Jinxed

A few weeks back I wrote a post describing how well Ben was doing with his languages, and now, not long after, he has taken to speaking to me almost exclusively in Norwegian. :-/ I have read tons of posts and articles by other parents discussing what to do with children who didn’t want to speak in the minority language and counted myself lucky that this has never been a real problem for us. Today alone I have taken myself in asking Ben three times to please reply in English. The first two times I asked it as a favour, the third time I ordered him to. Now, I know this won’t be the way to go but I got desperate.  My plan B was always to just ignore it if the kids spoke Norwegian and keep talking to them in English and eventually they would go back to speaking to me in English again. This may still be my best bet but I’m just scared all of a sudden that all my efforts are going to waste.

On the other hand, Christi does talk a lot of English, so maybe a period of resistance doesn’t spell the end of our bilingual adventure. After all, Ben will continue English schooling for the next 10 years, and he may just be tired now and wants communication to be less hard work. English is not his native language and Norwegian does come easier.

I just don’t know quite how to handle it…

Also, this comes at the same time as I have decided to make more of an effort with the 180 challenge over at multilingualliving.com. The Spanish studies have gone fairly well for me personally but I’ve lost the kids by being too unstructured.  Yesterday I vowed to get the children more involved and try some of the 10 minutes a day ideas, but with Ben seemingly exhausted by juggling two languages insisting on a third would surely be foolish. Perhaps I’ll involve Christi and Nic to begin with and leave Ben out for a bit. Or just put on a Pocoyo video and he can watch if he wants to…

As for the older kids and Spanish they are doing well despite us not focusing on studying it together. Christi just wrote a catchy song about looking for her shorts, and she keeps singing it around the house. “Donde están mis pantalónes cortos? Están aquí? No! Están allí? No!”  J And Nic is showing an affinity with languages, and new vocabulary in particular. The other day I told him “Tienes que hacer los deberes ahora!”, to which he replied “Huh??” Me: “You have to do your homework now!”  A few minutes later as he sat down with his work he asked me whether “ahora” meant “now”. I said yes, and asked him how he knew. He said that “ahora” was the last word of the Spanish sentence and when I translated it the last word of the English one was “now”.   J

Greetings from the wayside

Aye, it is true, I have fallen off the wagon again...kinda.

Of course there is still bilingualism going on but the Spanish has taken a bit of a knock in our busy daily life. I'm still reading my Spanish novels for learners (I'm on my final Lola Lago story and I love them! I wish there were more) I have not been speaking enough lately and especially so with the kids. Though Ben did come home from school boasting about how he and Sebastian (from Columbia) had been talking Spanish together. I was a bit puzzled as Ben doesn't really know enough Spanish to talk to anyone, so I asked him what he had been saying. "Stupido!", he said with a cheeky grin. I didn't want to rain on his parade so I just told him he might do better choosing words that didn't resemble English and obviously also that it wasn't very nice calling people stupido. I guess I'll have to teach him some friendlier phrases. NOT that it was me who taught him stupido! I blame Sebastian.

As for English I've been lazy at home. I speak more Norwegian and less English these days, or have done so up until recently. It may have something to do with the fact that we've been travelling a lot lately, visiting family, and for some reason it can still feel a bit awkward to be using English with the kids. But now I will have to get better at it because we just had the news that Ben was offered a place in Y2 at Birralee International, and that he qualified as "a child of Norwegian [or foreign] origin with English as a first language". To be honest I cannot quite remember what I put in the application, though I do seem to recall that I really stressed how comfortable he was with English and that we speak it a lot at home. So I better turn my white lie into a reality before we get busted. LOL. Nah, en serio, we do speak a lot of English at home I just need to be more consistent! :)

Ben becomes bilingual

My decision to learn Spanish and teach my kids some along the way had sort of made me think less about the way we use English in our family. Like I’ve said in earlier posts I’m the one who uses it most with the kids, though by no means one hundred percent of the time. I think my earlier “guesstimate” was 40/60 English/Norwegian. However, I have been more conscious about using English ever since last summer so the usage may well be closer to 80 percent some days.

A few days ago my husband commented on how Ben now switches between Norwegian and English depending on whom he’s addressing. Ben was outside helping his dad clear the snow from our drive and they were chattering away in Norwegian. When Ben was ready to go inside, the moment he opened the front door and called for me he switched to English, calling “Mum?!” I thought it was funny when he mentioned it, and didn’t think much more of it.

Then, two days ago we had a parent-teacher conference with Ben’s teacher and she told us that he is getting on fabulously with English, and even better he uses it when he plays as well now. Most of the Norwegian native-speakers will use English in the classroom and Norwegian for play. For me this shows that he is finding it natural to use English and isn’t doing it to please me or the teachers, but that he himself, probably subconsciously, chooses to use it.

So, yesterday I was in the sofa chatting with him, in English, and he asked me something I couldn’t answer so I said; “Why don’t you ask Dad?” He said “ok”, and turned around calling “Pappa!!”, and then proceeded to ask the question in Norwegian.

This makes me even more motivated to keep talking English to the children, though the other two will rarely instigate an English conversation even if they will answer me back in English if I start. On the other hand, the success with Ben makes me feel more uneasy about the Spanish project. I’m nervous about rocking the boat and have a feeling that I may be asking too much.

Language Challenge 180

I’m quite excited about the Language Challenge 180, which is a challenge over 180 days, to either get serious about the language(s) you are learning or refreshing and building on the second language skills you already have. I suppose I could have focused on English for this, but as we have so much English around us anyway it made more sense to work on our Spanish. This challenge is set up by www.multilingualliving.com and there are some 650 families/people participating in it. It is great to have someone send you e-mails twice a week to ask how you’re doing and give you that little nudge that can be, and often is, much needed. In addition we now have the opportunity to share experiences and resources with other learners, and also native speakers, which is great!

For us this first week has been less organized than I would have liked, simply because I haven’t had the time to fill in the forms that we got, which are meant to help us get a clear view of our targets and resources, but never the less, it has been a good week for Spanish for most of us. Ben let me read to him from the bilingual story books (“Ricitos de oro y los tres osos” and “El gato con botas”) and even wanted to play “Done está?”, which is a vocabulary building game we play using “My first 1000 words in Spanish”. And for Christi I managed to find two different Spanish teen magazines, both with One Direction on the front of their March issues, but unfortunately I don’t how to get hold of them. :P I need a Spanish connection, i.e. someone who can physically go to a kiosk and get the mags and send them to me.




As for my own learning this week hasn’t been great. I’m very busy reading for my half term tests in pedagogy and didactics, but as soon as they’re done it’s all Spanish all the time, because on Monday 19th I have a compulsory oral test in Spanish for my university course. If I don’t pass that one I won’t be able to sit the exam in May.

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..."