May 10, 2005
Bedtime story
My youngest daughter, Gamma, is eight and has recently complained she wants to be just one thing. Just Austrian. Or just American. But you're special, I tell her. But I don't want to be special, she answers. I just want to be me, I just want to be one thing. But you are you, I say. And think of all the advantages.
Such as? She asks.
Such as, I say, eh, massive visa advantages or something.
Advantages, I think. Advantages. This is just the way things turned out, kiddo. At school they split her class. All the normal, Austrian kids went into one class. The others ended up in the second, smaller class. Kids with learning problems, kids with behavioral problems, gifted kids and the foreigners. Gamma ended up in that one.
That turned out to be a stroke of luck: the teacher is a miracle and Gamma's doing great.
"Except she never speaks English in class," the teacher said, "when we do English."
That was the main advantage, right, of having an American father, I had always thought. Bilinguality. But Gamma doesn't want to stand out. So she pretends not to speak English. She speaks it with me, more than her (bilingual) older sister ever did. But how well does she actually speak it? How will she do with her relatives when she visits this summer?
Last night she read us a story at bedtime. A German children's book. Then we gave her an English book to read and held our breath. She sat there, book in lap, and just read it. With hardly any more mistakes than she had with the German book. We gave each other "thumbs up" signs behind her back. I guess she's doing fine.
Posted by Mig at May 10, 2005 08:12 AMi'm about to go to bat to keep kein OUT of the english classes at his school. ugh. it would be like enrolling me in a class for getting organized. thanks, but my furniture is already in alphabetical order, and kein similarly will not benefit from a "deees eees aaaiee CAT!" class.
hey! we have books for you to borrow! help me remember.
Posted by: anne at May 10, 2005 09:27 AMI used to work in a department with many academics visiting Australia, and they quite frequently reported that their children would very quickly insist on using English all the time, both at school and at home, even if English was their parents' second or third language. If they were young enough, they'd sometimes either lose fluency in their native tongue or retain only the ability to understand it.
Posted by: Mary at May 10, 2005 10:44 AMToday, we took daughter #2 to sit on daughter #1's horse. They pranced about for a bit.
Back at his stall, the horsey girls came up and asked daughter #1 why her little sister could speak english.
Uh, I said, so can Sally.
Deep, dark secret. And she could pass, I tell you, she has Lizzy McGuire down pat....
They learn it, but every language has it's own place and people.
Posted by: sue at May 11, 2005 12:01 AM