We are now reaching a stage where I think it is accurate to begin referring to V as "bilingual." Let's keep in mind, of course, that she is only 14 months old, so it's not like she is participating in long conversations or reading literature in either Swedish or English. Even as her mother, I must be modest in these claims. I feel I can start to call her bilingual at this point for a couple of reasons. First, she seems to have about as many words in Swedish as in English. Second, and more importantly, she seems to have grasped the fact that, in some cases, she has two words for the same concept. The best examples so far are bollen/the ball, anka/duck, and hunden/the dog.
That is not to say that she separates these out 100 percent of the time for all of her "people." Today, for example, she pointed to a duck and told me "anka." Later, she pointed to a duck (the girl has a lot of ducks!) and said to her pappa, "Duck, duck." Then she seemed to realize, "Wait, this is Pappa," and she switched to "anka, anka." Needless to say, he was impressed.
A new trick is the repetition of animal noises. You know, the classic, "What does the X say?" Interesting here is that these are a mixed bag. It must be too much for her to absorb that in Swedish the pig says "nöff, nöff," but in English it says "oink, oink." So V just has one animal sound per animal, and these noises are a mixture of English and Swedish. The pig, for example, speaks Swedish in V's world. The chicken, however, is strictly English speaking (bock, bock, bock, bock, bock). The dog/hund works out OK, because "woof, woof," works in both languages. At least the kid gets some breaks!
New words in the past week or so include star (she points at our Christmas stars), pretty, car, and egg. This is ägg in Swedish, which is pronounced the same as the English word, so it doesn't count in the "bilingual" list mentioned above.
Words that she got only part of the time before and has now mastered include bye-bye (she nows understands in what situations to use it, which is a big step) and, it seems, no.
The word egg gets applied to a lot of concepts. Anything that has an oval shape gets called egg. Anything that has a round or circular shape (even the polka dots on her shirts, for example) gets called "ball." This distinction is quite interesting; apparently on some level she recognizes different shapes.*
The Finnish is still hard to assess. It seems she has at least a couple of words, but she doesn't use them when she is with us (of course). She will be spending more time with her babysitter and Finnish-speaking friends as of January, so it will be interesting to see what happens.
*This just happened (I am writing this addendum the next day): V just noticed a little star shape on the car she got for Christmas, and she pointed and said, "Star." So definitely she recognizes shapes. I guess this is no different, though, from recognizing, say, a dog, a baby, or a banana. Right?
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