Family Language Diagram Update

I feel a bit bad: we haven't updated the family language diagram for ages! I cannot even remember how long ago I touched it. Bad Babeldad!

Then again, the situation has only changed very slightly when it comes to languages. All three Babelkids are now sufficiently fluent to be able to speak pretty normally with native speakers of their four languages. English is the dominating language, by a mile, but it has always been.

So all good in the Babelhouse from a language perspective.

Small Changes

Drill down into details though, and you will notice changes.

BK2 is more and more defaulting to English, when in the past she would speak Arabic or maybe German. We now witness (and sometimes interrupt) long conversations between BK2 and BK1 entirely in English. BK2 starts it, usually.

BK3 has recently jumped onto the bandwaggon as well. And while the long days in school are a good justification for why BK2 does it, BK3 doesn't even go to pre-school yet, so she got it entirely from her sisters!

BK1 is probably the one with the most solid knowledge and command of all four languages, as she's always been. I guess the time we were able to devote to her when she was alone really paid off for her.

Slightly Bigger Change

So all is more or less as usual in our Babelfamily.

Just the right time to overthrow it all and add more complexity to the mix: we're moving to Basel, Switzerland!

This is a work-related move, of course, but we did actually chose Basel on purpose based on its proximity to France and Germany and the hope that we would come into a multilingual environment. I won't make any guesses as to what the move will do to the girls' language, but I'm sure it'll be interesting.

If you were thinking "Basel... hm... German-speaking part of Switzerland, isn't it?" then all I can say is "technically yes", which obviously means "nope!". There's a fine line between a dialect and a language, I guess. For me, personally, Swiss German is a language. I recently spent four days in Basel and quickly found that I was better off speaking English if I wanted to actually understand what people said to me. So, depending on how you see it, the girls will either pick up yet another language (and a new majority language, too!), or learn a dialect that is quite frankly very different from mine.

This blog might just come to life again in September!

Missed opportunity? Hope not

Today we had a party to celebrate the end of the year, and the beginning of a new era for our babywearing group, Slinging in the Rain.
Atending the party was a lovely couple, first-time parents to a two-week old baby. The little girl was so sweet.

As it happens, the dad is English and the mum is Chinese. They heard me speak to BK2, and more importantly heard her reply in her usual gibberish of Arabic+French+English. They wondered what languages we were speaking, and seemed pretty impressed with our mix of languages.

They want to raise their daughter bilingual, but they prefer to wait until she is one. They hope that by doing so, their daughter would not have a Chinese accent when speaking English. Really, why? I don't know, because I did not ask. I was afraid of being too intrusive.

So I simply explained OPOL and ML, and left it at that. I hope they will go off and do their own research. I hope they will realise that the best way to prevent their daughter from having a Chinese accent when speaking English, is for the two to speak their respective mother tongues!

Ball not Bowl

I have just brought BK2 (who will be 4 in Febraury) from pre-school. As usual, the following conversation takes place in a mix of Arabic, French and English.

BK2: "S iqoul Bowl pour Ballon en Anglais" (S says Bowl for Ballon in English.)
Me: "Kifach lazem iqoul?" (How should he say it?)
BK2: "Ball" - with a pronounced emphasis on the "a", betraying her Northern-Englishness. Sweet...

Invasion of the English Accent!

BK1 is jumping about in the living room, singing a nursery rhyme.

It takes a bit before I realise she sings it in French but with a really thick English accent. I turn to the Babelmum and whisper: "did you hear that? She sings in French with an English accent!" when I notice she has switched to German with a really thick English accent.

No idea whether she was making a joke or trying on accents and languages, but she clearly did it on purpose.

All I can think about is how incredible is the linguistic computing power in that head?! I'm completely in awe!

Dora and the "Cho co late"

"Dora the Explorer" is a TV show for toddlers about a girl called Dora who encounters different characters who speak either English (most of them) or Spanish (some of them). The idea is that children learn Spanish while they watch Dora.

That sounds like a good idea, maybe. If passively watching and listening would help, and I don't know if it does or not, the show could have some value.

But

And it's a huge but:

Our problem with BK1 & BK2 is that because we're in the UK, English is everywhere and we're looking for any occasion to give them more French, German or Arabic instead.

Right, you say, so you can get Dora in French! True.

In the French version, Dora will mainly speak French but use English every now and again. The idea of course is that little French children may learn a bit of English.

Unfortunately, the voices for both languages are done by the same actors, which in the French version means when they speak English, they do so with a thick French accent. I'm sure someone will tell me that if they wouldn't, the French wouldn't understand. And that may even be true, at least for adults. But in our
case, it means my daughters learn completely inappropriate pronounciation from Dora when they know better!

Worst example: the chocolate tree song. The lyrics are very simple: "mix and mix your chocolate". I'm not even going to judge whether an English person would have written those lyrics. The thing that upsets me is that they sing "cho co late", pronouncing "co" as in ".co.uk" and "late" as in "too late".

I am actually pretty sure that even BK2 who is just 2 years old knows that in the real UK, that's not the way you say it. So why on earth did they do that? I mean how difficult would it have been to have two voice actors?

And, thinking about it: Dora is for children in the US and it is supposed to encourage them to learn Spanish, presumably because there are a lot of people in the US who speak Spanish. So, along those lines, the French version of Dora should really have Algerian as the second language, the version of Dora for the UK should introduce Punjabi/Urdu/etc and the version for Germany Turkish. Now that would make sense.

Or, go one step futher and give us downloadable "select two languages" versions!

Maybe I should see this in a positive light. Maybe I should sit down with BK1 & BK2 and say: "see how Dora and Baboush don't even know how to say 'chocolate'? That's because TV is often wrong. If you think you know better, you probably do."

(Oh, and Happy Birthday to my sister who is currently visiting along with her daughter and our mother. They are helping BK1 & BK2 develop their German)

She's Good Because I'm not Teaching Her!

About a week ago BK1 spent the whole day outside playing with a boy from her school who lives in our street. I was outside with BK2 at the same time and obviously met the boy's mother and we had a chat.

At one point, she said: "your childrens' English is so good!"

I like that, obviously.

I said: "yeah, that's because I don't speak English with them at all."

I could see the cogs moving in her head, then she smiled.

"Good Stockport accent, isn't it?" I said, and she agreed: "it is a lovely Stockport accent!"

English Accent

I mentioned earlier that Lilia has a Mancunian accent when she speaks English, but I have never written about accent in general.

Unfortunately, native speakers of her other three languages all say she has an accent.

Her German seems to be pretty much from the north, which is probably due to my influence.

Her Arabic comes with an accent that some of our friends describe as "german", others as "funny".

And her French has an English accent, our friends in France say.

Poor Lilia! But I am confident it'll work out ok.

Shocker: my Daughter is a Mancunian!

I may have mentioned this before: Lilia has a Mancunian accent when she speaks English!

While English people from the south would probably see that as a problem, I think it is funny. And it will make it blatantly obvious to everybody that her English has been acquired in England, as opposed to at school or during a year in the US or a week in the UK.

Speaking of accents: Lilia calls herself "Nija" (pronounced somehwat like "Neeya") most of the time, but she recently surprised us by flawlessly reproducing how her pre-school teacher pronounces the name (the first "i" is different, the "l" is different, and the second "i" is longer).

We'll see how long it takes before she can say her name the way it's supposed to sound...