February to May of James 0-6 Months, Sydney 2-2 1/2
From BilingualWiki
February 22, 2004
I have a new baby, born February 18th (2 weeks early). His name is James Thomas Jernigan. I hope I have the energy to speak Portuguese to him. For now, I’m so sleep deprived that I can hardly think straight. I’ve been speaking Portuguese to him, though it feels silly.
My parents and in-laws are here helping, so it’s a houseful. Lois didn’t understand this morning when I told Sydney in Portuguese, “If you finish all your pancake, you can have some bacon,” so right after I said this, Lois gave Sydney some bacon. I’ve got to remember to translate immediately after I’ve said something. Right now, I’m just too spent to do anything like that though.
February 26, 2004
Sydney was funny tonight. My parents were with her upstairs and she was saying something about her “Cama” (Bed). They were asking her, “What?” and she said, “bed”. I was so proud of her!
February 27, 2004
Today my mom asked me what “um beijo” was because she hears me ask for one from Sydney all the time. When I told her, she said it to Sydney, “um beijo, Sydney!” and Sydney laughed and said, “Mamae talking!” Diddy told me he was trying to read her one of her books in Portuguese but couldn’t really pronounce things right. She said, “she corrected me when I said the umbrella’s name.” I got cracked up because actually she uses the wrong words for umbrella. It’s called a “guarda-chuva” (“rain-guard”), but she calls it a rainfall. So probably he was more right than she was but he assumed he was wrong because he doesn’t really speak the language.
February 28, 2004
I have to return the library books soon that I checked out but Sydney really loves the version they have of the Beauty and the Beast. So I Xeroxed it and am coloring it with colored pencils so it’s a little more interesting to look at. When I’m done, I’ll put it in her looseleaf book. It’s a nice project to do because I’m still not up and about that much after having the baby.
February 29, 2004
Sydney was doing something well today and my mom said to her (learning the Portuguese from hearing it so much), “Muito bem” (Very good), Sydney looked confused and said, “no, Mamae!”
Later Momma said something in Portuguese and Sydney said, “That’s Portuguese!” which is interesting because I never really say the actual word Portuguese to her. Diddy said he has used the word Portuguese with her.
March 11, 2004
It’s been so funny watching my mom say things to Sydney in Portuguese and seeing Sydney recognize that it’s Portuguese. Momma sang one of Sydney’s songs that starts out with just some nonsense sounds. Sydney said, “That’s Portuguese!”
Then today my mom said, as they were driving into the driveway, “Where are we?” And Sydney said, “The house” and momma said, “Casa da Sydney!” and Sydney said, “That’s Portuguese!” She said it with a tone like, “That’s silly of you, Granny!
”
March 16, 2004
I’ve been insisting more, of late, that Sydney speak to me in Portuguese. If she asks me a question in English, I repeat the question back in Portuguese and she has to ask it (or ask for that certain something she wants like juice or milk) in Portuguese for me to answer or give her what she wants. It’s exhausting.
I’m also asking her to choose a book in Portuguese instead when she brings me one in English. Sometimes this process is just so tiring and emotionally draining as well. I miss hearing her say, “I love you” but just recently, she has started saying it in Portuguese at least. Today when I put her down for her nap, she started to say, “I love you” in English, but caught herself mid sentence, realizing it was English. Then she was unsure what to say so I said, “Eu adoro voce” (I love you) and then she said it back to me. The other day out of the blue she said, “Mamae é preciosa” (“Mamae is precious”). I felt so happy.
The whole Brazilian babysitter deal has become a major trauma because there just isn’t really anyone in this area doing babysitting. I can’t even get some people who do say they babysit to return my phone calls. It would be so much easier to just put her into our church preschool, and it would be cheaper too. Stephen and my friends here with kids in the preschool keep saying how great that would be, but it’s a question of lack of Portuguese exposure. I’m not giving up on this and that would be a step in the giving up direction.
March 17, 2004
Sydney said “tape” for “ribbon” today and I’m sure that’s because ribbon and tape use the same word in Portuguese though, of course, they don’t in English. It’s the same thing she does with wagon. She also makes mistakes in Portuguese that a typical English-as-a-first language speaker would make. She says “puxando” [pushando] for “push” though it really means “pull”. It’s one o those false cognates that messes students up; I really have to think about it before I use it to make sure I do it correctly.
March 22, 2004
THIS IS FASCINATING
I’ve been much stricter with Sydney as far as not responding unless she asks in Portuguese. In the car today, she asked, “help me” (she was hoping I’d get a book she’d dropped) and I said she needed to use the Portuguese, “Ajude”. She said, “Mamae diz ‘ajude.’ Daddy diz ‘help’” (“Mamae says ‘ajude.’ Daddy says ‘help’). I told her how good that was of her to notice and she added, “Mamae diz ‘por favor,’ Daddy diz ‘please.’” (Mamae says ‘por favor.’ Daddy says ‘please’.”) I was so excited about that and wanted to keep the game going. I said, “Mamae diz ‘obrigada’ (thank you)” and asked her what Daddy says. She said that Daddy says “obrigado” which is the form of thank you that men use. Then she went on to say that a dog says “aw aw” and a cat says “meow” but a child doesn’t say “aw aw” or “meow.” (All this was in Portuguese). It’s neat how that’s how she separates the language. Now that she gets that there’s a separation, I’m going to start using the word Portuguese with her more (because up til now I’ve been saying “How does mamae say that”).
March 24, 2004
The last couple of days, Stephen’s been out of town and with the post partum recovery, I’m not going out much. Sydney’s had nearly exclusively Portuguese. I have asked her, whenever she asks me stuff in English, “Ask me in Portuguese” and she does. It’s amazing!
Part of the reason I want to do this is that I had to find a new Brazilian babysitter and the one I found has an American husband and has been here so long that she tends to insert a lot of English in her Portuguese. I noticed she kept throwing in English to the other kids she takes care of (her grandkids who speak Portuguese but who she still speaks English to for some reason). I want to tell her that not only do I want her to speak Portuguese to Sydney, but I want her to insist that Sydney speak it to her. It’s had to get someone to understand that a 3 year old really will respond better to , “Fale em portugues” (“Say it in Portuguese”) than to “Como a mamae falaria isso?” (“How would mamae say this?”) It’s been hard not to just get an American babysitter now that I have the new baby, but I’m gonna try to hold out.
March 26, 2004
This weekend with my in-laws I’ve noticed how challenging it can be to have one language going with Sydney that they don’t understand. For example, today Sydney asked if she could have some juice and when I said, “not until you drink your milk,” she turned 2 feet away and asked Grandma who, not knowing what I’d said, answered, “sure.” Then tonight I asked her to go in the kitchen and finish her milk. Just as she picked up her cup to do as I said, Lois told her, “Let’s go put on your PJs”. Poor Sydney didn’t know whom she was supposed to listen to. It’s not this hard around Stephen because he understands nearly everything I say to her and he’ll ask if he doesn’t get something. So I think it might be hard for parents doing the one-parent-one-language method if one of the parents doesn’t speak the second language AT ALL.
April 2, 2004
We were doing “B” is for “Bela” (“pretty”) “Baguncado” (“messy”) “Balao” (“balloon”) and such using the block letters and fridge magnets. Later Sydney came to me with a “B” and said, “B de ‘messy’” (B is for Messy). I think that shows how children look at function over form and is a good argument for how not to get too caught up in correcting them on grammar because—at this stage of development-- they are making their own grammar rules and making discoveries as they go.
The other day at the grocery store, Sydney said, “Eu gosto biscoitos” (I like cookies) when she liked what I was buying. But in Portuguese, if you use the “to like” verb, you have to follow it with “de” (of”) such that you “like of something”. I repeated back her sentence with the corrected grammar, “Eu gosto de biscoitos.” She got mad because she thought I was saying that I like those cookies, when she knows that only she likes that type of cookie. She said, “No I like them!” So the different form that I parroted back to her meant nothing-- she heard my meaning, not the preposition correction.
April 4, 2004
Today Sydney was “reading” a book to herself and I heard her say, “Muitas palavras que nao conheco” (“Many words I don’t know”) I know she got that from me because I say that when I’m reading her a new book and have to look up stuff in the dictionary.
Today at church, I was talking with Brittany, the college student who keeps the babies at our church nursery. She said, “I am so inspired by your speaking Portuguese to Sydney. When I have kids I want to teach them another language. I want to learn Italian but maybe I should do Spanish instead.” I told her about the great resources she’d have if she did Spanish but she looked sort of deflated so I asked her why she’d choose Italian. Her fact lit up, “because I think it’s so beautiful and I want to visit Italy and I love the art.” I changed my tune, remembering how important Portuguese and Brazilian culture are to me and how that passion is what keeps me at it. I told her to follow the language and culture she has a passion for, even it it’s not as “useful” by other people’s definition.
April 15, 2004
I’m at a conference in Kentucky and heard a talk today by thiswomen who was just amazing. I could hardly listen to her talk because I was trying too hard to determine if she was American or Brazilian. She was reading a paper in English but it was on a Brazilian author so the quotations were in Portuguese. She spoke both languages equally and didn’t have a foreign accent in either. I had a Brazilian grad student on either side of me during the talk and at different times during this woman’s talk they both leaned over to me and asked, “Is she American or Brazilian?” I told them I thought she’d been raised bilingual. After the talk I asked her and told her that I found it amazing that even her gestures, body language, and intonation changed when she switched from Portuguese to English and back again. She said that she was Brazilian and had grown up in Brazil but had learned English at school, taken several long trips to the US as a child, and had gone to university in the US. I wonder if Sydney will be like that. I don’t think she’ll have the Brazilian body language unless we spend time in Brazil, because I don’t have the gestures and body language.
April 16, 2004
I’m still at the conference and today gave my paper. One heckler thought I was wrong to teach my kids Portuguese since I’m not a “native speaker.” I felt like he hadn’t heard one word of my talk. I need to look into the “native speaker definition” research. Had a colleague who looked into that for her dissertation, Anne Wildermuth was her name. One of the people who came up to me after the talk said she found that guy really offensive, “Who is he to judge who is a good enough speaker and what exactly does he mean by ‘native speaker’?” Another person who came up to talk, Kevin, was a student at Kentucky University and was babysitting for some English speaking kids in town. He tried out his high school French and Spanish on them but worried it might mess up the kids somehow since he’s not fluent and may be making lots of pronunciation or grammar errors. I told him he’s not going to hurt them and not to worry about it.
It was interesting because this morning before the talk, I was speaking and hearing only Portuguese because part of the conference is on Portuguese programs throughout the country, so the forum was all in Portuguese. So then this afternoon when I gave my talk, my brain was still in that mode and I noticed it not only interfered with my flow of English vocabulary words (which happens quite often since I’ve been speaking on a daily basis with Sydney, especially for expressions like, “Be careful” or “Come here” that I say nowadays much more in Portuguese than in English). It was hard to rework the English sentence I was in the middle of because I could not use this certain verb in Portuguese, “superar” (“go beyond”; “move past”) because English doesn’t have just one verb that would work for it, and without it, I had to reorder the sentence. I was sort of on pause for a moment until I could figure out how to say it—in my own first language, odd.
I’m still reading Bringing up Baby Bilingual by Jane Merrill. It’s a bit idealistic, as if it’s easy to raise your kid to speak another language. It’s not easy at all. (See the longer version of Kentucky paper or maybe the cut section to see how it was likened to breastfeeding a baby)
April 18, 2004
Since I’ve gotten home, I’ve really been insisting Sydney speak Portuguese and when she doesn’t know what the Portuguese is sometimes, I notice she’ll just ask another question in Portuguese. So she’ll ask me in English where we’re going and when I insist on Portuguese, she’ll pause and look a bit lost in thought, then ask what’s happening or what is it.
April 21, 2004
Today I was talking with a friend who mentioned Elke Maravilha, a Brazilian model/actress from Russia who growing up learned 5 languages, one for each weekday. Her mother was German and her father Russian. Her father insisted she speak a different language with him each weekday and supposedly she mastered 5 languages. Amazing. I looked her up on the web and found an interview where she said at age 14, her father made her start working so she taught English and French and later worked as an interpreter and translator. It’s amazing that you have a profession just by knowing another language. I’d never really thought of it like that before.
April 24, 2004
We are at the beach this week with my in-laws and Stephen’s aunt Melinda and Uncle Gene. It’s been interesting spending so much time with them and still speaking Portuguese to Sydney because I’m constantly translating to keep from having any misunderstandings. For example, Sydney asks for jellybeans and I tell her only after she’s eaten supper. If I don’t say “I just told her none til after supper” then invariably someone will give her some because, understandably, they don’t know what I just said. Earlier on, Sydney spook more English to me if everyone else around was speaking English, but this time I’ve noticed she’s done really well still speaking Portuguese to me. I think she’s almost proud of it, like she’s being fancy when she speaks Portuguese. One reason I say this is because the body language she uses while speaking Portuguese, (when she makes that switch just after having said something in English to her grandma, for example), is the same body language she uses when she‘s wearing a new fancy dress or new hat. It’s a sort of, “hey, I’m special” look. Maybe it’s just my imagination but it’s what I see.
Tonight at dinner she was getting antsy while the adults ordered coffee. (Only people without kids order coffee in restaurants, those of us with kiddies under 3 know that you don’t press your luck). I started counting her matchbox cars with her and Gene overheard us. Counting in Portuguese sounds sort of like Spanish except the final “o” sound is a “oo” sound like in “moo.” Gene started counting to her using his high school Spanish, “uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco” and Sydney got so cracked up and started repeating “cinco” using the “o” sound (also laden with a southern accent). It was so funny (and luckily Gene’s good-natured) because basically she found his pronunciation to be really funny.
Anytime I take a trip, I get excited about future trips. I’ve been reading Jane Merrill’s Bringing Up Baby Bilingual and reading about the first trip she took to with her kids to a French-speaking country. I am so excited already about taking Sydney to Brazil. I’m not sure how we should do it. I’m thinking she and I should go once she’s around 4 or 5. We could leave James at home with relatives if possible since he’s so young. Stephen gets a sabbatical after working for his company for 4 years so that would be when Sydney is 6, that’s later than I’d really like to wait but it’d be nice to be able to go for a month. Or I could take her on my own for a couple of weeks and he could join us at the end of the trip.
When we told our relatives that we’d taught Sydney some sign language signs, they got all excited and started quizzing Sydney. She did pretty well but we need to review them a bit more because she’d forgotten a lot of them.
May 2, 2004
I called my friend Gloria today and told her that Mom was coming this week. I sometimes say “next week” when I mean “this week” if it’s the weekend, but I meant “this coming week”. I do it in English so I do it in Portuguese too and it’s a bit confusing. I think I do it because I don’t consider the week to have started until Monday. Anyway, so I said that my mom is coming next week and that her plane arrives tomorrow morning, and she said, “My mom is coming this week” to correct mey error of “next week.” I said, “Oh, your mom is coming too? What a coincidence!” She laughed and I realized that she was just correcting me. It’s so good to know someone well enough that they will do that—correct me, otherwise I’ll just keep making the same mistakes.
May 5, 2004
Lately when Sydney doesn’t know the word in Portuguese for something, she’ll hold it up to me and ask, “Como Mamae chama isto?” (What does Mommy call this?”). It cracks me up. She asked me this about “nuts” referring to those nuts that go with bolts in her little play toolset. I had no idea so I looked it up in the dictionary. As I was looking it up, she tried to guess what the word might be and said, “nozes?” which is the Portuguese word for “nuts” but the kind of nuts you eat. I found that really interesting.
I told Diddy how she asks “What does Mommy call this?” (he and my mom are in town this week) and so he’s been playing this game with her where he’ll point to a pig in a book and say, “How does Mamae say this?” and she’ll say it. If she doesn’t know, she just says she doesn’t remember. It’s adorable. She’s been asking CONSTANTLY “Que que foi” which is sort of a quicky way of asking “What happened?” She uses it just to ask “What’s going on?” or “What are you talking about?” and really, it’s constant, so much so that my parents can both say it perfectly. Momma said it to her today at lunch—“Sydney, que que foi?” and Sydney told her in no uncertain terms, ‘No, Mamae says that!”
I got cracked up at her this afternoon because I was passing Sydney and Momma in the hall while my mom was taking Sydney upstairs for a change. Sydney had just heard a noise outside and wanted, of course, to know what happened (“O que que foi?”). She looked up at me as I passed and started asking the “what happened” in Portuguese but I passed her by so quickly that she realized I wasn’t going to answer her. Mid sentence she looked at my mom and switched to the English, “What happened?” Mom and I both laughed as how quickly she switched. Effortlessly it appeared.
May 11, 2004
Jennifer Lesser was talking to me today about how she’s going to put her daughter in a part time French speaking school. I was jealous because they just don’t have that for Portuguese. Wish they did. That is something to think about when choosing a language, for sure. And daycare, I mean, it’s so hard to get a Brazilian arranged to take care of Sydney.
Jennifer was also saying that she feels in her gut that it’s wrong to speak French to Matthew right now mostly because he’s having some language difficulties mostly. She thinks it’s due to his not hearing well (he has had 3 operations on his ears for ear infections). So she’s taking it easy with French for now which means Sarah Beth, her older daughter, isn’t getting much input either. I think you have to follow your gut on these matters though because a parent has a sort of 6th sense. I need to research this further.
Today I was reading over my “Personal Plan” for teaching myself and Sydney a second language. I wrote it before she was born. It’s funny because I haven’t stuck to some of the things mainly because they were cost prohibitive. Like getting Brazilian cable. It’s just too expensive and I rarely watch television except a show from time to time when Stephen is home at nights. I never watch it during the day. So he wouldn’t feel too happy about having tv on he can’t understand. I do have a friend who tapes some Brazilian novelas for me and Stephen hates those too because people are always yelling at each other. I can understand, actually. I also planned to keep a journal in Portuguese, which I have done but in a different form. I’m keeping a journal of letters to Sydney about cute things she says and does, what her interests are, who she plays with. That’s been fun, especially because I decided to include pictures.
Tonight at dinner, Sydney’s dinner was still on the kitchen island and not on the table because the pizza was too hot to cut up without it falling apart. Stephen and I had our pizza and told her hers would be ready soon. We went ahead and started eating and she looked at the empty placemat in front of her and said, “I got nada!” That would be a good book chapter name for the chapter that talks about mixing the languages or as to what happens when the child is talking to BOTH parents, as she was clearly addressing us both.
I can hear that my accent in Portuguese is terrible these days and I attribute that to not being around many native speakers. I’m going to a luncheon tomorrow with the Bible study crowd and hopefully that will go well enough that I’ll get back in the habit of going to Bible study. Unfortunately they don’t meet during the summer, but I could still have a luncheon here from time to time and invite them. It’s just hard now that I have 2 kids because most of the people who go have kids in school, so they aren’t running after a toddler or breastfeeding a newborn.
May 12, 2004
Sydney seems to really be getting the verbs better. She tends to speak Portuguese to James when I’m around and English to him when it’s only Stephen is around.
April 21, 2004
Today I was talking with a friend who mentioned Elke Maravilha, a Brazilian model/actress from Russia who growing up learned 5 languages, one for each weekday. Her mother was German and her father Russian. Her father insisted she speak a different language with him each weekday and supposedly she mastered 5 languages. Amazing. I looked her up on the web and found an interview where she said at age 14, her father made her start working so she taught English and French and later worked as an interpreter and translator. It’s amazing that you have a profession just by knowing another language. I’d never really thought of it like that before.
April 24, 2004
We are at the beach this week with my in-laws and Stephen’s aunt Melinda and Uncle Gene. It’s been interesting spending so much time with them and still speaking Portuguese to Sydney because I’m constantly translating to keep from having any misunderstandings. For example, Sydney asks for jellybeans and I tell her only after she’s eaten supper. If I don’t say “I just told her none til after supper” then invariably someone will give her some because, understandably, they don’t know what I just said. Earlier on, Sydney spook more English to me if everyone else around was speaking English, but this time I’ve noticed she’s done really well still speaking Portuguese to me. I think she’s almost proud of it, like she’s being fancy when she speaks Portuguese. One reason I say this is because the body language she uses while speaking Portuguese, (when she makes that switch just after having said something in English to her grandma, for example), is the same body language she uses when she‘s wearing a new fancy dress or new hat. It’s a sort of, “hey, I’m special” look. Maybe it’s just my imagination but it’s what I see.
Tonight at dinner she was getting antsy while the adults ordered coffee. (Only people without kids order coffee in restaurants, those of us with kiddies under 3 know that you don’t press your luck). I started counting her matchbox cars with her and Gene overheard us. Counting in Portuguese sounds sort of like Spanish except the final “o” sound is a “oo” sound like in “moo.” Gene started counting to her using his high school Spanish, “uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco” and Sydney got so cracked up and started repeating “cinco” using the “o” sound (also laden with a southern accent). It was so funny (and luckily Gene’s good-natured) because basically she found his pronunciation to be really funny.
Anytime I take a trip, I get excited about future trips. I’ve been reading Jane Merrill’s Bringing Up Baby Bilingual and reading about the first trip she took to with her kids to a French-speaking country. I am so excited already about taking Sydney to Brazil. I’m not sure how we should do it. I’m thinking she and I should go once she’s around 4 or 5. We could leave James at home with relatives if possible since he’s so young. Stephen gets a sabbatical after working for his company for 4 years so that would be when Sydney is 6, that’s later than I’d really like to wait but it’d be nice to be able to go for a month. Or I could take her on my own for a couple of weeks and he could join us at the end of the trip.
When we told our relatives that we’d taught Sydney some sign language signs, they got all excited and started quizzing Sydney. She did pretty well but we need to review them a bit more because she’d forgotten a lot of them.
May 2, 2004
I called my friend Gloria today and told her that Mom was coming this week. I sometimes say “next week” when I mean “this week” if it’s the weekend, but I meant “this coming week”. I do it in English so I do it in Portuguese too and it’s a bit confusing. I think I do it because I don’t consider the week to have started until Monday. Anyway, so I said that my mom is coming next week and that her plane arrives tomorrow morning, and she said, “My mom is coming this week” to correct mey error of “next week.” I said, “Oh, your mom is coming too? What a coincidence!” She laughed and I realized that she was just correcting me. It’s so good to know someone well enough that they will do that—correct me, otherwise I’ll just keep making the same mistakes.
May 5, 2004
Lately when Sydney doesn’t know the word in Portuguese for something, she’ll hold it up to me and ask, “Como Mamae chama isto?” (What does Mommy call this?”). It cracks me up. She asked me this about “nuts” referring to those nuts that go with bolts in her little play toolset. I had no idea so I looked it up in the dictionary. As I was looking it up, she tried to guess what the word might be and said, “nozes?” which is the Portuguese word for “nuts” but the kind of nuts you eat. I found that really interesting.
I told Diddy how she asks “What does Mommy call this?” (he and my mom are in town this week) and so he’s been playing this game with her where he’ll point to a pig in a book and say, “How does Mamae say this?” and she’ll say it. If she doesn’t know, she just says she doesn’t remember. It’s adorable. She’s been asking CONSTANTLY “Que que foi” which is sort of a quicky way of asking “What happened?” She uses it just to ask “What’s going on?” or “What are you talking about?” and really, it’s constant, so much so that my parents can both say it perfectly. Momma said it to her today at lunch—“Sydney, que que foi?” and Sydney told her in no uncertain terms, ‘No, Mamae says that!”
I got cracked up at her this afternoon because I was passing Sydney and Momma in the hall while my mom was taking Sydney upstairs for a change. Sydney had just heard a noise outside and wanted, of course, to know what happened (“O que que foi?”). She looked up at me as I passed and started asking the “what happened” in Portuguese but I passed her by so quickly that she realized I wasn’t going to answer her. Mid sentence she looked at my mom and switched to the English, “What happened?” Mom and I both laughed as how quickly she switched. Effortlessly it appeared.
May 11, 2004
Jennifer Lesser was talking to me today about how she’s going to put her daughter in a part time French speaking school. I was jealous because they just don’t have that for Portuguese. Wish they did. That is something to think about when choosing a language, for sure. And daycare, I mean, it’s so hard to get a Brazilian arranged to take care of Sydney.
Jennifer was also saying that she feels in her gut that it’s wrong to speak French to Matthew right now mostly because he’s having some language difficulties mostly. She thinks it’s due to his not hearing well (he has had 3 operations on his ears for ear infections). So she’s taking it easy with French for now which means Sarah Beth, her older daughter, isn’t getting much input either. I think you have to follow your gut on these matters though because a parent has a sort of 6th sense. I need to research this further.
Today I was reading over my “Personal Plan” for teaching myself and Sydney a second language. I wrote it before she was born. It’s funny because I haven’t stuck to some of the things mainly because they were cost prohibitive. Like getting Brazilian cable. It’s just too expensive and I rarely watch television except a show from time to time when Stephen is home at nights. I never watch it during the day. So he wouldn’t feel too happy about having tv on he can’t understand. I do have a friend who tapes some Brazilian novelas for me and Stephen hates those too because people are always yelling at each other. I can understand, actually. I also planned to keep a journal in Portuguese, which I have done but in a different form. I’m keeping a journal of letters to Sydney about cute things she says and does, what her interests are, who she plays with. That’s been fun, especially because I decided to include pictures.
Tonight at dinner, Sydney’s dinner was still on the kitchen island and not on the table because the pizza was too hot to cut up without it falling apart. Stephen and I had our pizza and told her hers would be ready soon. We went ahead and started eating and she looked at the empty placemat in front of her and said, “I got nada!” That would be a good book chapter name for the chapter that talks about mixing the languages or as to what happens when the child is talking to BOTH parents, as she was clearly addressing us both.
I can hear that my accent in Portuguese is terrible these days and I attribute that to not being around many native speakers. I’m going to a luncheon tomorrow with the Bible study crowd and hopefully that will go well enough that I’ll get back in the habit of going to Bible study. Unfortunately they don’t meet during the summer, but I could still have a luncheon here from time to time and invite them. It’s just hard now that I have 2 kids because most of the people who go have kids in school, so they aren’t running after a toddler or breastfeeding a newborn.
May 12, 2004
Sydney seems to really be getting the verbs better. She tends to speak Portuguese to James when I’m around and English to him when it’s only Stephen is around.
May 13, 2004
I went to a Brazilian luncheon with the ladies from Bible study. Haven’t seen many of them since James was born because they all live in Cary and it’s just a hike to go there with the 2 kiddies. I was feeling so comfortable with everyone and can sometimes forget that I’m American. That is, until suddenly I’ll say something that I can tell just doesn’t fit. Alzemira was telling everyone over lunch how Lula, the President of Brazil, would be in Durham this summer receiving an honorary doctorate from Duke. Someone asked what an honorary doctorate was and I explained and said as an aside, “I’ve never liked honorary degrees.” Someone asked why and I said that I just feel like if you haven’t earned the degree, why should one be bestowed upon you. Alzemira didn’t like that because I think she felt I was saying that Lula didn’t deserve it. I said it was nothing against Lula. And she said, “Well what about Mandela?” Ugh, I was sinking lower into my seat!! I said it’s not that I think he doesn’t deserve recognition, but give another type of humanitarian award, not a degree that you have to study for. Anyway I could tell as we were heatedly discussing this that I was coming across as a total ass which wasn’t my intention. Somehow, they as Brazilians can argue like this back and forth and it works but when I do it, it just doesn’t come across right and I feel bad afterwards. I don’t think it’s purely a linguistic problem, really. Though had I been arguing in English, I would have sounded a bit more polished, maybe used more euphemisms instead of being so direct.
May 14, 2004
Today I was talking to Kara, the nursery worker at the YMCA. She told me that her fiancé was raised to speak Canadian French and English, but that both parents spoke both languages, mixing the languages all the time. He didn’t even know he spoke French until he went to school and kids didn’t understand everything he said. He didn’t know how to separate the languages, but his parents never modeled this separation. Kathy said eating dinner with them was so stressful for her because she doesn’t understand French and they even today mix the languages so that she was lost for much of the conversation. For them, though, it was completely natural. I’d say it’s important to show children how to separate the languages early on, but also feel they’ll figure it out on their own eventually.
May 15, 2004
I taught Sydney the wrong word for screwdriver. She says this word a lot because she LOVES her little plastic tool set. I have been using the word for “screw” (instead of “screwdriver”) by mistake. I learned heaps of word for tools today when Alessandra, the Brazilian babysitter that comes just every now and then to our house, was in our kitchen with the kids. I thought I’d pick her brain. Anyway I was telling Stephen that hopefully it won’t matter that I was using the wrong word because she probably hadn’t learned the word “screw” anyway. Just as I finished saying that, she whips out a screwdriver and calls it by the wrong name. I felt bad. I remember how bad I used to feel when I was teaching Portuguese and I’d realize I’d told my students something wrong. I just dreaded telling them the right way.
May 16, 2004
Tonight I met one of my research contacts face –to-face after emailing her. She speaks Portuguese but isn’t teaching it to her 1 year old Sam. I spoke some Portuguese with her and it’s a bit of a Portunol (mix of Spanish and Portuguese), with many words coming out in Spanish. I asked if she speaks Spanish well and she said no but I think maybe she’s just being modest. She will probably do Spanish with Sam because his babysitter speaks Spanish and like she said in her email, her husband speaks Spanish better than Portuguese. I didn’t think about how many people who might read things I’ve written on the topic will not be stay at home parents so it’s very important that they choose a language that their caregiver speaks. Spanish is good for that. I could find a Spanish-speaking babysitter so quickly. I have had a woman approach me even, but languages like Portuguese are tougher.
May 18, 2004
A man at church, Bob Bratcher, who grew up in Brazil has been giving me books in Portuguese and I finally found an author I love in Portuguese. Cuny Indigitatado is so good! He also gave me one by Fernando Sabino whose short stories I love. I really feel it’s a sacrifice sometimes to only read in Portuguese (that’s sort of the rule I set for myself…we’ll see how long it lasts), but honestly I get to read so little these days that it’s not as big a deal as I thought it would be.
May 22, 2004
I noticed today that Sydney only knows the words for different types of makeup (foundation, eye makeup etc.) in Portuguese because only I say them to her. Reminded me of an interview I did with a family in Germany where only the father spoke English to the kids. The son loved collecting stamps and he and his dad spent hours going over the stamps such that he knew the names of most countries in English, not German. It was interesting, I thought, that eventhough in most respects, his German was dominant (because he spent more time with his mom and lived in Germany) that English had claimed the “name of the countries” domain.
May 23, 2004
Some good friends of ours, Nancy and Chuck, are in town from Austin Texas. They have kids that are in their 20’s who are married and thinking of starting a family. Their son, PJ’s wife is from Latvia and so they may speak Latvian and English to the kids. I was telling Nancy that one advantage is that PJ will be exposed to Latvian from day one, so that it won’t be so odd for him to get together with her relatives. He’ll learn along side the child if he tunes in and tries to understand what’s being said.
Nancy noticed that Sydney speaks English to herself while she’s playing. I hadn’t really noticed her speaking English because when she’s with me she speaks Portuguese. I started paying attention. While other people are around her speaking English like Stephen and I or if other friends are around, she does speak English while playing. But if it’s just James and me, she may start off in English but then if I interact with her and ask her questions, she clicks over to Portuguese to speak to James and me.
Also yesterday we were at the lake and Sydney wanted me to blow bubbles in the water like Stephen had just shown her to do. Stephen did it, then Sydney and she asked me in English to do it. I didn’t want to get my face wet so I just sort of lamely blew on top of the water. She said, in English, “Do it like Daddy!” and I said, “Say it in Portuguese.” She looked hard like she was really thinking. I was expecting her to say exactly the words, “Faca como Daddy” (do it like Daddy) but instead she said, “Quer bolhas” (Want bubbles?) because it was just all she could think of . It got the message across though and really showed me how she gets the meaning across, and doesn’t try to translate the same words she’d just said in English.
May 24, 2004
Today I had a fascinating interview with a man teaching English, his second language, to his children. He lives in Hungary and with the time difference and with his busy schedule of CEO of a company, I basically had to talk to him at the exact time he said I could call. Unfortunately James was only taking a short nap and in the middle of the interview he woke up . I started breastfeeding him so I could keep talking. It wasn’t easy because I had the hands free phone dangling over him while I was trying to type in the man’s responses. Atone point, James started farting loudly and the mike for the phone was right next to him. How embarrassing is that? Then he made a big poo so I had to change him while still talking to the man. Doing research while staying at home with your kids is not always the easiest set up. But I enjoy being with them so much and can’t imagine not being with them. Plus I’m not making any money at this yet, in fact I’m often spending money on the project, so daycare’s not really an option financially. On the one day a week Sydney goes to the Brazilian babysitter for 4 hours, I really miss her. It feels like the whole day she’s gone because she comes right home and goes down for an afternoon nap.
