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 ;-)

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!

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!

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.

On Good Books and Difficult Translations

"We're Going on a Bear Hunt" by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury is on of my favourite books for the babelkids. (I might have mentioned it before.) All three of them like it and BK3 (now 2.5yo) wants to see and hear it pretty much every night currently.

We managed to get three versions of the book: English, French and German.

Now I fully get that translating is a difficult job. Especially for a book that comes with a rythm and all.

(Btw: BK3 has seen this video a couple of times a lot and demands that I do the same routine.)

So how do the French and German version fare? Honestly: sub-par.

The French translation tries to stay close to the text. That works in a sense, because if you know the original, you can read from the French version in English, i.e. translate on the fly. I'm sorry, but the French just doesn't work.

The German version, though, is absolutely abysmal. The translation is trying to stay closer to the pattern, but it does so in a stupidly funny way that I think really doesn't do the book any justice. At all. As in: do NOT buy that.

Yes, I do understand that translating is difficult. Maybe for some really good books it just shouldn't be done at all.

Nochmal auf Deutsch, weil es wichtig ist: Die Deutsche Version ist wirklich schlecht. Lieber die Englische kaufen und ein paar Wörter lernen.

Unusual Mixing of Languages

The following discussion happened earlier tonight:

Me (to the Babelwife): J'ai quand même arreté bosser il y a 10 minutes... [French: I only finished working about 10 minutes ago]
BK1: Warum? [German: Why?]
Me: Weil ich heute tierisch viele Sachen machen mußte. [German: I had to do shedloads of things today.]
BW (didn't really listen): Quoi? [French: What?]
BK1: blabla besaf blablabla [Arabic: he had to do lots of things today.]

Interestingly enough, we notice these kinds of situations. That can only mean they don't happen that often. Who would have thought?

Also: I can not repeat Arabic phrases my family use. Neither vocally nor in writing. Sorry about that.

English, English, English

There is currently no need to ake a new family language diagram because BK3 is only just starting to make recognisable sounds. She seems to say her oldest sister's name, "mama" and "papa", and yesterday I thought she repeated "Katze" ("cat") after me, but I'm not sure.

BK2 is now using English words everywhere. No matter what language she is currently speaking, 20% up to 90% of the words are English. That makes for some very funny phrases, of course. The Babelmum was glad the other day when she noticed BK2 does it with German as well, whereas I have gotten so used to it I didn't even notice anymore.

Mind you BK2 still expects me to say it back in proper German. When I don't, she looks at me like something important is missing.

BK1 is reading a lot, preferrably in English, but she can read French and German. She is also interested in learning the Arabic alphabet and she is writting letters on the whiteboard and even putting them together to form words. She also writes a lot, again in English. Her latest thing is to write a diary, parts of which she will then type up on a web site that allows pupils to post (like a forum).

There is a lot of English flying around in our house currently.

But our last trip to Algeria was a couple of months ago and the last visit from someone German even longer. I guess it's totally normal that without further input, all kids lean towards the language we're immersed in. Our trip to Germany around Christmas is likely to bring a lot of German back.

Updated Family Language Diagram

It's been a long time but here comes the updated language diagram, now with BK3!

BK1 & BK2 both speak English by default, except when they talk about what they play, which they still do in Arabic. They also speak German and French when the situation is right. The mix a lot when they speak with us, and even when they don't, the grammar more often than not is English.

It is called "majority language" for a reason. *sigh*

BK3 obviously doesn't speak so far. The girls will address her in whatever language is appropriate. They will speak Arabic with her if she is with Babelmum and German if she is with me. If BK3 is alone they will use whatever language first crosses their minds, I think.

We need more holidays in Algeria and Germany, I guess. Or more visitors.

Reading

In a funny coincidence, just when Fiona wrote an article about too much reading, BK1 started to read more seriously. We are seeing the exact same thing.

2 weeks ago, she was a normal 5-year-old, playing with her sister, running around a lot, dressing up, the works. And then something happened. She picked up some book and decided to read it on her own. I have no idea which one it was that started the interest.

When we went to do a bit of shopping on Sunday, she took her book and read it in the car even though she was feeling slightly sick. She then carried it around with her when we split up and while the Babelmum shopped, BK1 was sitting on the floor reading at H&M and other shops.

She is half-way into "Pippi Longstocking" currently, and she spends pretty much every second she has with her book.

I certainly remember phases like that, but a lot later in my life! I have this recollection in my head of one day when I wanted to "just read a bit before sleep" and then my father walked in to wake me up for school and I was still at it. I must have been about 15 years old, maybe older.

Also, unlike her I read German books only until I was 18 years old. And BK1 is already reading English, French and German.

Mind boggling, really.

Phone Calls

BK2 was holding her yellow plastic telephone and making calls.

I love how serious she is about it. She tells me who she is currently on the phone with then proceeds to perfectly emulate a phone call: "yes... yes... ah... no... I'm busy... yes... ok... ok... I'm playing puzzle with daddy, yes..." and so on for ages. Eventually she'll hang up and call someone else. Adorable.

She copies our behaviour on the phone really well. And it probably helps that she speaks to her grandparents mainly via skype and phone.

Now here's one more sign that English is the number one language in her head: her calls with English people take a lot longer than others. And she calls them more often.

Her preferred person to call currently is our friend Fiona. I would say that she spends more time "on the phone" with Fiona than all other people combined!

Now the Babelmum speaks with Fiona regularly and she thinks that explains it, but I'm not so sure. I think it is because BK2 knows a lot of things to say in English.

Also, since her conversations seem to almost make sense, I guess she is imagining the other side and then answering to what she just imagined. It might just be that she feels more at ease imagining stuff in English.

Or maybe I'm just making things up now.

Funny enough this goes against the current trend towards German that BK1 & BK2 show. Since the birth of BK3 a month ago we had family over twice from Germany so they had a lot of exposure and it shows.

English Really is the First Language

More and more often I find myself in this kind of situation with BK1: We are speaking about something or I'm telling a story and I use a word that BK1 doesn't know. Today it was "Abenteuer", "Adventure".

Not long ago I would have explained the word, but recently I found the easiest way is to say it in English.

Tonight I noticed I was doing it and I thought 'I'm being lazy, I really should explain this in German!'

The two main points are, of course: 1. her English vocabulary has passed German vocabulary in size. I'm guessing it is bigger than French and Arabic vocabulary, too. When did that happen? And 2. she grew that vocabulary entirely outside our house, it is truly foreign to me. This is very strong evidence that both OPOL and MLAH work and work very well.

One thing: I have this idea in my head that at some point, I will start wondering how well I know my children. I always thought that and I probably placed that time somewhere around puberty. But now I'm wondering just how unknown my daughters will be given their first language is not mine. The time might come a lot earlier than I thought!

Ew.

All I can do is keep OPOL alive. Let's hope the little German part inside their heads will always be my home...

Babelkids and Languages

It's interesting to follow the development of language between BK1 and BK2.

When they are playing they often switch to English, especially if they're pretending to be someone else or something else. They have done this for a long time, even before BK2 started attending pre school.

But when they discuss something serious or switch to talking about what they play, they switch language immediately.

Amazingly, they have different preferences: BK1 always switches to Arabic while BK2 uses German as much as Arabic!

I have no explanation for this. Is German easier for BK2? Maybe.

The funny thing is that whoever switches away from English first sets the language they both will use, at least for a couple of phrases. They will then invariably fall back to Arabic at some point before they go back into play and use English again.

Funny, isn't it?

Interpreting is Easy for a BabelKid!

(This is the 100th article if I counted correctly. I'm amazed!)

Anyway, we were having dinner and were talking about something. The word "cozy" was uttered by someone and this is what followed:

BK1: "Papa, was heisst 'cozy'?" ("papa, what does 'cozy' mean?)
BD: "gemütlich"
BK1: "ah"
BM: "Ca veut dire quoi, 'gemütlich'?" ("what does 'gemütlich' mean?")
BK1: "snuggly" (and she makes a gesture like she's pulling up her blanket)

How easy it was for her to find the word and say it! I was still thinking about how we Germans always claim that "gemütlich" has so many things attached it cannot properly be translated.

And that's the difference between speaking a couple of languages and growing up with them. I will never be able to do what she does.

*sigh*

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!

More English

BK2 started pre-school yesterday.

She will only go twice a week for the time being, but it's the first time she'll be immersed in English more or less exclusively. How will that affect her languages?

Currently she is speaking mostly French and Arabic with Babelmum and BK1 and something that sounds like German with me. She also speaks English when she plays in the street, but because we're in Manchester and it is raining all the time she doesn't do it that much.

I guess the good thing is that her friend is in the same pre-school and she speaks french and arabic with him.

We'll see how the diagram changes in the future ;-)

Multilingual Phrases are not Dead

No, they're back with a vengeance!

Babelmum and the Babelkids are still with the in-laws in Algeria. Their Arabic is getting better and better and naturally the other languages are on a bit of a holiday, so to speak. Probably relaxing at the beach while I'm working, those lazy .... Anyway.

I had BK1 on the phone earlier via skype, and when we had finished, she said:

"Kann ich abcrochen?"

That's three languages, German, English & French. German provides two words ("Kann ich" = "Can I"), one prefix ("ab") and correct grammar, French provides part of one word ("crocher" comes from "raccrocher" = "to hang up") and English, well, my guess is that she translated "raccrocher" to "hang up" and then split "raccrocher" apart and tried to make it German by translating the "up" to "ab".

Or maybe she actually said "Kann ich upcrochen", I'm not sure.

Whichever it is, "crochen" is the correct verb form for this sentence. Or rather it would be if it was a German word.

Why English?

I think we have mentioned before that BK1 & BK2 often use English when they're playing. Now that BK2 is starting to really speak this has only increased. The Babelwife and I try to stop them, but frankly, it's a losing battle.

The funny thing is that they switch back to Arabic, German or French as soon as they want to tell the other something important or non play-related.

So why do they use English when they play?

My guess is that BK1 spends most of her time with children who speak English and she obviously plays with them a lot. She does not play with me or BW as much. So in a play situation, the language is likely to be English. That means that whatever she says in that situation will be easily available in her head in English but not necessarily in another language.

BK1 and now BK2 basically have a huge repertoire of play-related phrases in their heads, all English.

BW has another theory which she will hopefully publish here soon. Watch this space!

Updated Family Language Diagram

I have updated the family language diagram again. BK2 is now also speaking German to BK1 when she feels in the mood. It looks like the language of play for them is English, though.

Updated Family Language Diagram

I have update the family language diagram to reflect that BK2 is now happily babbling and can build "sentences" that have more than one or two words.

It's fairly obvious that English is slowly but constantly invading our space, which is not really surprising given we're in England.

BK1's mother tongue is now clearly English. I guess it was inevitable. We shall see what her 5 week stay in Algeria in July will do, but for now there is no doubt.

BK2 picks up everything people speak her way. She happily replies to Souad in Arabic or French, to me in German and to other people in English. Or at least she tries.

Between BK1 and BK2, things are not clear. When they play, BK1 will use English, but when she addresses BK2 for something, she'll use French or Arabic. My guess is that the summer holidays will change this, like they did last year.

And maybe some German will creep back into the picture at some point. I hope.

Missing out on Finesse?

Does any of our readers happen to know whether there is research on a possible correlation of parents' use of language and the time when children start to speak?

I have a theory: my daughters build sentences later than some of their monolingual friends because I do not speak with my wife in my native tongue.

Let me explain.

One of our friends' 2yo daughter is building sentences while BK2 is still at the stage where she uses at most two words together or speaks her own babbling. I am not concerned or anything but I wondered whether the fact that her mother studied languages and expresses herself extremely well helped the girl develop a better framework in her head while she acquired her language skills.

In our case this doesn't happen. I love talking, writing and reading German. I love playing with it. I am able to be a total nitpicker or use my German fairly creatively. But that only works well with people who are similarly eloquent. It certainly does not work with a 4-year-old like BK1. It also doesn't work for me when I speak English or French.

I'm sad to say that my daughters lose out on this aspect of German completely! And not only that: they do not see any of their parents use language in a way that we both are truly capable of. It is not a fundamental flaw in the OPOL method, though. Even between the two of us, we are not able to gauge the linguistic abilities of the other properly.

Makes me wonder whether my children would have been able to speak more refined German had both their parents been German-speakers...

I am an optimist. I am willing to bet that once they start reading books, they will be able to catch up or maybe even more than that: catch up for more than just one language.