November to February of James 6-12 Months, Sydney 2 1/2- 3 Years
From BilingualWiki
November 6, 2004
Sydney told me today that she’s teaching her dolls Portuguese. She said she’s already
November 21, 2004
I was so proud that Sydney made an error that was even culturally appropriate: Christine: Onde moram os Pandinhas? (Where do Panda bears live?) Sydney: (No show da) Xuxa! (on Xuxa’s show) (Xuxa is a famous children’s singer who stars in her own children’s tv show, makes CDs, and tries to incorporate racial integration).
November 23, 2004
Sydney was laughing at my mom today because Momma was saying in Spanish, “Mi marido es um perro” (“My husband is a dog”) I just died laughing because I know the story behind that phrase. When mom first started taking Spanish, she said she hardly knew anything besides “mi marido” (“my husband”) and “perro” (“dog”), so we made a sentence out of that and she kept repeating it in public. Eventually she said it around a Spanish speaker who gave her the funniest look. I’m still not sure why Sydney laughed—maybe the accent.
November 25, 2004
My parents have been in town for the last couple of days. My mom took a Spanish class last year and loves to come up with silly combinations of vocabulary she learned. She has a pretty good accent in Spanish. Sydney finds it really hilarious. She said, for example, “Mi marido es un perro!” (My husband is a dog) and “Mi marido es un angel” (My husband is an angel). I don’t think that Sydney understood the dog or angel part because both words sound quite different in English and Portuguese but she still laughed I think at the way the accent sounded…it is like someone making fun or Portuguese. She then said to me, “Quero leite” using a Spanish type accent which was quite good…in fact, she actually said “leche” in Spanish. I’ll have to ask Marybell if she has said that word to her (Marybell works at the YMCA nursery and sometimes says things in Spanish to the kids who speak it to their parents so maybe Sydney’s overhead her say it in Spanish.) I loved seeing how Sydney loves playing with the language.
November 26, 2004
SSome of the expressions Sydney uses in English are pretty much translations of what’s said in Portuguese, but they come out sounding more formal or adultish than they do in Portuguese. Today the people we were with were impressed with her saying, “I had no idea ducks had feet”.
I’ve had lots of family in these past weeks because I’ve had some medical problems and needed people to look after the children. I’m pleasantly surprised at how Sydney’s Portuguese has stayed strong, even when surrounded by so much English.
I told Stephen his Portuguese is getting better, and he laughed and said, “Yeah, if I TUNE IN, I can understand, but not as well as Sydney…Wow, that’s really saying a lot—I get less of what’s said than a 2 year old!” I told him he has to see that he’s comparing himself to a native speaker regardless of the age.
November 29, 2004
Sydney (to Grandma): James is looking for the..(pause while she tries to remember how to say “cat” in English…we’d just before then been speaking about cats in Portuguese so I think she was stuck in the Portuguese word…turning her head in my direction she said as a question: “gato?” (“cat?”)
December 10, 2004
My mother-in -aw, Lois, has been here a month now, helping while I get better. She is really picking up Portuguese. When Sydney (who is now, thanks to Lois, at a good point in the pottie training) says that she needs to go the bathroom, Lois says excitedly, “Vai Vai Vai” (Go Go Go!)
Yesterday in the kitchen I was rummaging through canned goods trying to find garbonzo beans to put on a green salad. I told Sydney I was searching for “grao de bico” and Lois said, “Garbonzo beans?” I was so impressed. She’s tried to guess from context before and gotten it wrong, but I sort of just pretend not to hear because I don’t want her to feel like she’s guessed wrong or it might dampen her enthusiasm to guess. I like the guessing, it’s like she cares what we’re saying and participates.
Sydney really wanted to read an English book and I said I’d look at it with her. She said, “no” then conceded that the cat (not a main figure of the book but one who sidelines on several pages) could speak Portuguese, so I just told the story from his vantage point. For example, someone was dusting up a mess right next to the cat, so I had the ct fuss about how it might make him sneeze.
December 11, 2004
I made Sydney a “Camera/Aquarium” book and she loved it. I left it in her room for her to read on her own. I made it from a book we bought at a library sale…just put my own words over what words were already on the page and tried to keep it really simple so she can work on reading it herself.
December 14, 2004
Sydney been reading the Aquarium book. Sometimes the words are on the page with the pictures, but other times no, She asked when I’m making her the tiger one because she saw the book on my office desk, but then I told her she’s have to wait to play with it. That got her curiosity up.
December 20, 2004
Today I was in the mall shopping with Momma and Sydney. When it was time to go, Sydney refused to put on her coat, so I said, “Tudo bem, vai morrer de frio” (“That’s fine but you’re gonna freeze to death”). I heard a Brazilian reiterate, “Vai mesmo morrer de frio. Bote jaqueta, sim!” (“You really are going to freeze to death. Put your jacket on.”). I nearly cracked up because I’m so used to being able to say anything and have no one understand.
December 17, 2004
A woman I know, Marisa, said her son has a bit of a slow-to-learn-to-speak challenge. The speech pathologist told her it’s because he’s learning Spanish at home. She’s getting a second opinion. How annoying that even those who should be so in-the-know are advising against bilingualism when most likely, his challenge has nothing to do with that.
December 20, 2004
Sydney still mainly prayer in Portuguese. (We pray before meals/naptime/bedtime.) But, she can do it in English too. Stephen said the other day that he forgot to pray with her and she said, “No, hold my hand…Padre Deus!” (“No, hold my hand…Father God!”)
December 25, 2004
Tonight Sydney said something to me in English by mistake and to cover her mistake, she turned at the end of the sentence and said, “Daddy” as if she were addressing him. She’s too much.
January 3, 2005
Today Sydney corrected my pronunciation. It was the difference in the 2 sounds[ ó] and [ ô] . It makes a big difference in the word I was using because it’s the difference in “vovó” (“grandma”) and “vovô” (“grandpa”).
January 4, 2005
Again Sydney was making up her own words. She said, “Coco Mijé”. I asked her what that was and she said it’s a different language. I asked her who speaks it and she just responded, “Outras pessoas.” (“Other people”)
January 5, 2005
Again with the [ ó] sound. Sydney was talking to Grandma (Stephen’s mom) and was singing a song in Portuguese that goes, “ha ha ha, hó hó hó” (the “ho” is the open [ ó] sound. Grandma had trouble with the new sound and kept trying “ha ha ha ho ho ho” and Sydney told her, “The first part is right but the second part is wrong.”
January 7, 2005
Today Stephen was asking me the past tense of “swing.” He asked Sydney, “So you swung today?” and she (never having heard “swung”) said, “No, I swing!” Stephen said, “No, it’s ‘swung,’ your mom knows her English!” Sydney laughed, as if Stephen was making a joke and said, “Mamae doesn’t speak English!”
January 8, 2005
Today Sydney asked to play with her word book. She chose words to put in it. Then from those words, we put the ones she liked best on the large cards and hung them in a prominent spot in the kitchen by 4 other words she worked on from last week. It helped having the cards and the book because it was more to DO with the words and she could compare them. She also seemed to like having different colors (I had red and black). Next time, I may use more of a variety of colors and perhaps do the color words in their appropriate colors.
January 16, 2005
I decided I need a new strategy because Sydney’s speaking whole sentences of English to me. I’ve gotten in the bad habit of responding with a translation when she does it So, for example if she says, “I want milk,” I question her using the Portuguese, “Voce quer leite?” (“You want milk?”) My giving her the answer isn’t helping matters. So I started just feigning that I don’t understand her if she speaks in English to me and if she wants me to get it, she has to come up with the Portuguese. Sometimes if I see she’s stuck, I’ll give her the first couple of words. Or if it’s just one word in English, I’ll help with that.
With her books I’m making her, I’m leaving one page where she can decide what she wants to put on it.
It’s funny because she still doesn’t know I speak English, but she’s very aware of who speaks what. Here’s a conversation we had: Sydney: I speak English and Portuguese. Daddy speaks English. Christine: Daddy doesn’t speak any Portuguese? Sydney: He speaks some Portuguese because you speak Portuguese. I speak Portuguese with you. Christine: What does Granny speak? Sydney: English Christine: what does Alzemira speak? Sydney Portuguese
January 31, 2005
I spoke with an interviewee living in California, Debbie who is home schooling her first grade son, Chase. Chase loves the calligraphy process. He also wants to learn Chinese. Debbie bought + and - dice and numbers 1-6. For him, it’ better than a worksheet. Sometimes we forget about all the different ways of learning, tactile being a great way to enjoy learning new things.
Debbie has an M.A. in Foreign Language Education from the University of Texas at Austin, and has had years of teaching English as a second language experience. I wanted to get her two cents on how she felt Chase’s language situation was progressing:
“When he was learning Spanish, he asked, “Donde está pancakes?” so that’s great, he can learn all the food question words. It’s clear, he has my ear, so I’m like, ok. I have no knowledge of Spanish, but I could try Powerglide and my friend said it’s great. I think that’ll work. I have some rudimentary Spanish, but it’s very ungrammatical, so it gets filled with French or whatever.
I think at this point, it’s an exercise, like teaching math or music. You have to have exposure at an early age before the window closes. So even if he never becomes fully fluent, later it’ll be easier to pick it up.
I’d like to introduce Spanish to the kids so they have some rudimentary knowledge of it (and French perhaps too) while they are young. Most researchers agree (to various extremes) that exposure at an early age might help with later fluency (pronunciation-wise especially).
So for us, we started the language late and it came easier to me because my father didn’t speak German, but he read it and we’d see Jaque Cousteau of the French sailors and then the translation later. I’d hear that and ask my father about it, so I was aware there were other sounds. Some kids become aware and develop a mental flexibility. The Dutch are a prime example of multilinguals who continue to add languages.
You asked earlier if what we do is less “schoolish”. I used to be like, “Oh, it’s 8:00 am, time to do weather for science and then three pages of math…I was very workbook and text oriented instead of project oriented. So I look now at what he needs to know. We looked at the food pyramid and it didn’t work well, so we made a chart of our food crop. So basically we 1. Read 2. Calculate 3. Do some basics: history, science 4. and work with lots of content . I don’t want Micky Mouse, “What do you think” stuff. That’s great at 4th and 5th grade, but they have nothing from which to reason on now so we read aloud and because Chase has trouble reading, I’ll read aloud stuff her loves, if he reads some on his own.
Schools nowadays have a whole unit on a noun, but a kid who’s been read to in utero doesn’t necessary need to belabor over that.” --Debs
January 31, 2005
My best friend Judy from New York called today and said she’d talked to a mother who said she was doing the one parent, one language thing. She found it really difficult to get any guidance from books because nothing’s written for this specific case.
February 2, 2005
I need to consider looking into adopted children. There’s a book out there called, “Raising Adopted Children” which on p. 41 has references to language teaching. I just think of parents who adopt children from other countries and really want them to maintain their first language.
February 12, 05 I was so depressed last night when I got home from a party. Sydney and James were with Allessandra, a Brazilian woman Sydney loves to have babysit. I’d had a fun night with adults only and came home to a quiet house. Alessandra hasn’t babysat for us in about 8 months, because we found Sara who is more flexible with her schedule. Alessandra told me, “Sydney wasn’t speaking as much Portuguese as before. She says, ‘I can’t seem to.’ When I’d ask her to say it in Portuguese.”
I had a bit of a cry over this. I felt somehow she was slipping away from me, that I wasn’t spending enough time with her. Actually I’m spending a lot of time with her but am having some problems with postpartum depression, trying many different treatments, and I find it so hard to talk—I just want to keep quiet and sort of fold into myself. I can care for the kids and do those things you’re supposed to do, but I don’t interact as much as I would normally. It all made me really sad. Amazing how language can be some sort of symbol for closeness, for so much more than just words and phrases.
