Multiculturalism and Music

Il n'y a pas de hasard, il n'y a que des rendez-vous - Paul Eluard.

Also the first verse in Ouverture by Etienne Daho.

Babeldad is somewhere on a Swiss mountain doing what he loved doing best when we first met some sixteen years ago: looking at the night sky and photographing stars.

I, naturally, instead of going to bed early and catching up on some well-needed sleep, sit at the computer, typing furiously on the keyboard. And I listen to music.

Why Etienne Daho? Maybe because he used to live in Manchester and London. Maybe because he reminds me of some of the music I used to listen to when Babeldad and I first met. Or maybe because he was born and spent a large chunk of his childhood in Algeria, before being uprooted to France...

Music is powerful. It can bring up and trigger unexpected emotions. I do sometimes burst into tears when hearing or singing a song.

What is interesting is that being multicultural, I find myself responding to wildly different genres and languages. Below is a selection of memorable songs and artists to me, in different languages.

Dahmane El Harrachi	Yarrayeh (Arabic)
Abdelkader Chaou	Chehilet Laayani (Arabic)
Raina Rai	Mimouna (Arabic)
Nouara	Ammi azizen (Kabyle)
Enrico Macias	J'ai quitté mon pays and many others
Daft Punk	Something about us
Adriano Celentano	Don't play that song (that Italian accent!)
Carlos Santana	Moonflower

And too many songs by the Beatles and the Bee Gees to list!

Do you listen to music in different languages?

What's in a Word or Four!

Our 26-month-old fourth daughter is in a unique linguistic and cultural set-up.

She was born in German-speaking Switzerland, lives in a mostly English-speaking neighbourhood and is spoken to in Arabic and French by her mother, German by her father, English by her three sisters, and Swiss/German/English by the environment.

Despite (or thanks to!) all these linguistic inputs, it is fair to say that her speech has recently exploded!

Just for fun, we started listing all the words and sentences she can say.
She can name 27 people, three dogs and one cat.
She can request songs by saying: "Timber", "Aicha", "Chebba", "Let it go".
She can say simple words such as pipi, caca, dodo, oui, bébé, no, yes, quoi, oui etc.
And she can say the following non-exhaustive list of common words and phrases.

Arabic	French	German	English
باب (door)	Nutella	heiss	thank you
خبز (bread)	fromage	Brot	what the heck
تشينة (orange)	banane	ab	go away
كلب (dog)	stylo	guck	again
قط (cat)	pardon	Auto	cat
برا (outside)	balançoire	Mund	come on
ضوء (light)	encore	Auge	sleep
صباط (shoe)	bus	Kopf	tractor
قعدي (sit)	camion	Kinn	mango
وعلاه (why)	manteau	Backe	seesaw
	bêtise	Hals	iPad
	gaufre	Nase	ball
	crème	Hand	thank you
	glace	Finger	please
	compote	Jacke	gone
	debout	Lampe	move
	poubelle	Boden	TV
	poupée	Hund	hug
		Schuh	what did you do
		Kuh
		Zebra
		Elefant
		Tigger
		Giraffe
		Affe
		Raus

The influence of the environment via German and English is staggering already. I think I am doing well though, given I am the only source of Arabic and French.

Language and Cultural Identity

In the train from Switzerland to France, I overheard a woman and a man speaking English. Then I saw them: they were Asians. This made me wonder about their history. It also reminded me of this funny video and how Physical appearance is not necessarily a reflection of one's cultural identity.

My daughters, aged 11, 8 and 6 have fair skin and light hair. They speak British English between them with a Northern England accent. Anyone overhearing them would have no idea that their father is German and their mother is African

When people in Algeria first hear them speak Arabic, they usually react in three steps:

• First, marvel at their ability to speak the local lingo, 
• Then, make fun of their accent and how hard it is to understand them
• Finally, denigrate Arabic as a useless language anyway.

This results in puzzled looks from my girls: "What? all those times you tell us to 'please speak Arabic', now it turns out this language is useless?" followed by utter silence.

This makes me angry. These are the very people who should praise our efforts and celebrate our achievements. It is hard to keep a minority language going, especially when only one parent speaks it, let alone with three more languages and two dialects in the mix!

So, how should you react when someone speaks your language whose physical appearance does not match the language in your mind?

Do

• Acknowledge one's genuine surprise - a dose of curiosity is healthy
• Express whatever positive feelings you feel about this
• Continue conversing in that language if both are happy to.

Do not

• Ask where they are really from!
• Make fun of the accent nor the language
• Correct mistakes if you were not asked to do so explicitly

Cultural identity should never be bestowed from the outside. It is up to each person to decide what their identity is, that is if they wish to label it at all.

Take a look at the rest of the series:  A-Z of Raising Multilingual Children hosted on The Piri Piri Lexicon.

Trilingual Toddler

Here are two conversations my 22-month old toddler and I had recently.

Me: "Nrouhou letounoubil?" (shall we go to the car?)
Baby: "Oui! Auto!" (Yes! Car!)

Tot: "Berra!" (outside!)
Me: "Nrouhou berra?" (shall we go outside?)
Tot: "Oui, berra. Come. Sebbati" (Yes, outside. Come. My shoes)

There's so much going on in these few sentences.

First, my Algerian dialect clearly shows French and Spanish influences: the word for car stems from automobile;  the word for shoes comes from zapato.

Then my daughter says the Arabic berra, the german Auto, the English come and the French oui. Mind you, not really sure whether she's saying come or komm in German.

In any case, BK4 is officially at least trilingual!

Arabic Lessons Are Go!

BK1 and BK2 started Arabic lessons on Saturday!

I have been teaching the girls how to read and write in Arabic at home, for a few years now. We've achieved some success in that BK1 (11 years old) can decipher words and spell them. BK2 (8 years old) can do the same with simple, familiar words. However, it's been a struggle. We haven't been able to do it regularly enough.

Now, with weekly classes, it's an hour and a half where they'll only listen to and speak in Arabic.

The face BK2 made when the teacher spoke to her was just a sight. She was like: Whaaaat?Absolutely hilarious! See, not only did the teacher speak in Classical Arabic, but she used her dialect and regional accent.

The teacher is from Iraq - she looked so sad when she told me. The other kids' parents are from Morroco, Eritrea, Sudan, Tunisia. Some of them speak Arabic at home, some only know German.

I am hoping they enjoy the classes!

Ski Camp

BK1, who will be 11 in March, is currently taking part in a ski camp. Two firsts: going to a holiday camp and skiing.

She's a mere two-hour drive, but she could be at the other side of the world, she's been gone for 5 days today. I can't wait to see her tomorrow and hear all about it!

Meanwhile she sent me the following messages via her friend's phone.

Bonjour hadawin nadna. le snow ouw vraiment vraiment high. Est-ce que ça va el tmec. Eneya ou Anna ana nrcdo kdem each other ou berech kenna ne cuddleo ma each other. Comment sont les autres? Caien une notre Fille ou ai vraiment vraiment funny. Je pense peut-être gdro ne bio friends ou Anna aussi. Koli hello end les autres ou blic eni OK. Miss you. Le Internet hana ouw Rubbish. Bye Bye

Geh ouw bien. Rachna fok la piste rouge le whole morning. Ou berk tacht 5 fois. Krib rocht fok la Piste noire

 Next time anyone asks me what do the girls speak, I'll show them this!

Arabic "Camp"!

The girls have just gone back to school after their two-week long Herbstferien (Autumn holidays).

For the last ten days, I have been teaching BK1 (10.5 years old) and BK2 (7.5 years old) how to read and write in Arabic. We have been doing between 10 and 30 minutes every day, following the Algerian textbook for 6-year olds. I can already see a lot of progress: BK1's reading and writing are improving, and BK2 has started to read too!

Here you can hear both girls reading (deciphering) a sentence, without me first reading it to them.

You can hear BK4 babbling (shouting!) in the background. It's hard going, I was in my bathrobe, and BK3 was on the iPad. But hey it works somehow.

I hope we can keep the momentum now that the girls are back in school. We'll have to downscale the frequency and duration of lessons. Now that they have gained confidence in their skills though, I am hoping we will manage a weekly session, life permitting.

You know what the best thing is? BK1 said our daily lessons have been FUN!

BK1 can read Arabic!

When we landed at Algiers Airport a few weeks ago, I noticed BK1 (10 years old) looking at the signs in Arabic. I said to her casually that I was hoping she'd be able to read Arabic by the end of our 6-week stay. She then squinted at the sign and spelled out "ma-t-a-r م ط أ ر " (airport), just like that. Turns out she could already read!

During our stay with my parents, particularly at mealtimes, BK1 would decipher the Arabic writing on bottles of water, lemonade etc. Granted, she has a limited grasp of what the words she is reading mean, but still! How many 10-year olds are there who can read in 4 languages?

Compared to our friends' son, who at 10 years of age passed his Arabic GCSEs successfully, grasping how to read is neither here nor there. However, compare that to the vast numbers of kids of a similar age, born to both Algerian parents and who are unable to speak colloquial Arabic, let alone read or write classical Arabic, and I feel sort of ... satisfied.

Yes, the road is long before BK1 achieves some literacy in Arabic, but we're on it :)

BK3 Lost Her German

The Babelkids spent 7 weeks in Algeria with the Babelwife and her parents this Summer.

Towards the end of their stay, we noticed that the kids became less interested in speaking with me via skype. As an example: three days before their return, BK3 came into the room while we were skyping, only to look at the screen and almost run off.

Now they are back and we know why: she completely lost her German!

BK3 is now trying to speak with me mostly in French, but with a lot of Arabic mixed into the sentences, which means I have a very hard time understanding what she wants.

7 weeks!

It only took 7 weeks for her to pretty much revolutionize her communications. Pretty good going, I'd say.

Am I worried now? Nope. It'll come back.

I am more worried because we're in the so-called "German-speaking part" of Switzerland. My German is tuned to Northern Germany, and I can tell you that I can not understand a single word when people speak down here, unless they make an effort. I am not worried about that, of course, but I am worried because my daughters will very quickly pick up the accent and I won't understand them anymore ;-)

English 1 - The rest 0

She's succeeded. BK2 has succeeded in Englishising her sisters. The shift from Arabic to English started a while ago, but was mostly confined to role play. Now most conversations between the girls are in English, even serious arguments! To top it off, BK3 even speaks to us, her parents, in English!

I find myself nagging them all day: "stop speaking in English, speak Arabic!", which usually results in either silence, whispering (in English) or a short Arabic phrase followed shortly by a flow of English conversation.

How to redress the balance? Is it too late? Are they bound to think of our minority languages as confined to conversing with us? I worry particularly about Arabic, as it is mostly a spoken language at this moment in time with me being the sole source.

I wonder what effect our move to Switzerlnd will have on the sibling language.

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!

A Colourful Language

Over the last three months, I have been noting down some of the colourful phrases our three daughters come up with. Here are a few gems.

This hopefully explains why I find it impossible to say what language my children speak!

You might find the following colour key handy.

Green = Arabic; Red = English; Blue = French; Orange = German

BK1 - 8 years and 10 months

When talking with me, BK1 usually uses Arabic grammar with quite a few English and French words. When conversing with her dad, she uses German with some English words/phrases.

Ich hab' das gerade ungetangled* 

BK2 - 5 years and 11 months

Out of the three, BK2 is undoubtedly the one who uses the most English. She has the superpower of making Arabic or German sentences using only English words! I think she wins the code-switching award hands down!

Es ist all right wir aklen mit das! 
Weil ich bin tired, ich bin almost super flumpy! 
Weil es war nothing, ich habe geninjad* around
Ich war nicht even in die cuisine
Rani un peu warm

BK3 - 3 years and 2 months

As BK3 does not attend nursery yet, she is more exposed to our minority languages than the other two were at a similar age. Still. English is ever-present thanks to her older two sisters speaking it at home while playing. She mixes slightly less English in her conversations with her dad and me. 

Ich will Glaeser cherchen
Die feuilles tahen 
das ist noch vraiment skhoun
maddirich encore
Ich will nicht laaben noch das Musik

* ungetangled and geninjad must be the ultimate rainbow words: English verbs conjugated in German!

One Person One Language

BK3 turned 3 last week, on Bonfire Night. Her multilingualism is coming in force, particularly since she started going to preschool two mornings a week, a few weeks ago. She does now often string correct sentences together in Arabic, English, German and French, albeit with loads of code-switching.

This morning at the breakfast table, BK1 is a bit moody, not having had enough sleep last night. BK3, wanting to make things better, offers her some peanut butter toast.

BabelDad: BK1 mag kein Erdnussbutterbrot     
BK3:         BK1 mag Honig?
BabelDad: Vielleicht
BK3:        BK1, t'hebbi laassal?
BK1:        Non
BK3:        Papa, Lilia mag nicht Honig

Perfect illustration of OPOL, One Person One Language!

Children's Words

The girls have had a fabulous time at my parents; their daily activities mostly consisted of swimming in the Mediterranean, watching cartoons in French, and eating biscuits and chocolate.

Their Arabic and French came on tremendously. They have been code-switching to their heart's content, saying some funny and touching things. Here is a little collection.

***

BK2, urging me not to deflate her armbands: "Ma t' un-gonfle-hum-ch!"
This is a whole programme in itself. Ma t' ... ch is the negation form in Arabic; hum is Arabic for them; gonfler is French for inflate; un is the English prefix. How did she come up with this amazing sentence? Go figure!

***

BK1, while preparing for our return to Manchester: "habbit nrouh l Manchester, w habbit neq'oud hna fi zayer" (I want to go to Manchester, and I want to stay here in Algiers)

***

BK2, two days before we left Algiers: "ifeely like home hnaya" (it feels like home here), code-switching between Arabic and English.

***

BK3, two days after our return to Manchester: "J'ai bringue trois tbassa" (I have brought three plates). Another trilingual sentence, this time from 34-month old BK3.

***

Me: "BK3, tu es une petite fille sage"(You are a well-behaved little girl)
BK3, outraged: "Je ne suis pas un petit singe!" (I am not a little monkey!)

Blast from the Past

M, a friend of mine from uni, gave us the great pleasure of visiting us with his wife and two children. They made a brief pause on their road trip from Belgium. We're glad they stopped by.

I loved that the first thing his five year old daughter did when she arrived was to look up at her mother and  utter a long sentence, unintelligible to me. That answered any questions I might have had on the family's linguistic situation. They are clearly multilingual.

M's family is a perfect example of OPOL. The children speak Czech with their mother, French with their father, and mainly Dutch outside of the home.

It was such a lovely encounter. Not only did I get to catch up with an old friend, and introduce our respective families, we also witnessed all our children conversing and playing happily in French.

One of the lingusitic highlights of that afternoon was BK2 pleading with M, as they were preparing to leave: "teqqedrou tzidou teqaadou h'naya?" (Can you stay here a little longer?). M, who is half-Algerian, had not spoken Arabic up till then. However, BK2 knew that M spoke Arabic. Based on this piece of info, she consciously or subconsciouly decided to speak to him in what she considered their most common language. 

The  shortest distance between two points is a straight line, unless we are talking about languages and culture...

And of course, M replied to BK2 in Arabic!

I don't speak French!

Bath-time and mealtimes seem to be quite conducive to multilingual talk in our family.

Yesterday, during bath-time, the girls were chatting excitedly about all the things they will do during our holiday in Nice.
We will be staying with our friends C (French), A (German) and their four children aged 11, 8, 5 and 1. The children mainly speak French, apart from the oldest who understands and speaks some German.

Promenade des Anglais

BK2, aged 5, then started worrying over her weak French. She had a little voice when she said: "I don't really speak Francais. I speak Arabic, Arabic, Arabic, French; Arabic, Arabic, Arabic, French"; mostly Arabic words interleaved with French vocabulary.

This is the child who whenever urged to stop talking in English at home, and switch to Arabic, would usually go (in Arabic!): "I can't speak Arabic. I can only speak French".

Here she is now showing how knowledgeable she is of her own language capabilities.

As to her not being able to speak French, I have no worries at all. I am sure she will be stringing sentences two days at the latest into our stay. I will report back!

ps: I spent 20 minutes writing this post only to realise afterwards that BabelDad beat me to it!

When OPOL Does Not Work - Exposure, Glamour Factor and Resources

When OPOL does not work, it can be difficult to find the reasons. Many people put it down to lack of exposure to the minority language, oftentimes citing a minimum requirement of 30% to 40% of exposure.

Annabelle from The Piri Piri Lexicon is a linguist. Here she takes apart the "myth" that children need at least 30% exposure to a language in order to acquire it.

Not being a linguist myself, I can only speak of our own experience. We are a quadrilingual family (see our family language diagram):

Mother - Algerian Arabic

Father - German

Mother & Father - French

Majority language outside the home - English

Our two older children (8 and 5) are exposed to English for at least 8 hours a day, between school, friends, after-school activities, TV and books. Knowing that they are roughly awake for 13 hours a day, that leaves 5 hours for the three other languages. So:
English -> 60%
Arabic, French, German -> 40%

Our "method" is OPOMLAH (One Parent One Minority Language At Home). That does not accurately describe it either as we have three minority languages, being myself in charge of transmitting two of these.

According to the 30-40% rule, there would be no way for our children to speak anything but the majority language. In particular they would have no German at all, as they only see their father two hours a day, and that's when he is not away overnight for work (15%).

Let me tell you this is far from being the case. They do speak German, and in the case of the eight-year old, can read and write it. How come?

To start with there is the week-end, which we strive to always spend together, immersed in our three home languages. We travel once  a year to Germany, and get visitors a couple of times a year, for a weekend at a time. We have loads of books and DVDs.

The main advantage we have is: we do not speak English at home.

Both BabelDad and I speak English fluently. We do code-switch, but we only speak French between us, making English the majority language OUTSIDE the home.

The second very important factor is that German is supported by books and DVDs.

Everything has got a name in German. The girls may not know the words, but they can be sure their dad does and will share it.
This is contrary to Algerian Arabic (or Moroccan Arabic) which lacks resources. Books and programmes are in an altogether different language - classical arabic. Also, the Algerian word for car is tounoubil (automobile), a truck is camioune (camion) and a phone is tilifoune (téléphone). The classical Arabic words exist (sayyara, shahina and hatif). But I would never dream to use them in my daily conversations as it would simply be odd.

Moreover, speaking a second language is usually a positive thing, yet not all languages fall into the same tier.

In most western countries, French and German are glamorous. Arabic is not glamorous.

We are fortunate to be in England, where I can feel at ease speaking my language, most of the time. Not sure I would feel the same way in other countries.

In a bilingual family, where one of the home languages is the majority language, the 30%-40% rule makes sense to me. That means that ideally, the main carer should speak the minority language.

However, the facts that:

• the majority language is also a family language
• the minority language is not supported by written and visual resources

could have precipitated the demise of Arabic acquisition in Stephanie's family. If the minority language had been French, or Spanish, or German, then the outcome might have been different.

As Annabelle points out, it is hard for parents to quantify how much exposure their children get to various languages. Even when an approximation is possible, language absorption is subject to exposure, as well as the languages' social status and availability of supporting resources.

A Sound Victory

This post has been in the draft folder for ages. I've, unsuccessfully, been trying to upload a sound folder to illustrate it.

BK1 and I were talking about Arabic letters and sounds yesterday, during the mayhem that is bedtime with three children. 

All of a sudden, she  looked at me and said: "Listen maman, ح ",  just like that.

It's official, our 8-year old BK1 is no longer a khawaga. She can say haa ح, one of the most elusive sounds in the Arabic language!

Khawaga is a somewhat condescending label, usually given to foreigners who speak Arabic as a second language, but who struggle with the haa sound, substituting it with the easier kha خ sound.

In Algeria, my children with their fair hair/skin and funny accents, are often dubbed khawaga, les étrangèrers, les émigrées etc. These epithets do irritate me. I sometimes want to retort: "Look, my girls can speak four languages. What about you?"

Well now at least one of them should not be called khawage anymore. Ha.

It's not Them, it's You!

"With all those languages, aren't you afraid your children won't learn any language properly?"

Heard that before, haven't we?

The latest incarnation came from a French au-pair girl who works for our neighbours. She reported that often, our children wouldn't understand her.

Turns out she based that on the fact that they didn't answer her, giving her the impression she had not reached through.

In reality, they almost certainly did understand everything she said.

But they know that she is monolingual. They knew exactly what they wanted to say, and usually would have said it easily using their vintage Arabic-French mix with some English thrown in, but of course she wouldn't have understood them, and they knew it.

So instead, they decided to just not say anything. Easier.

In essence, the problem here is not that the Babelkids don't understand French. The problem is, in fact, that the au-pair doesn't understand Arabic.

Ha.

My Childhood TV

BabelDad was surprised to learn I watched Sesame Street when I was a child, in Arabic. I am sure every 30-something Algerian can still hum along the opening score of  "إفتح يا سمسم " (Open Sesame).

Ernie and Bert were of course Anis and Badr. Same stories, but in Classical Arabic.
Even though the girls are familiar with the German version, SesamStraße, they were not that impressed by the Arabic one.

Remember when you were a child, looking up a word in the dictionary, only to realise 10 minutes later you had forgotten what you were looking for? Same thing happens to me on Youtube. The memories flooded in.

While looking up episodes of Sesame Street, I stumbled upon
سنان (Sinan). It follows the adventures of Sinan, a  beaver who is well-endowed in the teeth department, and his animal friends, in the green forest.

This on the other hand caught the girls' attention big time. They have been snuggling on the sofa for the last two hours, watching episodes of Sinan on the ipad, in classical Arabic. BK1 says she understands a bit, while BK2 does not understand much. BK3 is just mesmerized by the screen, as usual.

I find it bizarre to understand a language that my daughters don't. What a funny feeling. It makes me more determined to redress the balance.

This is why we are about to shell out on a satellite dish and a decoder. Not to watch the latest blockbuster or football game, but to have a preschool  TV channel, in Arabic.