August to October of James 6-12 Months, Sydney 2 1/2- 3 Years
From BilingualWiki
August 24, 2004
Sydney’s friend Robbie was over today. His mom Ann and I switch off babysitting for each other. I have pretty much been sticking to Portuguese when he’s around. He’s a little older than Sydney and picks up easily on what’s going on.
Today I heard Sydney saying things to him in Portuguese and he said, “Bom” (“Good”). Later Sydney told me, “He needs to learn to say, ‘Clean up’”
August 28, 2004
Today I nearly had a fight with my husband over a stupid comment I made. The hardest thing for me is that I don’t have any influence over how Sydney speaks in English. Sometimes Stephen uses bad grammar and it really bothers me because that’s what Sydney hears. Don’t get me wrong, he’s not the “I ain’t comin’” type of talker…he just makes the typical grammar mistakes people make from time to time…I’m a stickler though. Today for example, he was calling to her and asked, “Where you at?” I just cringed. I think it was wrong of me to correct him especially because it was a stressful morning, but it does bother me. Also, we have relatives in all weekend and I really notice that instead of saying “yes” she says “yeah”. I’ve asked Stephen to work on it with her but you have to be with someone a lot to change bad habits, so that’s hard since I’m the one staying at home with her.
Also, she mimics what she hears and that’s what he says (which isn’t really wrong for adults but sounds rude for a kid to say to an elder). Today at breakfast, she said to him, “I want a spoon!” He got her one and I told him that he should insist that she ask using “May I have…?” He said, “Okay.” And didn’t correct her but instead kept eating. I said, “No, can you talk to her about it now?” He said to her, Sydney, when you want something, you need to say, “May I have a spoon please?” She looked puzzled and said, “But I already have a spoon.” He smiled at me to say, “That’s why I was planning to wait til the next real opportunity because she won’t get it now.” It’s true, kids hear the meaning and aren’t usually ready to meta-talk about the form. Stephen makes me smile…I tend to take myself too seriously.
August 29, 2004
Yet another breakfast spoon story. This morning Sydney had trouble getting into Portuguese, I think because she’s been speaking English so much with all our relatives. She wanted a spoon and asked me for it in English. I told her to say it in Portuguese please and she said that just waved her hands around in frustration because she couldn’t think of the word.
Impromptu Reading Lesson
Sydney is into making up stories. Today she told my father-in-law and me that there was a cow in the kitchen. Then she said she wanted to read the word cow (we’ve read that word on one of the reading cards.) .I went and got the word for “cow” and some other words I thought she might recognize so she could show Pop. I could tell he was surprised at how well she read. She could even read his name, which was fun. It was a neat way for others to see what we’re doing together with it still being fun because it began on Sydney’s initiative. It was funny because she’d read a word, then he’d ask what that was in English and she’d translate. When she got to the word “olhos”, she read it, “eyes!” without having to be asked to translate it. She even ran her fingers along the 4 letters of the word “olhos” as if it really said “eyes.”
Tonight Diddy was reading out loud the words we’d stuck on the wall of the playroom. She’d laugh and correct his pronunciation. I think it really validates the language for others to try and speak it like that. We have tremendous support from family despite all my earlier doubts to the contrary.
September 2, 2004
I’ve been trying to help Sydney make predictions on what she thinks will happen in a story based on the cover and pictures and such. No matter what language you’re teaching, context is everything and kids learn to read faster if they know how to use those contextual clues. This is probably obvious to most people, but it struck me today.
September 3, 2004
In our reading time today, I noticed that Sydney remembered a word written on the back of a certain card. (We do that sometimes to save posterboard). It was amazing to me because she hadn’t seen that card in so long.
I decided to try to “exploit” how she makes associations from the front to the back of the card.
So on one side: “janela” (“window”) and on the other “j”
One one side “adora” (“loves”) and on the other side “a ______a”
September 4, 2004
Today in the car, Stephen put on his radio station and Sydney told him she wanted “music in Portuguese, not Daddy’s music.”
September 8, 2004
Stephen traced around me on butcher paper and we cut out a body to put on the wall. Then labeled it with the same type posterboard cards I’d used for the sun, moon, flower, etc. with labels of “man” and “head” “arms,” etc. I didn’t stick the words up immediately though, instead we played with the cards, danced with them (this sounds ridiculous now that I’m writing it up, but with a kid it wasn’t so weird) and talked about them. Later I heard her “reading” the words to 6-month-old James—she was really enunciating. First she read the 5 words we’d worked on, then moved on to those already hung on the playroom wall—sometimes translating them to English but still acting as if she were reading them.
Sept 9, 2004
I never know what to do in this case. We have gotten hand-me-down CD/tapes of kids’ music in English. Stephen was putting some one for the kids today. When I came in the room, he said, “All those songs in Portuguese are the same.” I felt sort of sad because I just ordered a new CD and am really trying to keep enough variety in Portuguese that she doesn’t get bored. He probably gets tired of me being so anti-English…it’s an odd situation, I admit.
September 10, 2004
Today in the car, Sydney was talking about a “gaviao” (“hawk”) because we’d seen one about a week ago in the same area we were then driving. She said that we needed to put a hawk on the playroom wall. I told her she’d love reading the word hawk and talked some about the word, what it started with and such. Then later she came into the kitchen with a blank card and asked me to write the word “gaviao”. She then looked through Stephen’s bird book for a picture (I think she had the idea we could just rip the picture out and put it on the wall). I’m so glad she’s taking initiative.
September 11, 2004
Stephen told me tonight that while I was out, Sydney tried reading nearly all the words we’d practiced. I found the cards all over the futon. He said she’d done really well from what he knew but that oftentimes she translated the word. So she’d look at ‘cachorrinho” and say, “dog.” He said that means she’s not actually reading the word, but instead has attached a concept to the word. I would argue that in fact, she is sight-reading it and then translating the concept. I think from his perspective, if you’re not sounding it out and saying exactly what’s written that you’re not officially reading it, as if without phonics, she’s not reading.
Sydney is really good at learning new vocabulary. I read the new word, then tell her what it means, then back up and reread the few words before it so she hears it again. I emphasize any root of the word that sounds like something she might recognize such as, “fome” of “esfomeado” because “fome” means “hunger’ and she’s really familiar with the word “fome.” Then, after doing that a few times, I stop and ask her what it means and she’ll remember-- like with “esfomeado” she told me it means, “hungry.”
September 14, 2004
Stephen told me that today he was watching Sydney “read” herself a book. She didn’t know he was watching. She was reading a book that he usually reads to her (in English, of course), but was doing it in Portuguese, from what he could understand, translating the English story. I’ve seen her do the same with a book in Portuguese, reading it aloud in English.
I don’t want to rule out the library just because most books are in English. I love our local library!!! I will sometimes translate her library books into Portuguese because I just enjoy looking at new books with her. With books at home though, I generally sk her to choose ones in Portuguese for me to read to her and Stephen does the same if she brings him a book in Portuguese. Tonight when I wanted to look at a book from the library with her ( I asked her if she wanted me to “read” it and she told me (in Portuguese) “No, you don’t speak English yet.” I thought the use of the “yet” was pretty funny…as if I need to learn it.
Stephen and I have noticed that she tends slip in some English words more with me than she does Portuguese with him. Sometimes she just gets frustrated with him when she can’t say what she wants to in English, and she just gives up (without trying it in Portuguese). And with me, she’ll just say it in English if she can’t find the Portuguese. So, I do think she knows that I know how to speak English. Anyway, it just sort of contradicts what she said about my not speaking English yet.
September 15, 2004
Stephen really helped me today in finding a way to make books for Sydney. The book I made for her didn’t go well. She likes it but the homemade nature of it makes it hard for her to read on her own because it sometimes falls apart. Plus it just doesn’t feel like a real book. I thought about buying a book without words that had pictures and writing the story on the pages (using nametag type blank white stickers that I write the words on) but I don’t know if I could find a book big enough that I could make the words large enough for her to read. Plus if the word is there, I don’t know if she’s reading the word or just looking at the picture- that’s what I like about the homemade books because we can illustrate on the page after we put the words. That way she’ll actually look at the written words.
Stephen suggested buying a large spiral notebook where the spiral is at the top so you can turn it and us it as a book, having ample space to write. We’d probably have to get an artist’s book to get something unlined, though I guess the lines wouldn’t be so bad. We could draw the pictures or get them from magazines. I’d like to get down on paper some of the favorites of the stories I tell her. She loves this one story about a girl who wants a bicycle, but doesn’t have the money so she asks Santa and he brings her not only a bicycle but also a kitten she puts in the bicycle basket. So I may teach her some of the base words (nouns like “bicycle”…she already knows “kitten” and “santa claus” so that helps), then do the book to teach the connecting words like verbs and such.
Sydney and Stephen were playing and he was tickling her. I asked her if Daddy was tickling her and when he heard the “to give a tickle” construction that I used in Portuguese, Stephen said, “Oh, that’s why she keeps asking me to ‘give her a tickle’” She does that a lot, speaks English with Portuguese grammatical construction. Sometimes she does it vice-versa as well, putting the adjectives before then nouns in Portuguese like you do in English. It is very rare, however, that these errors cause misunderstandings, they just sound odd to those who don’t know both languages.
Tonight she used the Portuguese/English deal to her advantage. She usually prefers that I put her to bed though I’m usually breastfeeding James at that time so it’s not easy for me to do. Stephen had already told her he’d take her to bed, but she asked me if I would do it. I said okay. Then she turned to Stephen and said that Mamae was taking her up. He asked, “Why don’t I take you?” And she said that I had asked her to take me up. Stephen said, “Mamae asked you?” “Yes,” she confirmed. We both just had to laugh…learning to manipulate us already!
September 17, 2004
Sydney seemed to like it when I hid the word cards and then said, “Hum, let’s go find some new words.” I’m going to try it with sentences.
September 23, 2004
I’ve been asking myself lately about how Sydney views Brazilian culture. Last week we started with a new Brazilian babysitter, Sara. Afterwards Sydney told me that she spoke Portuguese really well. I had to laugh. I explained that she is Brazilian and that most people in Brazil speak Portuguese. She said, “But there are no men!” I said, “No, there are men who speak Portuguese.” She said, “But there are no bad people.” I told her that everywhere there are good and bad people.
Brazil is very illusory to her. She reads Brazilian books, listens to Brazilian music and videos, and dances to Brazilian music. (I’m trying to teach her to have Brazilian hips that can actually move to music unlike Americans who are so stiff). She spends time with my Brazilian girlfriends and their children but in fact, their children and even they themselves have become very Americanized in dress and other ways.
I’ve been praying at the dinnertable and before nap/bedtimes only in Portuguese for the past 8 or 9 months and now Sydney can pray with me. She says “obrigada por Daddy” (“Thank you for Daddy”) and such. It’s so cute! I feel odd now when I pray aloud in English because the Portuguese has become habit to me. Like God is Brazilian.
September 24, 2004
This morning I ran into Gloria and Bria and in a matter of 10 minutes she and my daughter nearly put me into cardiac arrest. Gloria and I were talking and had the exit pretty much blocked off so the girls could run in the hall. They, unbeknown to us, hid and we could NOT find them. I thought they’d somehow gotten outside and panicked. Finally found them. I realized how much I use Portuguese as a code language when I started to say to Sydney (in front of Gloria), “Just because Bria does naughty things, doesn’t mean you have to too,” then I realized that Gloria would understand. I’m not sure whether this would offend Gloria or not….she’s one of the most easy-going people I’ve even known so maybe not, but I didn’t wanna risk it.
This afternoon we went to a family reunion for the weekend. I had just arrived when Sydney needed a diaper change so I said (to her in Portuguese) that I’d take her to the restroom. My Dad heard me speaking Portuguese and saw me turning to the restroom and said (good naturedly), “Now ya’ll go in there and talk funny a lot so you can get it out of your system.”. I told him later that that was going in the book! Later Stephen told me that he makes fun of me like that, but that later he hears him telling his friends and other family members that I’m speaking Portuguese to the kids and he’s all proud of that.
It’s hard to speak Portuguese in front of my brothers not because they in any way show disapproval, but just because I don’t spend much time with them so it still feels odd whereas with my mom and Diddy or with my in-laws, it just feels pretty natural because it’s a habit that they seem accustomed to. My nieces (the ones at the reunion) are around Sydney’s age, and they did a little blessing, each one taking their turn doing a different little blessing that rhymes. So I asked Sydney if she wanted to say one. The one we pray in Portuguese needs some guidance because it’s one we do spontaneously, not a memorized one so I was reluctant to do it because it feels like I’m showing off when I speak in front of them. But Sydney said yes, and then I started the prayer and she clammed up when it was her turn to speak. Oh well, as least I tried. I didn’t want to skip her because she needs to be validated and Portuguese shouldn’t be something to hide because she’ll get the idea that it should be something done in private. Sometimes it is tiring though because I’ll say something to Sydney and everyone will laugh and say, “oh yeah, I understood that!”
As far as culture, I thought of how not having a pat prayer to say is really quite Brazilian because Protestants in Brazil try to separate themselves from Catholics and therefore do few to no memorized prayers to avoid rote praying.
September 25, 2004
My brother today asked me to ask his daughter for a kiss, but to ask in Spanish. He said that she understands Spanish because of some of the Mexican daycare workers she’s exposed to. They greet the children and speak exclusively Spanish to them. I said, “Oh, I didn’t know you were doing that,” because I’d misunderstood and thought they had put her in a bilingual daycare. He said, “We’re not doing anything, she’s just in there with some Mexican women who speak the language to her.” I loved hearing that because it makes the whole process seem more natural
September 26, 2004
Today in the car on the long trip home, I was passing Sydney books. I passed her one in English and she said, “No, I want one in Portuguese!” Stephen and I laughed. I knew why she wanted to Portuguese ones, because they were these, snazzy little new books I’d just had a friend of ours buy her on her trip to Brazil. I have found that it’s better to ask people to buy her small paperback books because if not, they tend to waste money and space in their suitcases on larger more impressive hardback books when really she loves the little tiny books because they are easy for her to carry around. She loves to have 6 or 7 books in a set and usually a little set of books is quite economical.
September 28, 2004
Today I spoke with a professor of speech pathology at the University of Virginia. He needed help with a Portuguese translation (I got his name through someone I knew at the YMCA) so he called and was very interested in my research. I am so glad about that and also that he works with communications disorders so he can really be of service when I’m doing the medical part of the book.
Okay, so here’s a good cultural problem to have with the language. I found some pennies and wanted to give them to Sydney to put in her little piggy bank. I wanted to count them with her and tell them what they were called because she has very little exposure to money, since we generally use debit/credit cards. I decided I would call them “pennies” in English because it’s silly to call them “centavos” (the Brazilian “equivalent”) when in fact they are not centavos, they are pennies. But the sound of the word “pennies” in Portuguese means “penis.” I was in a quandary.
I’ve really enjoyed our reading lessons because we’re putting fewer limits on where we are when we do the lessons. We do them all over the house and even in the car. That way, reading is really integrated into our lives. I think the reading program I’m developing should be called, “Words without limits!”
October 5, 2004
I notice that Sydney sometimes stutters a bit when she tries to get an idea out quickly. It’s hard for her to switch when she’s been in one language all day. Today Stephen was really late getting home from work so Sydney had only had exposure to me. She wanted to telephone Grandma. but when we called her, Sydney spoke Portuguese to her by mistake. When Stephen first gets home, she doesn’t want to talk much to him until her English warms up. Once she’s switched to English, it’s harder to get her to speak Portuguese to me.
She’s really connecting things in the world to her books and vice versa. She’ll see something new while we’re running outings and say, “Like in my book!” she’s all excited to see the connection. Likewise while we’re reading, she finds things in the book that connect to her own experiences. I think that’s great because it makes books so relevant to her life that they will continue to be a part of her life and build her experiences. I’ve really tried to talk about other countries and other languages so she will know that the U.S. isn’t the center of the world.
Today was the 3rd day we’ve taken care of the 1.5 year old, Robbie Maitland. I’m keeping him on Monday’s now. We’re only speaking Portuguese to him because it’s easier not to have to switch back and forth, and I want Sydney not to lose exposure to the language while he’s here, especially since he’s coming on a regular basis these days. Sydney considers herself Robbie’s teacher and shows him things and says the name of it slowly in Portuguese and says commands like, “Come here” in Portuguese. He can say, “Bom” and his mom says he says it a lot at home. I tried not giving him a cup until he repeated the word for it in Portuguese, but he got tired of that. It was fun though because Sydney and I modeled it for him and Sydney actually knew what I was doing and helped me out. He follows my commands in Portuguese probably not because he understands the words themselves but he knows from the context what Sydney or I want him to do.
My reading lesson with Sydney didn’t go so well today. I worked on the book about the bicycle and put just a word or 2 on each page. But as we started she wasn’t really looking at the words and trying to read them. I’m not sure why. I was a bit frustrated and I think she sensed that and wasn’t really into it. I need to just stop if I get the least bit frustrated. Maybe putting more than one word per page distracts her. I’m not sure. She seems to do better with the cards, but I wanted to move beyond isolated vocabulary words to let her have story.
October 6, 2004
Sometimes when I speak in Portuguese to Sydney when we’re around Stephen, I get more of a window into her perspective just from hearing what she translates to Stephen. I told her earlier today while we were at the cash machine of the bank that the machine ate my card. She told Stephen, “The card was in the mouth!”
Today I tried singing ‘Frere Jaca” to Sydney. I’d asked a Brazilian friend earlier if Brazilian children sing it and she said yes. But then, with it being in French, Sydney told me not to sing it because she doesn’t know it.
Sometimes it’s frustrating trying to “read” (translate really) the library books. It’s not that I’m even trying to translate the entire story…sometimes I just don’t know the word for certain pictures shownl.
October 10, 2004
Today our reading lesson was different because we didn’t put pictures on the wall. Instead after presenting 3 new words and 2 fairly new words and 1 old word. I had chosen words that were very relevant such as “pottie” since just the day before she used the pottie successfully for the first time. I said “Let’s play a game!” She was all excited. I closed my eyes and asked for different words and she would hand me the card, I would open my eyes and if it was right, I’d say “yippie” and get all excited. If it was wrong, I’d tell her what the word was, would keep that word at my side and let her try again. As soon as she seemed to tire of this, we quit and did something else.
I may try finding pictures of each of the new words and letting her match words to pictures where we sort of trade words and pictures…she’s very into games where you ask for what you want and then give what the person wants to them…non competitive. I’m really trying to incorporate what she likes into our lessons. How else could I do this? She loves to swing…I could make the word “balanço” (“swing”) and some other action related words and after she reads them, we could run do them. Words like, “sweep, run, jump, swing, etc.”
October, 11, 2004
Sydney was teaching Robbie to say “bola”. His mother Ann overheard her and asked me “Oh, yeah, I’ve been meaning to ask you, what does “bom” mean? Robbie’s been saying it about his food.” It was fun telling her it meant “good” and so nice that she was comfortable with his saying something she didn’t understand. Some parents would be freaked out.
October, 13, 2004
Today I wanted to read a new library book to Sydney because I hadn’t seen it before (we just got 8 Portuguese books from interlibrary loan). She wasn’t interested, probably just because I was. She said she wanted another book and to coerce me she choose the book I’d made for her and we’d illustrated together (the one on the story of the bicycle). As she was asking me if I wanted to read it, she raised her eyebrows at me as if to say, “I know you can’t resist this one!” I had to laugh because it made it clear to me that she KNOWS the reading project is important to me. She’s right. We read the book together and she seemed to take more ownership of reading the words she recognized though still I was reading much more than she was before.
October 14, 2004
I’m realizing, especially these past few days that Sydney’s spent more time with me and less with her father and that her Portuguese is better than her English. (A few months ago when I had the panic and thought she wasn’t speaking Portuguese as much as English, I never thought I’d be saying that.) Recently I’ve been noting what she says in Portuguese and imagining whether she’d say that in English; I realize her fluency in Portuguese and her mastery of vocabulary in most subjects are better in Portuguese. That is, of course, with the exception of things she mainly does with her father.
Stephen was saying he thinks it’s odd that she won’t talk on the phone to him during the day while he’s at work. We call him nearly everyday and sometimes Sydney is the one who suggests calling. Yet, then, she just talks nonsense when she gets on the phone, making up words interspersed with Portuguese. But when Stephen’s with her and says, “Let’s call Grandma” she talks just fine to Grandma. I told him it’s because she hasn’t clicked over into English yet, and it’s hard for her to put her thoughts into words. He said that lately she’s been speaking a lot of Portuguese to him. I’ve noticed that too. It’s amazing just what contact time with the language will do.
I’ve loved the books on tape and so has Sydney. We have Snow White for example. After Sydney’s listened to them for awhile, I hear using lines from the book to make her own constructions, I smile. Today she’s heard the part of Snow White where the wicked stepmother’s servant can’t bring himself to kill Snow white, but instead warns her to flee to the forest. Sydney used many of the exact phrasing when she told her brother, “Vai, James! Fuga! Vai na floresta!” (“Go James, Escape! Go into the forest!”)
October, 15, 2004
Today I’m trying something new with the words. I’ve again put a word that fits with another word on the same card (paint nails) and have used words directly related to some activity we’ve just done such that all new words deal with some theme. Today we’re doing nail painting because I painted Sydney’s nails for the first time last night and she was elated. She also loved the word for nail polish (“esmalte”) so I thought I’d capitalize on that interest. I made a book of sentences and thought after each thematic lesson, she could read a sentence or two that’s almost like a little story. Any words she doesn’t know I put higher on the page for me to read, hoping she will see this like a puzzle she will solve instead of a book I will read her. I think the mistake I made with her book on bicycles is that I moved to quickly into a long book that she couldn’t read and she looked too much to me to do the reading for her.
After all that talk about contact time, I was anxious to see how Sydney would do in English on her playdate with a neighbor kid who doesn’t speak Portuguese. I noted their conversations, and Sydney was quite fluent in English, but it didn’t flow quite as easily as I think it does when she plays with people who speak Portuguese. I would liken it to someone who learned English as a second language at a very early age like 5 who is now 6 years old (meaning they’ve spoken fluently for under a year but speak it well). I do not, however, think she is anyway delayed in her English fluency when compared to monolinguals her same age.
September 23, 2004
I’ve been asking myself lately about how Sydney views Brazilian culture. Last week we started with a new Brazilian babysitter, Sara. Afterwards Sydney told me that she spoke Portuguese really well. I had to laugh. I explained that she is Brazilian and that most people in Brazil speak Portuguese. She said, “But there are no men!” I said, “No, there are men who speak Portuguese.” She said, “But there are no bad people.” I told her that everywhere there are good and bad people.
Brazil is very illusory to her. She reads Brazilian books, listens to Brazilian music and videos, and dances to Brazilian music. (I’m trying to teach her to have Brazilian hips that can actually move to music unlike Americans who are so stiff). She spends time with my Brazilian girlfriends and their children but in fact, their children and even they themselves have become very Americanized in dress and other ways.
I’ve been praying at the dinner table and before nap/bedtimes only in Portuguese for the past 8 or 9 months and now Sydney can pray with me. She says “obrigada por Daddy” (“Thank you for Daddy”) and such. It’s so cute! I feel odd now when I pray aloud in English because the Portuguese has become habit to me. Like God is Brazilian.
September 24, 2004
This morning I ran into Gloria and Bria and in a matter of 10 minutes she and my daughter nearly put me into cardiac arrest. Gloria and I were talking and had the exit pretty much blocked off so the girls could run in the hall. They, unbeknown to us, hid and we could NOT find them. I thought they’d somehow gotten outside and panicked. Finally found them. I realized how much I use Portuguese as a code language when I started to say to Sydney (in front of Gloria), “Just because Bria does naughty things, doesn’t mean you have to too,” then I realized that Gloria would understand. I’m not sure whether this would offend Gloria or not….she’s one of the most easy-going people I’ve even known so maybe not, but I didn’t wanna risk it.
This afternoon we went to a family reunion for the weekend. I had just arrived when Sydney needed a diaper change so I said (to her in Portuguese) that I’d take her to the restroom. My Dad heard me speaking Portuguese and saw me turning to the restroom and said (good naturedly), “Now ya’ll go in there and talk funny a lot so you can get it out of your system.”. I told him later that that was going in the book! Later Stephen told me that he makes fun of me like that, but that later he hears him telling his friends and other family members that I’m speaking Portuguese to the kids and he’s all proud of that.
It’s hard to speak Portuguese in front of my brothers not because they in any way show disapproval, but just because I don’t spend much time with them so it still feels odd whereas with my mom and Diddy or with my in-laws, it just feels pretty natural because it’s a habit that they seem accustomed to. My nieces (the ones at the reunion) are around Sydney’s age, and they did a little blessing, each one taking their turn doing a different little blessing that rhymes. So I asked Sydney if she wanted to say one. The one we pray in Portuguese needs some guidance because it’s one we do spontaneously, not a memorized one so I was reluctant to do it because it feels like I’m showing off when I speak in front of them. But Sydney said yes, and then I started the prayer and she clammed up when it was her turn to speak. Oh well, as least I tried. I didn’t want to skip her because she needs to be validated and Portuguese shouldn’t be something to hide because she’ll get the idea that it should be something done in private. Sometimes it is tiring though because I’ll say something to Sydney and everyone will laugh and say, “oh yeah, I understood that!”
As far as culture, I thought of how not having a pat prayer to say is really quite Brazilian because Protestants in Brazil try to separate themselves from Catholics and therefore do few to no memorized prayers to avoid rote praying.
September, 25, 2004
My brother today asked me to ask his daughter for a kiss, but to ask in Spanish. He said that she understands Spanish because of some of the Mexican daycare workers she’s exposed to. They greet the children and speak exclusively Spanish to them. I said, “Oh, I didn’t know you were doing that,” because I’d misunderstood and thought they had put her in a bilingual daycare. He said, “We’re not doing anything, she’s just in there with some Mexican women who speak the language to her.” I loved hearing that because it makes the whole process seem more natural
September 26, 2004
Today in the car on the long trip home, I was passing Sydney books. I passed her one in English and she said, “No, I want one in Portuguese!” Stephen and I laughed. I knew why she wanted to Portuguese ones, because they were these, snazzy little new books I’d just had a friend of ours buy her on her trip to Brazil. I have found that it’s better to ask people to buy her small paperback books because if not, they tend to waste money and space in their suitcases on larger more impressive hardback books when really she loves the little tiny books because they are easy for her to carry around. She loves to have 6 or 7 books in a set and usually a little set of books is quite economical.
September 28, 2004
Today I spoke with a professor of speech pathology at the University of Virginia. He needed help with a Portuguese translation (I got his name through someone I knew at the YMCA) so he called and was very interested in my research. I am so glad about that and also that he works with communications disorders so he can really be of service when I’m doing the medical part of the book.
Okay, so here’s a good cultural problem to have with the language. I found some pennies and wanted to give them to Sydney to put in her little piggy bank. I wanted to count them with her and tell them what they were called because she has very little exposure to money, since we generally use debit/credit cards. I decided I would call them “pennies” in English because it’s silly to call them “centavos” (the Brazilian “equivalent”) when in fact they are not centavos, they are pennies. But the sound of the word “pennies” in Portuguese means “penis.” I was in a quandary.
I’ve really enjoyed our reading lessons because we’re putting fewer limits on where we are when we do the lessons. We do them all over the house and even in the car. That way, reading is really integrated into our lives. I think the reading program I’m developing should be called, “Words without limits!”
October 5, 200
I notice that Sydney sometimes stutters a bit when she tries to get an idea out quickly. It’s hard for her to switch when she’s been in one language all day. Today Stephen was really late getting home from work so Sydney had only had exposure to me. She wanted to telephone Grandma. but when we called her, Sydney spoke Portuguese to her by mistake. When Stephen first gets home, she doesn’t want to talk much to him until her English warms up. Once she’s switched to English, it’s harder to get her to speak Portuguese to me.
She’s really connecting things in the world to her books and vice versa. She’ll see something new while we’re running outings and say, “Like in my book!” she’s all excited to see the connection. Likewise while we’re reading, she finds things in the book that connect to her own experiences. I think that’s great because it makes books so relevant to her life that they will continue to be a part of her life and build her experiences. I’ve really tried to talk about other countries and other languages so she will know that the U.S. isn’t the center of the world.
Today was the 3rd day we’ve taken care of the 1.5 year old, Robbie Maitland. I’m keeping him on Monday’s now. We’re only speaking Portuguese to him because it’s easier not to have to switch back and forth, and I want Sydney not to lose exposure to the language while he’s here, especially since he’s coming on a regular basis these days. Sydney considers herself Robbie’s teacher and shows him things and says the name of it slowly in Portuguese and says commands like, “Come here” in Portuguese. He can say, “Bom” and his mom says he says it a lot at home. I tried not giving him a cup until he repeated the word for it in Portuguese, but he got tired of that. It was fun though because Sydney and I modeled it for him and Sydney actually knew what I was doing and helped me out. He follows my commands in Portuguese probably not because he understands the words themselves but he knows from the context what Sydney or I want him to do.
My reading lesson with Sydney didn’t go so well today. I worked on the book about the bicycle and put just a word or 2 on each page. But as we started she wasn’t really looking at the words and trying to read them. I’m not sure why. I was a bit frustrated and I think she sensed that and wasn’t really into it. I need to just stop if I get the least bit frustrated. Maybe putting more than one word per page distracts her. I’m not sure. She seems to do better with the cards, but I wanted to move beyond isolated vocabulary words to let her have story.
October 6, 2006
Sometimes when I speak in Portuguese to Sydney when we’re around Stephen, I get more of a window into her perspective just from hearing what she translates to Stephen. I told her earlier today while we were at the cash machine of the bank that the machine ate my card. She told Stephen, “The card was in the mouth!”
Today I tried singing ‘Frere Jaca” to Sydney. I’d asked a Brazilian friend earlier if Brazilian children sing it and she said yes. But then, with it being in French, Sydney told me not to sing it because she doesn’t know it.
Sometimes it’s frustrating trying to “read” (translate really) the library books. It’s not that I’m even trying to translate the entire story…sometimes I just don’t know the word for certain pictures shownl.
October 10, 2004
Today our reading lesson was different because we didn’t put pictures on the wall. Instead after presenting 3 new words and 2 fairly new words and 1 old word. I had chosen words that were very relevant such as “pottie” since just the day before she used the pottie successfully for the first time. I said “Let’s play a game!” She was all excited. I closed my eyes and asked for different words and she would hand me the card, I would open my eyes and if it was right, I’d say “yippie” and get all excited. If it was wrong, I’d tell her what the word was, would keep that word at my side and let her try again. As soon as she seemed to tire of this, we quit and did something else.
I may try finding pictures of each of the new words and letting her match words to pictures where we sort of trade words and pictures…she’s very into games where you ask for what you want and then give what the person wants to them…non competitive. I’m really trying to incorporate what she likes into our lessons. How else could I do this? She loves to swing…I could make the word “balanço” (“swing”) and some other action related words and after she reads them, we could run do them. Words like, “sweep, run, jump, swing, etc.”
October 11, 2004
Sydney was teaching Robbie to say “bola”. His mother Ann overheard her and asked me “Oh, yeah, I’ve been meaning to ask you, what does “bom” mean? Robbie’s been saying it about his food.” It was fun telling her it meant “good” and so nice that she was comfortable with his saying something she didn’t understand. Some parents would be freaked out.
October 13, 2004
Today I wanted to read a new library book to Sydney because I hadn’t seen it before (we just got 8 Portuguese books from interlibrary loan). She wasn’t interested, probably just because I was. She said she wanted another book and to coerce me she choose the book I’d made for her and we’d illustrated together (the one on the story of the bicycle). As she was asking me if I wanted to read it, she raised her eyebrows at me as if to say, “I know you can’t resist this one!” I had to laugh because it made it clear to me that she KNOWS the reading project is important to me. She’s right. We read the book together and she seemed to take more ownership of reading the words she recognized though still I was reading much more than she was before.
October 14, 2004
I’m realizing, especially these past few days that Sydney’s spent more time with me and less with her father and that her Portuguese is better than her English. (A few months ago when I had the panic and thought she wasn’t speaking Portuguese as much as English, I never thought I’d be saying that.) Recently I’ve been noting what she says in Portuguese and imagining whether she’d say that in English; I realize her fluency in Portuguese and her mastery of vocabulary in most subjects are better in Portuguese. That is, of course, with the exception of things she mainly does with her father.
Stephen was saying he thinks it’s odd that she won’t talk on the phone to him during the day while he’s at work. We call him nearly everyday and sometimes Sydney is the one who suggests calling. Yet, then, she just talks nonsense when she gets on the phone, making up words interspersed with Portuguese. But when Stephen’s with her and says, “Let’s call Grandma” she talks just fine to Grandma. I told him it’s because she hasn’t clicked over into English yet, and it’s hard for her to put her thoughts into words. He said that lately she’s been speaking a lot of Portuguese to him. I’ve noticed that too. It’s amazing just what contact time with the language will do.
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I’ve loved the books on tape and so has Sydney. We have Snow White for example. After Sydney’s listened to them for awhile, I hear using lines from the book to make her own constructions, I smile. Today she’s heard the part of Snow White where the wicked stepmother’s servant can’t bring himself to kill Snow white, but instead warns her to flee to the forest. Sydney used many of the exact phrasing when she told her brother, “Vai, James! Fuga! Vai na floresta!” (“Go James, Escape! Go into the forest!”)
October 15, 2004
Today I’m trying something new with the words. I’ve again put a word that fits with another word on the same card (paint nails) and have used words directly related to some activity we’ve just done such that all new words deal with some theme. Today we’re doing nail painting because I painted Sydney’s nails for the first time last night and she was elated. She also loved the word for nail polish (“esmalte”) so I thought I’d capitalize on that interest. I made a book of sentences and thought after each thematic lesson, she could read a sentence or two that’s almost like a little story. Any words she doesn’t know I put higher on the page for me to read, hoping she will see this like a puzzle she will solve instead of a book I will read her. I think the mistake I made with her book on bicycles is that I moved to quickly into a long book that she couldn’t read and she looked too much to me to do the reading for her.
After all that talk about contact time, I was anxious to see how Sydney would do in English on her playdate with a neighbor kid who doesn’t speak Portuguese. I noted their conversations, and Sydney was quite fluent in English, but it didn’t flow quite as easily as I think it does when she plays with people who speak Portuguese. I would liken it to someone who learned English as a second language at a very early age like 5 who is now 6 years old (meaning they’ve spoken fluently for under a year but speak it well). I do not, however, think she is anyway delayed in her English fluency when compared to monolinguals her same age.
October 18, 2004
It’s amazing how much language Sydney and I have learned from fairy tales. Today I heard her say, in a dramatic voice, “James, James, jogue suas tranças!” (“James, James, let down your hair!”)
October 22, 2004
Sydney shows an amazing ability to explain words when other people don’t understand her.
Sydney: Mamae, aquele Coelho nao ficou ‘still.’ (Mamae, that rabbit didn’t stay still)
Christine: (not understanding her when she used the English word ‘still,’ because I was expecting her to use a Portuguese word.) O que? (“What?”)
Sydney: Ele nao ficou ‘still’!
Christine: O que?
Sydney: (Holding her downward-pointed cupped hand very still) Ele ‘can’t run’. ‘Ta ‘still.’ (He can’t run. He’s still.)
Christine: Oh!
Sydney often asks what words mean several times before she remembers. (i.e.for the first several times I read her a book). Sometimes I get the feeling she does remember what the word means, but wants to hear me explain it again.
October 24, 2004
Today Sydney found one of the cards that Stephen had used to teach her some words in English. It said, “milk.” I’d say it’s been a couple of months since she’s seen it. She held it up and said to me, “Olha, ‘leite’” (“Look, ‘milk’”) as she pointed to the word, looking just like she was reading it. I told my mother that and she said, “That’s positively brilliant.” Nothing like a little parental reinforcement
October 25, 2006
Sydney loves inventing words and then telling me (and others) the definition. Today she said to Stephen, “ ‘Baboo’ That’s what you say when something falls on the floor.”
Sydney and I had a similar thing happen with invented words:
Sydney: “ ‘Kee Bee’ (pause, and then with the knowledgeable voice of a teacher) É um lugar na Australia que tem muitas criancas” (“ ‘Kee Bee’ is a place in Australia that has lots of children.”)
Christine: O que elas fazem (What do they do?)
Sydney: Elas brincam porque tem muitos brinquedos e baloes. (They play because there are lots of toys and ballons.)
Christine: (typical mother question) Quem cuida delas? (Who takes care of them?)
Sydney: Elas sao maior que eu. (They’re bigger than I am.)
Christine: Entao nao precisam de ninguem pra cuida-las? (So they don’t need anyone to take care of them?)
Sydney: Sim (Yeah)
October 26, 2004
Today I’m with the kids in Nashville. Our first morning here and Sydney wouldn’t answer my parents’ questions except with nonsense words. I asked her to answer my parents in English and she told me she only wanted to speak in Portuguese. I felt like, “Now what?”
Today, Diddy said I’d changed from what he thought was my original plan which was to speak Portuguese to Sydney when English speakers weren’t around. He said, “We miss some of her personality because we don’t understand what you two are talking about.” I can see his point. Not ready to make a change though. I do translate when she says something cute. As she gets older too, she’ll be with other kids more and speak more English. Right now, she’s just home with me a lot.
I asked Sydney about “Kee Bee” again and she gave me the same “place with children in Australia” definition.
Visited with my grandparents and it was a little odd. I know second hand that my grandfather thinks my speaking 2 languages to Sydney will confuse her. So today at their place, speaking Portuguese to her, I just felt strange.
October 27, 2004
Today Sydney met some of my mom’s friends. They are super friendly and were so excited to spend time with Sydney. Sydney wouldn’t really talk. It looks as though she doesn’t speak English, but of course she does. Several times today, I felt rude/awkward for speaking a language to her that mom’s friends and Diddy and Momma couldn’t understand, just like I’d feel rude to talk about some one-on-one topic just with Stephen in a room of people where we’re all supposed to be carrying a conversation together.
Diddy tried his Spanish on Sydney, “Se llama Jaime.” (“Your name is Jim”…he meant to say “My name is Jim.”) She looked clueless.
October 28, 2004
Diddy said Sydney was telling him what the Portuguese word was for things he asked about, but later I overheard her make up a word… “Nukee” and she told me it meant “um passeio” (a walk/trip) so maybe she was just saying nonsense words to Diddy when he asked.
October 31, 2004
Sydney gets more of a twang and picks up southernisms on our trips to Nashville to visit my parents. The day we got home to Chapel Hill, she told Stephen, “Daddy, I have a big ole ‘fraulda’!” (“Daddy, I have a big ole diaper!”)
