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!

Official: Daughters not really German

We had friends over from Germany this week end. We handn't seen them for years and it was great to spend time. They also have two kids who are a bit older than BK1 and BK2, respectively.

BK1 and the older boy were a perfect fit while the younger girl mostly wussed around BK3. Overall they were all playing together really well. Happy days.

At some point we had a discussion about language and it was the first time that someone clearly expresses that my girls do not speak proper German. Unfortunately they are right, too, especially when it comes to BK2. Her grammar is particularly English.

My theory is that because BK2 grew up listening to all the same sources as BK1, except that she also had BK1 to listen to, she was exposed to more English than BK1. Also, we had to share our time between BK1 and BK2, while BK1 was alone for 2.5 years and had our full attention and thus language.

I am not concerned, because BK2 is perfectly able to express herself in German. I am also sure she'll be able to pick it up properly in no time should she ever want or need to. I'm just a bit sad.

After our friends had disappeared, I asked BK1 whether she got used to speaking German in the three days. For my ears she had definitely improved. Her response, though, was: "it's still difficult".

*Sigh*

We'll see where this all goes.
 

Report on Linguistic Effects of our Algerian Adventures

As expected, our month-long stay in Algeria has had beneficial effects on the children's fluency in Arabic and French.

BK3 is the perfect illustration of how easy it is to be monolingual. We've been immersed in this multilingual thing for so long, it has almost become second nature. How  lovely it was to hear BK3 repeat all words in Arabic and use them. How easy it was not to wonder what language she is using. And how liberating to drop my attention to giving a fair exposure to the minority language.
BK3's vocabulary, mostly in Arabic and partly in French, just exploded during our stay. She also began to string words together to say things like: "Arwahi lahna" (come here) .

BK2 has started making complete sentences in French, thanks to Nickelodeon Jnr. Who said TV was bad? She now says things like: "Je suis trop occupée maintenant, je ne peux pas manger", (I am too busy now, I cannot eat), or "Je ne veux pas passer toute la journée à peindre, peindre est très difficile" (I don't want to paint all day, painting is very hard).
Of course she makes mistakes: "Je dore maman" instead of j'adore maman. But hey, she is 4 and a half and muddles through four languages!

BK1's accent in Arabic is slightly less pronounced. She still struggles with some guttural sounds. As with the other two, her vocabulary both in Arabic and French increased. She is also more confident in her ability to make herself understood in Arabic. Arabic sentences flow more easily. Here she is in our garden a week ago, back in England.

ps: BK1 is 7.5, BK2 is 4.5 and BK3 is 22 months.