wouldn’t put Swedish your CV, as it feels akin to cheating, the language is almost like a dialect of my own language and I would count knowing a dialect as knowledge of a separate language. On the other hand I had to learn to understand this language. It isn’t my mother tongue. I understand it, I can read it, but I would never speak it because I don’t have to. If I encounter a Swede I would speak to him (slowly) in my own language. At the most I would throw a few Swedish words in if he had trouble understanding the Norwegian ones. (In Norway we even have a word for it; Svorsk (Sworwegian))

I still don’t know where I’m going with this, but it is clear to me that while Norwegian is the majority language, and English is the chosen minority/school/home language, my children are exposed to a number of languages at home, and I for one am really happy that we live in a place where that is the norm! :)

The truth about el sombrero...

Sometimes learning a new language can take the mystery out of it completely. I finally managed to print out some worksheets for the kids' Spanish lessons tonight. Nicholas got one on 'la ropa' where the object was to connect the pictures of pieces pof clothing to the correct words for them. While drawing a neat line from the word 'el sombrero' to the picture of a Mexican style hat he sighed and uttered:

"Sombrero! Det e så skuffende! Det pleid å høres så kult ut, og nå e det bare en hatt..." (Sombrero! It's so disappointing! It used to sound so cool, and now it's just a hat..."

What is a first language?

I gave just applied for a school place for Ben, who will be starting Y2 this autumn. On the form I had to inform the school what his first language is. On the list of criteria for acceptance “English as a first language” is right at the top. Now, the people at the school already know my son, as he is currently a pupil in Y1, and last year he was in Reception Class. In Norway children start school when they’re 6, and so the first two years are counted as nursery school, which is why we have to apply again. In year 1 there are approx. 40 children, and only 20 will go on to Y2. The more I can do to raise our chances, the better. We are already favoured, in theory, because Ben has siblings in school. Christi will start Y9 next autumn, and Nic will start Y6. Still, I’m not sure how many of the children now in Y1 count English as their first language… To cut a long story short, I ended up writing that Ben’s first language (at least chronologically) is Norwegian, but informed them that I speak English with him at home and that he is comfortable with the language.

It’s the mention of the level of comfort, something I just happened to add on, perhaps to let them know I’m not making him speak English against his will, which made me ponder the question in the title of my post. I’m currently sat trying to write an assignment for my history class. It has to be in Norwegian, or at least I suppose they expect it to be in Norwegian. My problem now is that I am nowhere near as comfortable writing in Norwegian as I am writing in English, especially not when it comes to the subject of history or education. This has a very reasonable explanation. Almost from the day I started studying history (and English) my working language has been partly English, and this part grew by the year. The textbooks, with few exceptions, were in English, which meant that my growing subject vocabulary invariably ended up being mainly English. When I started to write my Master’s thesis I struggled for months to get anything done. Working in Norwegian was awkward. I could never find the words I needed. Only when I decided to write the thesis in English did I manage to make some headway and put my thoughts, findings and analyses down on paper. It makes me think that while Norwegian is certainly my first spoken language, English is now my first written language. Of course we all know that with languages the rule is “use it or lose it”!

I’m not sure where I’m going with this. It just made me think. Something I do in English while writing, and to a large extent also while just thinking, because I like to think in words, if you know what I mean. When people talk to me I often see the words in my head, typed out, so to speak. This even happens when I listen to Spanish, even though I don’t know the spelling. My brain guesses at the spelling, and with a phonetic language like Spanish my brain is often right :-)

Code switch of the day:

“I dag ska æ stå opp og lag breakfast på sænga te æ!” ~Ben (waking up on Mother’s Day… He also used the word ”te-spoon”. LOL )

Spanish victory of the week:

Christiania coming into my room to tell me that she can understand a bit of Spanish tweets. Which words? No entiendo, café and tostada :-) - She also asked me how to say “you are” and practiced saying “tu eres mi madre/padre”.
– Kind of a big victory this week, as she not only understood words but came asking to learn more!

(As for my Spanish, it’s not been as good. I read the chapters in my book for Friday’s lecture, but then missed the lecture as I had to work, and I also had to cancel to Skype chats with Ana due to work and school :P )

Mi primera clase de español

So, today I had my first proper Spanish lesson at the university. For the next 11 weeks I will have four hours of Spanish every Friday. - Two lessons in the morning, in lecture form, where the focus will be on grammar, as far as I can gather. Then I have a two hour break, because there was no room in the study group session straight after the lecture, which means I’m back in the classroom again from noon til 2.

The group session focuses more on vocabulary work and talking. There were only about 15 of us present today. In groups of 4 we answered questions about a book called La chica del tren, which we had to read the first four chapters of for today’s lesson. A few of the students hadn’t read it. Luckily I managed to get hold of it yesterday.



Neither the lecture nor the group lesson were particularly difficult, but I would have struggled if I hadn’t know any Spanish in advance, I think. I noticed that I have quite an extensive vocabulary compared to the others in my group. (Thank you, MosaLingua flash cards!)

When we had finished talking about the book, we moved on to a written assignment we were supposed to have prepared. We were meant to share this brief text about ourselves with each other. I think I did quite well, and according to la profesora I hadn’t made any mistakes either. ;-) The others in my group had interesting, well written texts too. Then, when we had gone through our presentations we talked a bit about what we did in our spare time. None of us were fluent enough in Spanish to speak correctly all of the time, and we frequently had to guess at words or use Norwegian or English ones, but it was great fun simply trying to keep a conversation going in Spanish about dancing, playing football, doing magic and playing the ukulele.

I’m very much looking forward to next Friday!

Taking Spanish to another level!

I have mentioned several times how my Spanish studies have all along been of a very independent nature. I’ve been taking advantage of the mass of free resources online, I’ve downloaded apps to my phone and I’ve bought books. The most organised thing I have done so far is probably the Skype dates and the written correspondation with Ana.

I wanted to join a course before but it is incredibly expensive, around 2-3000 NOK for ten evenings of 1-2 hour lessons. Back in September I checked to see if the university might offer language courses (they always used to in the past). As it turned out they did but during the Autumn term they didn’t offer Spanish. I did mean to call back and hear what they would do for Spring term, but I completely forgot…until yesterday. I found out that a)there is a Spanish, beginner level, course! B) it started two weeks ago but they let me join late, and c) tomorrow morning at 8:15 I have my first proper Spanish lesson. :-) I can’t wait!

I bought the textbooks today and have been preparing as best I could for the lesson. Ahora necesito ir a la cama, tengo que levantarme temprano! :)