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!