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.

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!

Why I'll never Learn German in Switzerland

When we made the decision to move to Basel, two years ago, I thought: "Finally, I'll be able to learn German!".

Haha.

Well, my German has definitely improved but it is nowhere near the level I was hoping it'd be two years down the line.

I've come to realise that Basel is not the place to learn German. Basically, the Swiss do not like to speak German. Many prefer to speak French or English to me rather than Hochdeutsch.

I guess there are many reasons for this.

To start with, people here have their own language, which is unintelligible to most German speakers. Being Algerian, I know exactly how this feels. Algerian Arabic is virtually impossible to understand for anyone who does not come from the Maghreb (time to brush up on your geography!). The best I can do to make myself understood is to speak Classical Arabic. However, I do not like doing so. It somewhat feels false, artificial, forced. The Arab world uses Classical Arabic to read and write, but no Arabic speaker has it as his/her native language.

Secondly, the Swiss may have an inferiority complex with respect to their northern neighbours. With its 80 million inhabitants, strong economy and stature in the world, Germany has the capacity to intimidate many European countries. I have witnessed quite a few Swiss people apologise to the BabelDad for their supposedly bad German!

Thirdly, the Basel area is highly cosmopolitan. Not only does it border Germany and France, but also a third of its population originates from foreign lands. English (and to a lesser extent French) is a preferred Lingua Franca. Moreover, in my experience, Swiss people like to practise their English whenever they get a chance.

In conclusion, I am confident I will learn German, eventually. But it will not be through immersion as I'd originally thought. It will be because I want to and I will put a lot of effort into it.

Ich schaffe das!

"Germanish"

The Babelkids only ever learned German because we tried to be an OPOL family. I spoke German with them in an environment that was otherwise very English and had Arabic and French sprinkled in. Exposure to a language via the breadwinner is always problematic, I guess.

So when they speak German, they code-switch a lot. They use English words, often with German grammar.

Today on Google+, I came across this thought experiment by Jakub Marian: "Germanish". As he puts it: "Just as a funny mental exercise, I wanted to try to see what English would look like if it used German grammar, but with English vocabulary preserved as much as possible. The result is a constructed language which I call Germanish.ust as a funny mental exercise, I wanted to try to see what English would look like if it used German grammar, but with English vocabulary preserved as much as possible. The result is a constructed language which I call Germanishust as a funny mental exercise, I wanted to try to see what English would look like if it used German grammar, but with English vocabulary preserved as much as possible. The result is a constructed language which I call Germanish"

This is actually very close to how my kids speak at times, especially BK3.

Funny.

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 ;-)

Farewell England

As I sit here surrounded by paperwork, I suddenly realise this is my last week in England. In four days, we will say goodbye to ten years of our lives in Manchester. We're leaving dear friends behind. Our babies were all born here.

When we cam here, we thought we'd go back to southern France after a maximum of two years, once the economic situation improved. 10 years, 3 children and a few local moves later, we are now heading back to the continent. Direction: Basel. How long for? That's anybody's guess.

New adventures await us, linguistic ones not being the least. We'll be in the Swiss-speaking part of Switzerland, with large monorities of various backgrounds. It will be a chance dor the BabelKids to improve their German and be in an inherently multilingual environment. It will be interesting to watch the impact this new chapter in our lives will have on our family's languages and culture. 

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!

Multilingual Maths

I find the second hardest task to accomplish with three young children, after international travel, is the morning school run.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock

In our household, school mornings are the most chaotic and loudest times of the day. Between DD1 lounging in bed (she is a night owl like her dad), DD2 deeply absorbed in a sticker book and DD3 playing with Ariel and claiming it is "not morling!, I despair. So from wake-up time at 7.30 and leaving the breakfast table at 8.30, I become une horloge parlante (a speaking clock), telling the time every two to twenty minutes depending on the situation.

We had a great weekend, doing gymnastics, having a school playdate over, a family cinema trip and bike/skate ride. So this morning we all took a particularly long time to get ready. After much barking encouragement, everyone was finally sat at the breakfast table, enjoying the weekend's remnants of waffles and petits pains au chocolat.

At 8.30, it was finally time to leave the table, put shoes and coats on, and convince BK3 that she needs to have a wee if she is to accompany her sisters to school.

BK1 interjects: "Das war zwanzig Minuten" (That was twenty minutes)

BabelDad: "Was war zwanzig Minuten?" (What was twenty minutes)

BK1: "Von wann Mama hat ten past eight gesagt" (From when mum said it was 8 past 10)

Turns out BK1 was doing maths in three languages. I told the time in French, she calculated mentally in English, and said the answer in German! Just like that!

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!

Denglish

BK2 just said "Nein Papa, wir haben unseren Mind gechanget!" (No dad, we changed our minds)

As usual, the (German) grammar is pretty much spot on.

Awesome.

BK2 Worries about her French

We're going to France tomorrow to visit friends.

In the bath this evening, BK2 expressed her worries about being able to communicate with our friends' kids, because they only speak French.

We try to tell her she'll be fine and she speaks a lot of languages, but she's not convinced.

"Ich gette muddled up!" she exclaims, "I'm getting muddled up!".

If you're German, you will have noticed: that was supposed to be a German phrase.

The first word as well as the grammar were indeed German. The rest: not so much.

But how adorably has she captured the very essence of her worries in just one multi-lingual sentence!

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.

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.

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.
 

Musings on Spoken and Written Arabic

I borrowed a couple of dual-language books from our library, in Arabic/English and French/English.

So, at bedtime, BK2 and BK1 asked me to read them التيوس الثلاثة الاخوة جروف , better known as The Three Billy Goats Gruff. 

The girls already know the story in English and French. While I was reading the Arabic version, they kept asking what words and sentences meant, particularly BK2. I found myself translating into colloquial Arabic as I went along.

After a while, BK1 asked:
"Is this book written in Qbailia? (Berber language common in Algeria)"
Me: "No! It's Arabic, can you not tell?"
BK1: "Yes, but why is it different from the Arabic we speak?"
Me:  "I agree, it sounds similar yet different. This is classical Arabic, whereas we speak Algerian Arabic, a colloquial form of the first".

At one point, I read طار في الهواء (tara fil hawaa) and I remarked: "Surely you understand this? We say the same thing: طار فلهوى (tar flahwa)" only to be met with a quizzical look: it's totally different!
Thinking about it, it's akin to similarities and differences between English and German (earth vs Erde) or between French and Spanish (terre vs terra). Being able to map words from one idiom to another does not necessarily mean understanding and mastering both languages.

BK1 reads French and German quite fluently, with no effort from our part other than providing her with books that elicit her interest.
It turns out that achieving literacy in Arabic is going to require quite a lot of input from me. The alphabet is the easy bit. Because of the pronounced differences between the Arabic we speak at home and classical Arabic, it is like learning a whole new language almost from scratch...

ps: BK2 is turning 5 this month, and BK1 will be 8 next month.

Multilingual Toddler

BK1 woke up crying at 4 am, complaining of an earache. It turns out her nose was so congested that it hurt her ear!
While I was tending to BK1 in the room she shares with BK2, I heard BK3 in our bedroom leaving her own bed and climbing into ours.
BabelDad: "Meine Süße"
BK3: "Du schlaf. Mama."

BK3 was 2 yesterday. She is officially a multilingual toddler :)

Less German

The Babelwife has been in Algeria for 3 weeks now with the Babelkids and I'm finally joining them later today.

Babelkids were obviously very excited yesterday evening when I called them. They even asked the Babelwife to give me another call when they went to bed, so they could say good night. Bless them.

I spoke with BK1 and BK2 briefly in the afternoon. It had be a long time, almost 2 weeks. (We kept our calls very brief because there is currently no landline phone where they are, stolen cable apparently, don't ask.)

I noticed that both BK1 and BK2 had lost some of their fluency in German, as they always do during the summer holidays when they're immersed completely into an Arabic-speaking environment.

Interestingly BK2 lost a lot more than BK1 this year, and now I'm wondering why that might be.

Does it help that BK1 has been speaking German for a lot longer than BK2? Probably. Maybe the time when she was the only child we had was crucial, too? I'm convinced BK1 had less English around her when she was little.

I reckon it is a combination of those two.

Whatever it is, I'm happy to see them later and I'm sure all kids will find back to their usual level of German quickly.

The Germans Came

I am hanging the washing up. Well, not really. I am putting the washing on the radiators to dry, cause it is summer, so the heater is on and the rain is pouring down (rant on the British weather over).

The following conversation took place in Arabic and French, but for the sake of comprehension, I translated it into English.

Me: You have not told me what you did today at school.
BK1, casually: Hm... Oh yeah, the Germans came.
Me, wide-eyed: What??
BK1: These German teenagers visited the school today.
Me: Did you speak German with them?
BK1: Yes, I said my name, they said their names and we talked about our hobbies.

Wow! This is BK1's second multilingual adventure outside the home in one week. Thanks to school. Who would had thought.

Scrap Greek and Latin, Teach Arabic and Urdu!

Learning a foreign language in the UK is to become compulsory from age 7. Fabulous news!

In theory.

In practice, who is going to teach them? A primary school teacher whose only claim to foreign language knowledge is French O-levels 20 years ago and a one-week excursion to Tenerife or Fuerte Ventura every now and then?

Now suppose the government can and will recruit native/fluent-speaking teachers, encourages immersion and allocates resources and time for learning languages. These are: Mandarin, French, German, Spanish, Greek and Latin.

Now, I can see the case for French and German, languages of neighbouring countries, quite common and useful for understanding English.

Mandarin and Spanish are increasingly important, due to the economic emergence of China and South America.

But Latin? Greek? One is a dead language and, no offence to Greek-speakers, the other is only spoken by 13 million people worldwide and is sadly in no risk of becoming important on the economic scene any time soon.

What about Arabic, one of the most spoken languages in the world?

And what about Urdu-Hindi? After all, minority language literacy has proven benefits on academic achievement.

I know the benefits of multilingualism, and I think I know how to go about it in practice. I am not sure the British government does...