Not quite bilingual ... not quite monolingual

I've been thinking about myself as a bilingual for the past couple of days. Many people would not consider me to be bilingual -- in fact, I myself do not -- but by the most liberal definitions of bilingualism, I actually qualify.

I've lived in Finland now on a permanent basis for six+ years. All things considered, I rarely speak Finnish, as I work in an English-speaking environment at a university, and I speak English at home with my family. I would venture, then, that Finnish constitutes no more than 5-10 percent of my total linguistic output. In other words, I probably speak English 90-95 percent of the time. My spoken Finnish is limited to encounters with people in customer service positions and a few people who don't speak any English, such as my mother-in-law.*

So here I am, a native speaker of English in a relatively small country like Finland. This is interesting for a lot of reasons. First, my mother tongue is the most learned foreign language in the world. Current figures put the total number of English speakers in the world at something like 750 million, and the vast majority of them are not native speakers.** My second language is Finnish, which, it's safe to say, is not very commonly learned as a foreign language. This creates quite a juxtaposition, wouldn't you say?

As native speakers of English, especially for those of us who work in education or have traveled a lot or lived abroad, it's perfectly normal to hear nonnative speakers of English using English (or "abusing" it, as some of the less tolerant would say). We are used to hearing people speak English with foreign accents. And furthermore, many people are so successful at using English that their status as a nonnative speaker is a non issue.

The same points are not true for Finnish, or at least not for the most part. Just yesterday, I was reading in a Finnish teachers' magazine about how Finns don't have the "ear" for hearing foreigners speak Finnish. More often than not, people working at stores and whatnot treat me with an amused or even resigned politeness when I speak Finnish to them. Sometimes, they simply switch to English, which I am sure they think is helpful. In other situations, for example with monolingual Finns, and, it seems, especially older monolingual Finns like my mother-in-law, there are real challenges in communicating what I want to express.

Many Americans are monolingual, so it perhaps difficult to relate to the challenges of expressing oneself in a foreign language. Can you imagine being constrained in what you want to say by not knowing the right grammatical constructions or the right words--at all? Our intelligence, personality, humor -- pretty much every aspect of our identity is best expressed through language, and if that tool is taken away, what are you left with?

Having personally experienced this type of frustration many times makes me sympathetic towards other foreigners, nonnative speakers of English, and, strangely enough, even the hearing impaired: I, too, know what it's like to sit through dinner parties and other gatherings, straining to keep up with conversation, trying to figure out how to contribute, only to find out that the topic has long since moved on ...

Unfortunately, it seems to be human nature to judge people not on what they say, but the way they say it. For example, a student of mine recently conducted a test in which she asked people to listen to recordings of members of the European Union Parliament speaking English. She found that -- surprise -- those speakers who were native speakers of English were judged as being more competent politicians, as well as more intelligent. This is only one example of many in what is best described "linguistic profiling."

Facing these challenges myself is no doubt why it is so important for me that my daughter feels like an insider here in my adopted country -- both linguistically and otherwise. Lucky for her if she doesn't have to struggle to express her intelligence, humor, or everyday desires. As for me, it's an uphill battle, but I am sure it will, someday, get easier. In the meantime, I, like other foreigners, am forced to retain my humility, self-deprecation, sense of humor, and wits.


*I have to admit that these thoughts that have been going through my head are largely inspired by a rather frustrating exchange with my mother-in-law. We can all relate -- right? In my case, added to this already traditionally fraught relationship is the language barrier. Recently, after a rather long and difficult phone conversation with her (any foreigner knows that phones are the worst mode of communication for us, right?), she called my husband to clarify the details, saying that she couldn't understand what I had been trying to explain over the phone. I pretty much went through the ceiling when I heard that ...
***This figure is arguable, having mostly to do with what it means to "speak" English. In addition, the term "native speaker" is hard to define. But I'll leave those points aside for now.

Two-year inventory

There's a lot going on in that head of hers, language-wise and otherwise. A lot of people have been asking if she ever mixes her languages, which she does, and I'll explain that in a bit. Another frequent question is what language she speaks to herself, when she is playing alone. I'll get to that, too.

I've been doing a fair bit of travelling in the past month or so, which means lots of time spent in airports, trains and whatnot, without much to do. To pass the time, I started compiling a list of the words that V knows so far in English. Even though she knows plenty of words in Swedish and Finnish, as well, it's harder for me to put a count on those, because those are languages she doesn't speak with me.

Little V turns two in about two weeks. Here is an overview of the words and categories she has so far. There are a lot of words, so I won't list them all, I'll just give the categories and counts here.

People's/pet's first names (including a few fictional characters, such as Mickey Mouse): I estimate she knows distinct names for about 35-40 people/characters/pets at this point.

Food items: She can distinguish between something like 30 food items, including juice, fish, coffee, cheese, chocolate, and ice cream (she is REALLY good at identifying the last two items in the list, which means the mom has to be extra sneaky)

Household/dining items: She is familiar with probably 20 or so terms of things that are either in the house or that we use in the house, such as fork, spoon, brush, toothpaste, sofa, floor, lamps, candles, etc.

Animals: She knows the names of something like 15 different animals.

Clothing items: She pretty much knows them all--socks, stockings, boots, shoes, jackets, shirt, diaper, underpants, etc.

Body parts: she can identify tongue, mouth, teeth, nose, eyes, head, arms, feet, legs, belly, fingers, bum, hair. She recognizes chin, cheek, forehead, but she doesn't use these words yet.

Things that are outside: When we go outside, V is very excited to point at everything she sees and call it by name, especially boats, cars, trucks, tractors, airplanes, bicycles, and, as she says, motorbicycles. It's hard to estimate how many distinct terms she uses when we are outside, as there are loads of them, relating to the flora and fauna, animals, buildings, playgrounds, etc. Just for the sake of completeness, I'll put my estimate at around 30 distinct terms.

OK, so that's a summary of all her nouns. Nouns, by far, make up the majority of her vocabulary (hardly surprising).

Here comes the adjectives she uses on a regular basis.
Color terms: She uses color terms, such as orange, pink, blue, yellow, but not with 100 percent accuracy yet. Maybe 70 percent accuracy.
Other adjectives, in no particular order: nice, big, little, naughty, cute, hot, cold, warm, funny, tired

She doesn't have so very many verbs yet. Here are those I can think of: to run, to kick, to hit, to be, to want, to have, to cuddle, to kiss, to hug, to fly, to clean, to (be) hurt, to sleep, to eat, to play, to swing

The slowest words to come to her are the so-called "function" words: prepositions, articles, conjunctions, etc. She doesn't really use any conjunctions yet, not even and. Well, sometimes she uses and, for example when she says, "Want milk AND bread," but that's usually after I have asked her a question, so she is just repeating what I say (I think). When she is speaking without prompting, her way of expressing that something is an addition to, she uses words such as also, other, too. She uses too in English very frequently.

She has some adverbs, such as out, in, under.
Her prepositions are pretty much limited to to, in.

I think that's about it!

It would be interesting to compare her word knowledge in English to her other two languages, but, like I said, since she doesn't speak theses languages to me, I really can't estimate. Let's just say that I have been quite amazed a few times recently when I have heard her speaking to her babysitter, other children, or even her father--she really does speak three languages now!

People have been asking if she ever "mixes" her languages. Previously, I have always answered "no." Up until recently, it always seemed that she separated her languages depending on who she was talking to. This is still mostly true, but lately I have noticed that her languages go more into separate domains, depending on what she is doing and what she is talking about. For example, she knows more words relating to playground play in Finnish than she does in English, because she plays with her babysitter and friends at the playground, speaking Finnish. Sometimes, she even uses Finnish play-related words with me, because she doesn't know the equivalent in English.

Another question I have been asked lately is what language she speaks when she is alone, playing by herself. English is still by far her dominant language (at least for now), but more and I more I hear her speaking Swedish or Finnish to herself. It seems to have to do with the activity, or what she is thinking about at the moment. This morning, for example, I heard her switch into Finnish when she was playing with her Legos. I know that she often plays Legos with her babysitter, so clearly she was thinking about being with her babysitter at the time.

Socks of a different color

Here's a conversation I just had with V, right before bed.

Me: "Let's put these socks on, so your feet don't get cold while you are sleeping."
V: "No. Andra sockies. Not these." (Note: andra is Swedish for 'other.' Oddly enough, this is the only word she continuously merges in both English and Swedish, even though she is perfectly capable of saying other. I still haven't figured out why she does this.)
Me: "But these socks have little bunnies and hearts. They're really nice night-time sockies!"
V: "No. Andra sockies."
Me: "What other sockies do you want?"
V (thinking): "Pink socks."
Now this is interesting, because I am not totally convinced that she could pick pink socks out of line-up. And at this point I'm curious.
Me: "Let's go to your sock drawer. Show me the socks you want."
And that's what we did. Guess what happened then? V pulled out a pair of pink socks, proclaiming,
V: "Pink sockies."
Ta-da!

There are a lot of opinions going on at our house. And, hand-in-hand with this, there are a lot of attempts at using negation. It is really fascinating. I haven't had time to do a blog entry here for a long time, but I have been making notes and will try to catch up soon, just to keep this a complete record (mostly for myself, and maybe the one other person who might read it :-))

But this I just have to mention: V is a little parrot, and she speaks American English. Hooray! One of her favorite ways to exert an opinion is to shake her head and say, "Nope." This is so American; I just love it.
Another nice Americanism is the use of pet names. She calls me "sweetheart" on a regular basis. If she wants more milk, for example, she'll hand me her bottle and say, "More milk, sweetheart?"
Kills me.

Salt of the earth

When V falls asleep at night, she likes to talk about the people she knows and loves. We have little conversations about these people. When we talk about Emily, we talk about how Emily likes to say, "Yeah!" Tonight, V came up with the Emily sentence (if you can call it that) on her own. She said, "Emily," and then she laughed--chuckled, I guess, would be a more accurate description. Then she said, "Emily, yeah." She repeated this a few times, laughing and smiling each time. V knows what the word say means, but she has never used it in a sentence. I guess this is as close it she comes for now. I suppose I am struck not just by the quasi-sentence she made, but also by the idea that she is able to talk about something that is so abstract; Emily moved back to the States about four months ago. I guess V misses her. Actually, so do I!

V has already learned an important lesson: good friends are the salt of the earth.

Mean mamma

V has started saying her first bilingual pun. Min mamma means 'my mamma' in Swedish. Min is pronounced just like the English word mean.So little V says, "Min mamma is nice!" And then she laughs and laughs.

Prepositions and andra stuff

A lot of people ask me if V ever mixes her languages. For the most part the answer is no. I can think of a couple of words, though, that she says in Swedish even when she is speaking in English. One of them is the word andra, which means 'other.' No matter how many times I repeat the word other to her in English, she just doesn't seem to get the idea. Another is the word korv, which means 'sausage.' (Well, I'd call the Finnish version of sausage a glorified hotdog, but that's a different story.)

Whole sentences are spilling out now, right and left. Mostly it seems to have to do with what she observes around her, things like, "There's a tree over there. And there's an andra tree!" Sometimes, there's even a color involved, and, increasingly, it's even the right color. Today, for example, V pointed and exclaimed, "There's a red car. And there's a red car, too!" It's an exciting world she lives in.

I would say that she pretty much has all of the grammatical elements in English at this point, save for a couple. The main exceptions are prepositions and conjunctions. For example, she'll say, "Mamma Pappa come to bed Vera." This means, "Mamma and Pappa come to bed with Vera." She knows a few prepositions, but not many. And I don't think she knows any conjunctions yet.

Just because she has almost all of the grammatical elements, of course, doesn't mean that she has a robust vocabulary. Well, her vocabulary is pretty good for a 22-month-old child, but that's still pretty basic. For example, she doesn't yet know how to use the verb to want, so if she wants something, she points and says, "V's. V's." It gets the idea across, even though there is often some guessing involved in trying to satisfy her.

I continue to be amazed at how she uses whatever words she has to convey what she wants to say. Of course she often surprises me, too, when a word comes out that I had no idea she knew. Today there were a few examples, but my tired brain can't conjure up what they were.

"Spindel!"

I never knew that V knew this word, but a few minutes ago, she pointed with great excitement and started repeating, "Spindel, spindel!" to her pappa. Sure enough, there was a spider crawling across the floor. This was a first; we don't usually get much wildlife up in our fourth floor city apartment.

Her new favorite question, as of a week or so, is "What's that?" She probably says this to me a hundred times a day. And I know that this phase will continue for at least a few years, so I'd best prepare myself for that. She also knows the counterpart in Swedish and Finnish: "Mikä tämä on?" to her Finnish speaking people, and "Vad är det där?" in Swedish.

Make a mamma

I just wanted to note a couple of funny things that V has come up with lately in English. One of them she says when she wants to climb up on a little stool so she can "help" me do whatever I am doing in the kitchen. When she wants to climb up, she says something that sounds like "Make a mamma." I have no idea what it means or where it came from (make with Mamma, maybe?).

The other thing is her name for a new favorite treat, Rice Krispies cereal. She calls it "Aunt Christine." I can only assume that it's the "Chris" sound that sounds the same in both terms. So it's pretty funny when she points up at the cupboard at the box of cereal and says, "Aunt Christine, Aunt Christine!"

blanket statement

It seems more and more that there are two languages operating in that head of hers. She says something to me, then turns to her pappa and says the same thing in Swedish--about all kinds of things: her legs, her toes, going bicycling, going to bed, her toy bear--you name it. This is probably not so incredible to people who actually grew up bilingual, but to me, a monolingual, linguist mom, it is nothing short of fascinating. I simply can't relate; in her world, it's perfectly normal to have two terms for everything. And, increasingly, three terms, if we count her emerging skills in Finnish.

I have a couple more examples of how V uses a word she knows to apply to something that she doesn't have a word for. Oddly, both of these examples refer to napkins. She has one term for paper napkins; she calls them "diapers." Her word for cloth napkins is "blanket." Genius. I do correct her, of course, but as of yet, the word napkin hasn't yet filtered through and come back out in her speech.

The long and short of it

I forgot to mention previously that V has a lot of adjectives--at least in English, possibly in her other languages: big, little, hot, cold, soft, hard, etc. She also seems to have a couple of adverbials: over there, up there, down there, etc.

Today she surprised me by counting out loud in Finnish. No kidding. She was looking at a page from a book, and all of the sudden she said, "Seitsemän (seven)." Then she said, "Seven." OK, I really don't think she knows that seitsemän and seven mean the same thing in different languages; it's probably just a coincidence that she said both things back-to-back. (Really, I may be a proud mamma, but I'm not delusional.) She then started from the beginning: "Yksi, kaksi, kolme ..." Then her pappa came in, and she said, "Sex!" Now, in case you might think that this is a really weird thing for her to say to her father, keep in mind that sex means 'six' in Swedish. It also means the same thing that sex means in English, so rest assured there are plenty of puns in Swedish about the number 6.

21 months and counting

There have been a lot of changes in the past month or so. Sentences are coming out like crazy! Most of the sentences are quite basic, with just copular verbs (she often deletes the copula, but that's hardly surprising): "Cava sleeping." "Pappa drinking." That kind of thing. This morning I heard her use her first successful prepositional phrase in English, which excited me (remember, I am dorky linguist; things like this excite me): "Juice is on the table."

Her use of one language over another has always seemed to depend on to whom she was talking. Lately, though, there seems to be more mixing of codes, which I can only speculate has to do with what she learns in what context, or what she is thinking about. This morning, for example, I was dressing her to get her ready for her babysitter, and she started saying, "Mekko," which means 'dress' in Finnish. She knows the word dress in English, but I guess because she was thinking about her babysitter, the word came out in Finnish.

She has been using quite a few words in Finnish, actually, which makes me think that she probably has a rather large vocabulary in Finnish already. Again, it seems to depend on the context, if a situation makes her think of her babysitter, then she'll say the word in Finnish. For example, she says apina 'monkey' when she is hanging or goofing around, and if she stands on something that is maybe a bit precarious, she says, "Seiso!" ('Stand!')

She has also been throwing a fair amount of Swedish into the mixture lately. For example, she seems to know andra 'other' in Swedish more than in English--even though I do think I have heard her say other in English, too. I guess this is just a case of competing forms.

She is quite adept now at mimicking entire sentences or phrases, and it's quite funny that if she doesn't know all the words -- a string with a lot of short words, for example -- she'll babble part of the sentence. So, for example, if I say, "Do you want some more blueberries, or is that enough?" she might repeat, "Na na want more blueberries, do do dat enough?" And the final word is always emphasized. Oh, and the intonation is always right on target. It cracks me up when she does that!

Another thing she has been saying a lot in English lately is "My goodness!" I know she can only get this from one obvious source, and I am quite embarrassed that I would say this enough for her to catch it ...

One thing V does, and I am uncertain if this is common or not, is to pay close attention to people's names. In a large group of people she is very careful about noting who is there, what their names are, and she always notices if someone has left the room. She points to a person and repeats their first name over and over. She also remembers names. Yesterday, for example, she surprised me when we were looking at a magazine, and she pointed to some ads and said the names of several people we met when we were on vacation a few weeks ago. I didn't think she would have such a repository of names after so much time.

No, really, how are you?

Yesterday V had spent the day out with her pappa, which meant it was a Swedish-speaking day. When she came home and I said hello to her, she asked me, "Hur mår du?" (I think I spelled that right), which means "How are you?" in Swedish. This is probably the first sentence I have heard her say in Swedish -- although chances are, of course, that in her mind it's not a sentence, per se.

English word combinations and sentences are now coming out rather frequently. Yesterday we heard a lot of "Where is it?" and that type of thing.

I want to note that V still doesn't have the /s/ sound or the dental or palatal fricatives at the beginnings of most words. And she loves to make pancakes with me, but she calls them "pancanks."

A new favorite

Here's my new favorite thing that V says, and also one of her new favorite foods: "Pinda butta"!

19-month verbs, plurals, and other stuff

Lately I have been noticing a lot of verbs in English. These include push, close it, open, sleeping, going, drop it, want that, throw it, kiss, cuddle, eat it, help (you), kick ... maybe that's about it. Oh, she has also repeated "Love you" a few times, which of course breaks my heart!

I included the pronouns with the verbs, because V doesn't distinguish word boundaries at this point--which makes sense. So, for example, like I have noted before, she calls out "Help you!" when what she really means is "Help me!" or even just "Help!"

I realized that I have been carrying on a lot about her lack of deictic expressions, but I have been over generalizing. She has been using demonstrative pronouns such as that and this for nearly as long as I can remember -- pretty much as long as she has had her first words. It's the personal pronouns that come later: I, you, she, etc.

There are a lot of two-word utterances these days, especially noun phrases. She uses her own name a lot to indicate that she wants something or to tell us that something is hers; for example, "V's fingers." "V's milk." There have also been some quasi sentences, such as "Cava eating."

She continues to be very interested in colors, as well as in numbers. She keeps trying to talk about colors, and she is getting pretty good at identifying them! She knows the names of the colors, at least, and she seems to be able to recognize blue and green.

About a week ago, she counted to three for the first time. I make it a habit to ask her how many toes and fingers she has, mostly as something to distract her when I am putting on her pajamas or whatnot. The other day when I asked her how many toes she had, she said, "One, two, three ...!" Her father heard it, and he is the numbers person in our family, so he was quite excited about that.

Someone the other day commented that V knows a lot of proper names for people. I hadn't thought of that before, but I suppose it's true. She talks about people she knows, she recognizes people in photos, and she really likes to call and "talk" to her friends on her play phone that her godparents gave her. Every time I hang up my phone she calls out, "Bye bye Tina Tina!" -- which is actually a bit embarrassing (I don't think I talk to Tina that much!). Lately, she has been obsessed with these tiny Pippi Longstocking, Tommi, and Annika dolls that she wants to carry around with her all the time. She talks about them constantly, even showing them to people we see outside on the street.

Some of these words are quite clear; others not so much. The other night, for example, when we had Finnish speaking friends over, they heard her saying Finnish words when I, at the same time, was certain she was speaking English! So, her pronunciation is less that clear much of the time. Some words, such as "Annika" or "window" come out clear as a bell. Certain sounds, though, seem to give her trouble. For example, she routinely leaves off the sounds [n], [s], and the palatal fricative (the sh sound in English) at the beginning of words. The word cereal, for example, comes out sounding like "hereal." There are exceptions, however; for example, she can say the word socks and cheeks without difficulty.

In her current pronunciation, the words shoes, juice (and, I suppose, Jews, if she knew that word) all sound the same. Sometimes I don't know if she wants juice or if she is showing me her shoes.

She also pronounces the words pear, Pierre, and bear identically.

Another interesting point is that she seems to add articles (a/an, the)already to her English words. So in other words, she says, "A cow." "A bottle." "A ball." I find this really compelling. The idiomatic use of articles in English is one of the hardest things for nonnative speakers to acquire. Finns, for example, tend to have a really hard time with articles in English because Finnish has no articles. My students (and others) complain that this is the one part of English grammar that they find the most difficult--and I can see why! There are few hard and fast rules to describe when or when not to use articles; usually native speakers just know when it "sounds right," which is not especially useful advice for people who are trying to learn English. Articles are one of many linguistic features that are innate to a native speaker of a language, and this is why I find it fascinating that V seems to already be acquiring the patterns in English.

Unfortunately, it is hard for me to comment on her other languages in much detail, because, of course, she doesn't speak any languages other than English to me. However, I do notice a few things when I hear her speaking to her dad or her babysitter. So, on the subject of innate ability in a native language, I can comment on her pronunciation of Finnish and her use of certain forms in Swedish.

Finnish makes use of so-called "double" letters (ie, geminate consonants and long vowels) that we don't use the same way in English. In a word like kukka 'flower', for example, both of the "k" sounds in the middle are pronounced; the "k" sound in the middle is held longer in the mouth than the "k" sound that comes at the beginning of the word. V can already produce these geminate sounds perfectly. In contrast, I, a nonnative speaker of Finnish, still struggle not only to correctly pronounce geminates and long vowels in Finnish, but to even hear them. And I have been speaking Finnish a lot longer than she has! Being brought up from infancy with a language makes all the difference.

In Swedish, nouns are divided into what they call either "neuter" or "non-neuter." The class of the noun tells you what kind of article to use with it, either en or ett, and also how to make it plural. Again, this is one of those properties of Swedish that somebody like me could struggle for the rest of my life to try and keep straight. I don't think V can use these forms productively yet (that is, at this point she pretty much repeats what her dad says), but there have been some instances of her correctly saying, for example, "Hundar" for 'dogs' or "Ballen" for 'the ball.' Needless to say, her dad loves it when this happens.

Break out the verbs

Moving on to V's verbs. She's only got a few so far, but it's a start! These are: going, cleaning, help and and come. These are the only verbal inflections she has so far, as noted. So when she is ready to get out of bed in the morning, she says, "Going," which means something like "Now I am ready to get up." When she wants to come in the bathroom and the door is closed, she bangs on it and she says, "Come, come!" (Privacy? Is there any parent of a toddler who remembers what privacy means?)

I've mentioned that deictics are among the last lexical features children acquire. So when V says, "Help you," she really means "Help me." It's just that she doesn't yet know how to say "me." Children learn by mimicking, of course, so she is just repeating what she hears, which is usually, "Do you want me to help you?"

V had her 18-month appointment last week, and the nurse noted that V really talks a lot. Throughout the appointment, V chatted away in both Finnish (to the nurse) and in English (to me). V starts talking the second she wakes up in the morning, usually with a demand, either "Cuddle!" or "Milk!" And it doesn't stop for the rest of the day.

A couple of days ago, though, she had a surprise for us when she woke up. We were in Paris about a month ago, and V fell in love with our friend Pierre. She must have been dreaming about him, because when she woke up in the morning, it wasn't the usual "Cuddle!" or "Milk!" but a very clear, "Bonjour!" This was followed by "Merci!" Peter and I started laughing, and of course this only encouraged her. There was then a chorus of "Merci. Merci. Au revoir!" How incredible that she would still have those words stored in her head after a visit one month ago to Paris. Now when we ask her, "What does Uncle Pierre say?" she answers, "Merci!"

Baby's first NPs

We have experienced more "bursts" during the past couple of weeks. V is changing fast in many ways. The most significant development is that she started being truly mobile, preferring to be upright and walking rather than on the floor. I am not sure if it is a coincidence or if these things are developmentally related, but her advanced mobility coincides with noteworthy changes in her use of language.

Just for the record, I'll give an overview of V's language(s) at 18 months.

Today I noticed her first use of noun phrases -- the next step up, of course, from nouns. It was basic enough, but a clear milestone in her development of syntax. She said several instances of a genitive plus a noun: Vera's nose. Mamma's nose. Mamma's eyes. Vera's eyes. Previously, her verbalization of these observations would have been just Mamma's. Vera's. Nose. You get the idea.

She uses an awful lot of adjectives at the moment. The most frequent is no doubt broken. She used to say "uh-oh" whenever she encountered some problem, like trying to get her shoes on, for example. Now she says, "Broken," when she is trying to do something and it isn't going well. Other frequent adjectives are hot and little. The context for little is quite predictable, and merits mention for its clues about her cognition. V doesn't seem to grasp at this point what big and little mean, although I think it is sinking in, and she is starting to use the words. For example, V loves shoes of all shapes and sizes, and she frequently tries to put her sister's Barbie shoes on her own feet. She then gets frustrated because, obviously (to you and me, anyway), Barbie shoes don't fit her. I tried to explain this to her numerous times, saying, "These shoes are too little for you." Since most of her vocabulary is mimicking at this point, she now repeats, "Little, little" when she tries to put the Barbie shoes on.

Her mimicking is so astute that I am often surprised when she says certain words, words that I wouldn't have thought she had yet acquired. Recent examples are the words towel, drum, and pee.

Also on the topic of adjectives, V is fascinated by the idea of color names (although at this point she seems to use them as nouns, not as adjectives). She likes to point to objects that are of one color and say whatever color first comes to mind. Sometimes she gets it right, so I confirm her observation. This clearly pleases her. It's a bit more humorous, though, when she points at something--a flower, say--and announces, "Yellow" (which she pronounces "lellow"). I correct her: "No, that's red," but she has a different opinion. "Yellow," she says. So I repeat "Red," and it goes on for a few turns, until finally she concedes, "Red." Whew. The only color names she knows right now are in English, and these are blue, red, yellow, and green. I think she might still be a long way off from uttering an adjectival phrase, for example "Red flower."

V refers to people in pictures--and also in person--according to the names of people she already knows. Any women (or sometimes men--very pretty men!) in ads who have dark or reddish hair are "Mamma." She recently pointed to a picture of Julia Roberts and said "Mamma," so you can imagine how much I appreciate that. Lately, any man she sees in an ad who has dark hair is "Pierre," the name of a friend of ours. Yesterday I think she gave a man in a shop a bit of a shock. He was shaved bald and was wearing glasses, just like V's father. V pointed at the man and said, "Pappa." He looked alarmed when she said that, so I played it up and said to him, "Surprise!" Well, he seemed to have a sense of humour about it.

There are lots of examples of multiple codes. V's multilingualism continues to develop. The other day, just to see what would happen, I asked her in Finnish, "Where is your ear?" This is a question she readily answers from the Finnish speakers she knows. When I said it in Finnish, however, she gave me a very strange look, as if she were trying to process what I was saying. She thought for a moment(usually her response to such questions is automatic), then flashed me a smile, as if we were sharing a joke, and she touched her ears, showing me that she understood.

I know I am not supposed to speak Finnish to her, but I just wanted to see what would happen!

Language lesson #1

V just gave me what I am sure is only the first of many language lessons. The thing is, she already pretty much speaks better Swedish and Finnish than me, and the chasm in our abilities will only continue to grow. I am sure my language skills in both of these languages will serve as a source of embarrassment for her in the future. That's the case with plenty of foreign moms I know here.

But here is what happened. I just handed her bear, and she said, "Thank you." Then she followed up with "Kiitos," then "Tack." OK, so here is a pretty clear demonstration that she knows very well that all three of these terms mean the same thing. So was she trying to help her poor, linguistically deprived mother? Like I said, this lesson is likely the first of many.

Now it's at three

Now at the age of 17 months, there is ample evidence that there are three codes in place, all in the same brain. There was one good example of two codes just this morning. The point of this blog is to write about language, not other developments, but let's just say that Vera had a big accomplishment for the first time this morning. When her dad woke up, I whispered to her, "Tell Pappa about your potty." Vera looked up at him, a look of pride on her face, and said, "Pottan!" I was surprised that she knew how to translate so easily, and so instantly.

Last weekend, V's Finnish grandmother was visiting. V's "mummu," as she calls her, has always been worried that V wouldn't be a proper little Finnish girl who speaks proper Finnish. Last week's visit, I would say, quelled at least some of her fears. V chattered nonstop to Mummu in Finnish, talking about everything from her leipä 'bread' to potta 'potty.'

One of V's favorite things to do right now is to hand things back and forth, so that you have to say "Thank you!" then give whatever it is back to her, so she can say "Thank you!" and so on. I watched as V did this in three languages one morning last weekend. First she was doing this with me as I fed her breakfast: "Thank you!" Then came her pappa, and she handed him something and encouraged him to say, "Tack tack!" Then came her mummu, and immediately she switched to "Mummu, kiitos!" It seems quite clear that she divides her languages according to the interlocutor. I'm not sure at this point that she has a default language. I am tempted to say it would be English, but I have no way of knowing, of course, how she communicates when she is around other people (I'd love to be a fly on the wall!)

A few days ago, I am pretty sure we had what counts as our first kind of recap conversation of our day. I was putting her to bed, and she showed me her night-night bear and said, "Bear, water, uh-oh. No no no." At first I thought she was asking for a drink of water, but she corrected me. "Bear, uh-oh." I soon realized that she was reminding me of something that happened on our way back home from her babysitter. We were walking through a big mud puddle, and V chose that exact moment to drop her bear down onto the ground. I made a big show of telling her, "No no! Now your bear is all dirty! Look at that, you got your bear all wet and dirty. Now we have to go home and wash it." Obviously, this all made some impression on her -- surprise, surprise. When V brought this up later, at her bedtime, I went along with her, saying, "Yes, you dropped your bear. It got all dirty in the water. We had to wash it." You should have seen the delight on her face when I understood and responded to what she was trying to communicate! She was so excited. I can understand the thrill she must feel as she recognizes that she is able to relate to others through language.

"Shhhhhh!"

V has a constant monologue going on, and I am not sure if it is because she is playing with language, or if she is actually trying to interact. Probably the former. It's nonstop babble, with everything coming out of her mouth that seems to enter into her head. One surprising aspect of her babble is the number of names that come out. She still repeats--actually, very often--the name of her little friend, our upstairs neighbor, who moved away now close to three months ago. That represents something like twenty percent of V's short life, so I would have thought that she would have moved on to new concepts, but apparently the name and idea are seared into her consciousness.

She also repeats the names of people she has only met once or twice, and, again, quite some time ago. For example, Tessa was the name of a little girl that V played with for one day only, and that was about two months ago. Today when V was falling asleep, she was saying, "Tessa, Tessa, Tessa." Does she just happen to fall upon the sound sequence and remember the name, or does something, in fact, prompt the memory of Tessa? I guess there is no way of knowing.

V seems to enjoy putting things into categories. I have noted previously in this blog, for example, that she likes to point out shapes. "Star. Ball. Heart. Moon." Lately, she also enjoys noticing body, face parts, and clothing on other people, toys, and from all sorts of pictures: "Fingers. Toes. Mouth. Eyes. Hat. Boots. Foot." Fingers are especially exciting. She often looks at her own, and then, as if ecstatic to discover that they are still there, she exclaims, "Fingers!"

Her predilection for categorizing things according to shape and appearance has led to conundrum when it comes to numbers. She has a book she really likes called, "Let's Count Baby." The premise of the book is probably easy enough to catch from the title. For the past couple of days, she has been interested in the actual numbers that are printed on the pages. She will point to the figure "8" and say "eight." Then she'll point to the figure "7" and say "eight." So then I correct her, saying, "No, that's a seven." So she'll say, "Seven," and then point back at the "8" and say "seven." And so on. I suppose this is the first time she has encountered a break from the usual pattern: even though these things (the numbers) all look more or less the same, they actually all have different names. And this seems to be confusing her! I am not sure how to deal with this, because I don't want her to think that a "7" is called "eight," and so on. But I guess I should just calm down. After all, she is only sixteen months old, and I am sure she has plenty of time to learn what the numbers are called.

In other news, she has a few new adjectives and adjective phrases: clean, nice, all gone. She also says "Nam!" if she really likes some food she is eating, so I guess that counts.

One of her favorite routines is to go through what all of the animals say. Quite typical, of course. What cracks me up about her, though, is when we start asking what certain people say. It doesn't matter who it is -- Mamma, Daddy, her sister, grandma, babysitter, even our dog, Cava -- the answer is always the same: "Shhhhh!" You would think we spend most of our time telling her to be quiet, which is most certainly not the case!

I am not sure what else to note about her languages other than English. Only to say that they are developing, but at a less noticeable pace than her English. Of course my reports are biased, as well, because she speaks English with me. However, I do hear her speaking enough Swedish to her dad and sister and enough Finnish when we are out in the city to know that these other languages do exist for her. Yesterday, for example, when we were in town, she was saying over and over to people in shops and so on, "Kiitos!" which means 'thank you.'

Ribbit

Yesterday morning, like most mornings, I woke up early with V and set out to complete our ritual. The first thing she always wants to do after she gets out of bed is to turn on the star-shaped lamps in our windows. This is what we were doing when I looked outside and noticed a heavy fog obscuring everything.

Never one to miss offering an educational experience, I pointed outside and told V, "Fog, look at the fog."

She obliged and peered out, and of course in my mind's eye we were like some Mary Cassatt-style depiction of mother and daughter, both in our pajamas, V in my arms, looking out the window at the sea and fog.

Then V, her eyes transfixed outside the window, began to quietly repeat, "Ribbit. Ribbit. Fog," she pointed. "Ribbit. Ribbit."

So this is what I have succeeded in teaching my child, apparently: that there is an abundance of frogs lurking outside our windows. Foiled again!

All day yesterday, she repeated her observation, pointing out the window and saying, "Fog, fog. Ribbit. Ribbit."

This beckons a few words about both perception and production. It would seem that V's ears are tuned into English phonology, but not quite. Fog and frog are pretty close, after all. I have noted several times that her pronunciation is not perfect all the time, either. Some words, like her sister's name, she says perfectly some of the time, but other words, like bunny, socks, and lampa ('lamp' in Swedish) are, for the time being, consistently a bit off. She says bunny like "buddy," socks like "hocks," and lampa like "almpa." I can't quite find rhyme or reason as to why she says what she does the way she does; however, it seems that the sounds that seem to give her the most trouble in English are /r/ and /s/.

V is starting to put together larger chunks of language. Because she speaks English with me, I can only really comment on her English, of course. It seems to be the case that she is trying to formulate the right way of expressing more complex thoughts. For example, she says "Pepper back," when she has finished playing with the pepper shaker (like a lot of kids, she needs some sort of distraction so she can eat, right?) and wants me to put it back into its proper position. Her favorite new word is "help," and she gets a lot of use out of it. "Mamma, baby, help." "Put the baby's leg back on, Mamma." (I realize this might seem like a weird request. In explanation, the legs of one her baby dolls falls off all the time). Or "Spoon, help." "Help me eat my yogurt with this spoon, Mamma."Or today a new one was, "Daddy, Cava, bye-bye." "Daddy and Cava went outside."

Same old

This is a little embarrassing to admit, but V's vocabulary is growing so fast that it's actually kind of boring to try and chronicle it all. So I'll change tactics. Well, OK, I'll mention just a few items, in English: head, hair, help, break it/broken, flower, hammer (yeah, I know, that's a weird one; it surprised me, too), and maybe that's about it for now. And now I really will stop with these word lists. Wait, just one more, because I find it interesting: she uses the word back, but not as a noun, as a preposition. Most of her other words are nouns, so that's why I like this example.

The most exciting news lately is that she does seem to have three distinct codes--that is, English, Finnish, and Swedish. For a long time I wasn't totally buying it when her dad claimed that she only speaks to him in Swedish, and that when he says Finnish words, she gives him "weird looks." I still don't know if I buy into the "weird looks" thing, but the babysitter's opinion backed up dad's. The babysitter said that V seems to know that English doesn't work when they are together. I was surprised to hear this. Somehow I felt quite certain that when V is with her babysitter, she would be using English, simply because it is her strongest language. But no. Apparently, just like she did with English for a long time, she spends her time with the babysitter repeating whatever Finnish she knows. For one entire day it was kiitos, which means 'thank you.' The next day, it seems to have been ole hyvä 'you're welcome.'

Needless to say, I find it incredible that children in a multilingual environment, even at such a young age, know how to separate when they should say what, and to whom.

A couple of days ago, in a class that I teach, the students got into a discussion about views of multilingualism. It seems that today the general public is much more enlightened about such things than they were, say, twenty years ago, but you still hear some pretty weird stuff. For example, there are parents (or well-meaning grandparents, neighbors, whatever), who seem to believe that kids will get confused with more than one language, that their speaking and cognitive skills will be delayed, or that they will lack an identity or such muck. This is all completely unsubstantiated.

Only once in my life have I ever met anyone who actually complained about being multilingual, and her complaint was something along the lines of "I speak four languages badly." I call bull---- on that, because even monolinguals speak "imperfectly." We all are still acquiring vocabulary, pragmatic skills, etc.--it's a lifelong process.

The simple fact is that, if a kid is systematically exposed to any number of languages early enough in life, the constructs of that language will be in that kid's head forever. So all the grammar and so on that the rest of us try and struggle with when we try to learn a foreign language as a teenager or adult? It's already already programmed into bilingual kids' heads. Bilingual kids might lose expressions and vocabulary and so on if they are not exposed to the language throughout their lifetime, but the grammar of the language will still be in there somewhere.

I have never heard a multilingual person say, "It's terrible to speak so many languages." On the contrary, when parents choose not to teach their kids their own mother tongue, the kid is likely to grow up and say, "Why didn't you?" It's a missed opportunity. To me, it simply doesn't make sense for any parents to not speak their mother tongue to their own children. I know that sometimes there are intervening factors, but this remains my basic opinion. At the same time, I don't think it's wise for parents to try to speak a language to their kids that isn't their mother tongue--or pretty darn close to it. But that's another story.

Now I'll get off my soapbox.

Something truly exciting happened yesterday. Anyone who knows much about my research interests knows how much I love the word please. Last night as we were finishing our dinner, V was trying to take the lid off a jar or something like that. For the first time, I was able to get her to repeat, "Help, please." And she did repeat it, probably nothing short of one hundred times. Baby's first please. I'm in heaven!

Let the trilingual status begin!

The title for this post is admittedly exuberant. Here's why: yesterday I brought V home from her day with the babysitter, set her down in her chair for a snack, and she promptly looked up at me, pointed at her nose and said, "Nenä." Nenä! This is the Finnish word for nose, of course, and, as far as I can tell, this marks the first official trio of words all connoting the same concept. She has already nailed English nose and Swedish näsa. OK, multilingualism is still a long way off, but what an exciting start.

Funny, actually, that the first example has to do with nose.We have somewhat of a history with noses, thanks to my mother. During a visit to my mother, when I was pregnant with V, my mother, out of the blue, told me, "You were the one kid of mine that, when you were born, I looked at you and thought, 'If this kid ever wants a nose job, I'll pay for it.'" Yeah, she's funny like that. Then when V was born, my sister asked our mother if she had seen any pictures of V yet, and my mom answered, "Yes, she has a big nose like her mom's."

So that's our history with noses, although it has little to do with language. (Are our noses really that big?)

Continuing on from my digression, then. Here are some new English words as of the past week or so: kiwi, mouse, ears, truck, again, boots, and mackey, which means 'macaroni.'

She has also learned some new names of people. She says Pia, Sirpa-täti, Amber, and Emily (actually, she says that name constantly, because she wants to play with her friend).

And a new animal sound: the sheep says "baaa," of course!

There is one morpheme that V has uses for such a long time that I actually overlooked it. This is the diminutive -y that we use in English. It's interesting that her use of this is absolutely grammatical; we attach this morpheme only to nouns, and this is what she does, and very productively--"Sockies, ducky, doggy, kitty," etc. The diminutive form is in addition to the base form of each of those words, of course, so it's not just a matter of her mistakenly thinking that the word dog, for example, is actually doggy.

In terms of semantics, V continue to use a couple of general words when she doesn't know a better word. Examples are her use of apple and dog. In V's world, an "apple" is any round or circular food, either real food or what she sees in pictures. So oranges, cucumber slices, meatballs--those all get called "apple." Any picture she sees of an animal with four legs, provided that she doesn't have another name for it, gets called "dog." A little argument that we have over and over again when we look at her picture book goes like this:

Me: Horsey. What does the horsey say?
V: Heeeeeeeee. (pointing) Dog. Woof woof.
Me: That's not a dog, that's a horsey. What does the horsey say?
V: Heeeeee. (pointing) Dog. Woof woof.
And so on, for as long as I allow it to continue. At this point, there is simply no convincing her that the horse is not a dog. Oh well, you have to pick your battles.

Status update

In the very first blog entry I posted here, I wrote that I would estimate that V's linguistic input is 75 percent English, 20 percent Swedish, and 5 percent Finnish. Things have changed in our household since the mom went back to work, however. These days, V is with her Finnish-speaking babysitter and Finnish-speaking children three days a week. That makes a big difference! I would now estimate that V's linguistic input is 60 percent English, 20 percent Swedish, and 20 percent Finnish. Of course it's a bit hard to figure, because when her dad is home in the evenings, both English and Swedish are flying around, so the amount of English might actually be something like 10 percent higher. Almost all of her input at this point is through direct address--in other words, because someone is talking to her. Sometimes in the morning I have the BBC news on in the background, but I don't think she listens to it ... unless it sinks in, anyway. That's another question that I don't really know the answer to.

At this point, English is most definitely V's main language. I would estimate that something like 75-70 percent of her wordstock is in English.

Still, in the past couple of weeks or so, I have been quite amazed to see firsthand that she switches to Swedish when her dad comes home. I am not kidding! At the age of 15 months, she is already cognizant of the fact that her pappa uses a different linguistic code. A few weeks ago I reported with glee that she had a few concepts for which she has two words, one in Swedish and one in English. At this point, there are so many examples of her bilingualism that I would be hard-pressed to think of them all.

That said, there is definite mixing of codes--although, not as much as I would have thought. The few examples I can think of are a bit perplexing for me. For instance, one of her very early words was bread. She used that word to refer to any kind of food; she used the word a lot. Now, even though she still knows the word bread, of course, she seems to prefer the Swedish word, macka. She uses the Swedish word even when talking to me, and, like I mentioned, it's unclear why. Maybe she just likes the sound of the Swedish word better? It's more novel at this point than bread? Who knows.

Although English is currently her main language, I fully expect that this will change, and, depending on what kind of school she goes to, her strongest language will be either Swedish or Finnish. After all, we are living in Finland, where the matrix language is Finnish (and, to a lesser extent, Swedish). Any parent knows that the child's own peer group has a far greater influence on language (and many other matters) than the parents.

It's peculiar that, as of yet, I don't notice V using any Finnish at all. I get the idea that she mostly uses English when she talks to her babysitter, even though the babysitter always speaks Finnish to her. V seems to understand some Finnish now--although not much--and she doesn't seem to use any Finnish words. I suspect this will change quite fast as she continues to play with her babysitter and Finnish kids.

Addendum: I had just finished writing this blog entry and sat down to read some books with Vera. Immediately she pointed to a picture of a cat and said, "Kissa." That is the Finnish word for cat. So, I was wrong: she does have Finnish words--at least one, anyway. I am surprised!

"Mouse!"

Words come flying out of V's mouth now that make me think, "Where did you learn that?" Words like mouse, boots, pretty, and macka, which is Swedish for a little sandwich.

I was successful in making a voice recording of us looking at a book together, but I was not successful in figuring how to upload it in a very good way onto this blog site. It is strange to me that this blog service we are using would support video but not audio, but that seems to be the case. So now you can see a very shaky and seasick-inducing visual and audio of V's response to a book. (You can also see Cava, our dog, come to investigate what is going on.) It's not so easy to hold a recording device with one hand, a book with the other, and a wriggly kid on your lap! At any rate, I think it's interesting to hear how her phonology actually works, and there are lots of good examples in this short video. Many of the words, I am sure, would not be recognizable if I were not there to "translate." Enjoy!

More morphemes

Tonight I was actually quite shocked to hear V use the English plural. The plural form she used was "balls." I am pretty sure it was not an accident, because she very readily uses the singular form when she sees just one ball. In this case, there were a bunch of tiny balls inside a plastic toy she has. I think I can pretty safely say that this is her second morpheme. The first was the possessive -s, now comes the plural -s.

Wordstock

One week ago, clear as a bell, came V's first complete sentence in Swedish. Her sister had just shown up, as well as our dog, Cava, and so naturally V was very excited. The trouble is that Cava is somewhat advanced in years and usually hides from V. V was wandering around the apartment, repeating, "Cava, Cava." Finally, she came to Nova and me and asked, "Var är Cava?" It was so clearly enunciated that we could barely believe our ears. Too bad her dad wasn't there to hear it!

I have mentioned many times that she is very good at mimicking. Lately, I have noticed that she has picked up certain key features of the English intonation system, which, believe me, differs greatly from that of Finnish and Swedish. For example, in English we tend to use a rising intonation when we ask a question--otherwise it sounds like a statement. If you don't use the rising intonation, people might be confused as to whether or not you are asking a question, so in other words the rising intonation actually carries meaning. These days, a lot of people in the United States also use this rising intonation feature when they make statements, which, you might guess, makes them sound like they are always asking questions. I am sure you have noticed this--I know I have, especially since I moved away from the States. It's interesting that this so-called "uptalk" seems to be a feature of white speech only, from what I understand.

Anyway, about the question intonation. V already has this feature mastered, which points toward its great importance in effective communication in English. Other languages, such as Finnish, don't make use of intonation for meaning, which might be hard to imagine if you are really used to English. Finnish has other stuff, mostly suffixes, that indicate whether, for example, something is a question or a statement.

Here is another example about intonation. You know how moms talk incessant nonsense to their babies, right? Today I was doing that when I was dressing her to leave. I asked her, "Are we going to go see your babysitter?"

V looked up at me and issued a pitch perfect, "Mmmm-hmmm!" What was so funny about it was that it sounded exactly like people in the Southern United States. Picture someone from the Plantation South, for example, talking about if they like pecan pie. "Do I like pecan pie? Mmmm-hmmm!" And that's what V did--like a perfect little Southerner.


Here are a few words that are new on the lexical front: avocado, sockies, milk, pretty.

Just for fun, I thought I would try to list out all of her current wordstock. I'll stick to just the English words for now, because I would have to think too hard to come up with the Swedish and Finnish words (!).

These are the things that she can answer "What does the X say?": cat, cow, horse, duck, clock, chicken, dog, pig (the horse sound is REALLY cute!)

These are words that she uses at will, in no particular order: star, dog, cat, duck, bear, brush, diaper, shoes, bath, ball, no, socks, hat, baby, cheese, banana, avocado, milk, bottle, clock, cookie, bread, book, lamp, toes, nose, mouth, eyes, more, uh-oh, shhhhhh (does that count?), kiss . There are also some dozen or so proper names that she knows, names for friends and family.

It shouldn't be surprising that her comprehension is far greater than her production. Any of us who try to speak a foreign language know about this linguistic truism. For example, she understands the words finger, nice, sleeping, but she doesn't say any of them--yet.

Play it again, seahorse

V has a little seahorse toy that our friends gave her. If you push its stomach, it plays lullabies. This toy is part of our nighttime ritual. Vera listens to the songs while she cuddles with her night-night bear. It usually works like a charm, and she falls asleep within minutes. A couple of nights ago, the songs stopped playing, and I heard silence, so I assumed V was sleeping. Then I heard a series of "No, no, no, no, no" from her room. And then "Duck, duck, duck, duck." Then "No duck, no duck, no duck, no duck." All of this came out in a very sad and desperate little voice. When I went to check on her, V was pressing her hand against the seahorses's belly, trying to get it to play its songs again. V indicated what she wanted me to do: to get the songs to play over again. When I complied, she soon feel asleep.

A couple of days ago, I made claims that V was doing something syntax-y with her language. I would say that this is another example. Obviously, V doesn't know the word seahorse, nor does she know the word play or again. She doesn't know how to say "Play the seahorse again," so she was using the words she knew and that seemed to apply. In this case, the seahorse was a "duck," and she was telling me "no," as in, "The 'duck' (seahorse) is not playing."

Well, it probably goes without saying that I thought this was fabulous. Here is another example of a small child with a limited lexical repertoire using whatever words she can to get what she wants. OK, so she called her seahorse a duck, but that's still pretty damn good! She could have called it "dog" or "cat" or any of the other words she knows, but the concept of "duck," obviously, was the closest word she had for this particular object.

A few days ago she started calling me "mammaly/mammala." Now the same pattern has extended to her dad; she calls him "pappala."

Another interesting point is her learned social behavior. V already loves to "feed" her baby with a toy bottle, and she likes to pretend to eat and to feed us as well with her toy forks, spoons, etc.

Could it be ... syntax?

This is going to come off as disjointed, because there are lots of things happening, all over the place, with V's language. A few weeks ago I compared her progress to an explosion, and it seems to be that this is the norm now. She feels less and less like a baby in many ways, and her language is one of the strongest examples of this.

I'll start with her phonology. A few weeks ago I reported that her vowels were all over the place. That has changed. She can now mimic any vowel sound I try to get her to produce--even [i], as in beep beep. She also seems to have most of her consonants, even though some of them would not be readily recognized by someone who is not her mother. For example, she routinely produces the alveolar fricative (the sound represented by "sh" in English) as "ssss." For example, when I say, "Be quiet, Cava's sleeping," she says, "Sssssss" when her target, of course, is "Shhhhhh." Then there are other sounds that she has in some positions or sound sequences, that she nonetheless can't seem to produce in certain word positions. Like the [s] sound, for example, that I have just been discussing. Her aunt is named Sirpa, but V calls her 'Hippa.' V's babysitter is named Saila, but V calls her 'Laila.' In other words, she has the [s] sound in some instances, but not in others. Another example is the word lampa, which is a word V says A LOT. Every time, though, she pronounces it as 'almpa,' ie, tranposing the first two sounds. Lately, she has been playing with phonology, making nonsense words out of words she knows very well. For a couple of days, for example, she has been calling me 'mammaly,' even though she certainly knows how to say the word mamma! In fact, I am starting to think it is her very best word ...

Now onto her morphology. I am very excited to report that V seems to have acquired her first English morpheme: the possessive 's. This, of course, is a natural reaction to me telling her "no" when she reaches, for example, for my coffee cup, important papers, that kind of thing. She now points to such items and says of her own accord, "Mamma's." She also says "Vera's," (although it comes out sounding more like "baby's"), as well as "Pappa's." I am so proud of her first morpheme!


Moving on to her lexical inventory ... new acquisitions include "vakkie," which is V's word for vacuum. Oddly enough, the vacuum is something which seems to cause her a great deal of excitement, but that's another story. Other new lexical items provide further evidence of emerging bilingualism: water/vatten and bear/nalle.

Today there was a rather glorious moment when I realized V might be producing her first kind of sentence-y type thing. Yes, syntax is happening, just like Chomksy told us. It was getting rather late in the evening, past the time her dad usually comes home from work, and Vera caught my attention: "Mamma." Then, looking in my eyes, she pointed to the door and said, "Pappa." This is a simple utterance, but I have to view it as a question: she was asking where her pappa was; why wasn't he home yet.

I would like to add a few other observations, also having to do with cognition (perhaps more so than language). I noted a few weeks ago that her first experience with heartbreak had already occurred: her first best friend, our upstairs neighbor, moved away just before Christmas. The first few days after she was gone, V woke up every morning repeating her name. Now, more than three weeks later, her pleas for her friend have diminished but still not ceased altogether. At least a few times a day, something prompts the memory of her friend, and she repeats her name to me. It's so sad!

Also on a cognitive level, there are lots of requests, mostly nonverbal. In fact, V is getting quite insistent and is showing strong evidence of her own willpower. She has begun to take us firmly by the hand, invoking us to pet her teddy bear, stroke her head, turn the pages of her book, or take her for a walk. If she is playing alone and something goes wrong--her ball rolls under the sofa, for example--she comes to one of us and says, "Uh-oh," and points to whatever the problem is. Another stroke of genius: so much information is tied up in that little word uh-oh!

I think that's it for now. I might be writing this in a void, but, if not, I would like to know if I am using too much linguistic jargon for this to be understandable ... or interesting?

Twinkle twinkle

Lots to comment about just now.

Today was V's first full day with her babysitter, and there was already something to discuss. When I went to pick her up, the babysitter said, "She's really verbal," which I thought was interesting. I have always kind of thought so, but then of course I do, I am her mother. But the babysitter said that other kids she has taken care of don't really talk until they are two years old. V has been talking a bluestreak since she was about ten months.

The most recent development, in Finnish, was the word for star, which in Finnish is tähti. This brings her total number of Finnish words up to four: mennään 'let's go,' voi voi 'oh dear,' anna 'give,' and tähti.

Star is another one of those concepts that she has words for in each language, including, as of today, in Finnish. We sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" in English, and she shows the twinkling with her hands, opening and closing her fingers. She also points when her pappa says "stjärna" in Swedish, but she doesn't say it yet. She actually says star and tähti.

She has got a few speech acts already. Not surprising, the most prevalent so far seems to be the request. Tonight, for example, she kept repeating, "Bottle, bottle," and I ignored her and gave her other food (we usually just give her a bottle when she goes down for the night). Finally, she grabbed my hand, took me to the kitchen, pointed to the cupboard where we keep her milk and bottles, and then she pointed to the microwave. "Bottle," she said again. OK, this time I got it: she wanted a bottle, and she wanted it NOW, not later. She knows how to ask for what she wants!

Now a word about her pronunciation. Bottle is a new word for her, as of a couple of days ago. It's interesting that she says it with an aspirated t, like a speaker of upper-class British English would (RP). The reason this is interesting to me is because I am her pronunciation model for this word, and I say bottle with an American flap, which most people think sound like a d (ie, something like baudle). So where does she get this t sound from? Or is this a good example of how the phoneme gets acquired before the allophones? Curious.

I noticed tonight that she definitely doesn't have the l sound yet. We were playing with her toy fruits and vegetables, and every time she handed me the lemon, it sounded like either Yemen (as in the country that has been in the news lately on account of its al-Quida activity) or nemon.