Don't fall me!

Pretty much since she started acquiring language, V kept all her languages separate, which I think mostly has to do with the fact that each language is associated with the different people she knows. This is pretty cool in and of itself, because I think it demonstrates in a really cool way that language is, first and foremost, a communication and social tool; it's how we relate to others.

But now, as she is approaching 4 years old, it seems that language is becoming more of a cognitive rather than social process. I have to come clean here and admit that I don't know much of anything about cognitive linguistics, but I would venture that LANGUAGE (as a THING) is getting more solidified in her brain, and along with that, there's a lot more experimentation with the boundaries of each separate language. In other words (cut to the chase!), she is mixing a lot more than ever.

Swedish is now her strongest language, because it's what she speaks with her peers at the daycare, as well as at home with her big sister and her pappa. Her English is still absolutely native-like, but there are lots of words that she forgets. She often says something like, for example, "We have to be careful going doing the traps." Traps? Trappor is Swedish for stairs. So V uses a Swedish word as the base noun, but then she adds the English plural form, -s. She also sometimes refers to her leg as her ben, which is the Swedish word. There are lots of and lots of examples like this.

 It's a mixed bag, though: I also heard her say a sentence in Swedish that went like this: Har du beena i Stockholm? I think this sentence would sound hilarious to anyone who knows Swedish. You can see that she used the English verb been, but she's added an -a in an attempt to make it sound more "Swedish." Clever girl!

Ocassionally, she mixes in the odd Finnish word, too, although Finnish is by no means a dominant language at this point. She can still communicate in Finnish, and the sounds are still definitely there (including the geminates, which are a very important part of Finnish phonology). What's missing, of course, are many of the word endings.

V's pronunciation is developing pretty much according to what the books tell us. The hardest sound for her in Swedish and Finnish seems to be the trilled "r" sound they have. It usually comes out sounding something like the American flap (or something like a "d" sound), unless it's at the beginning of a word, in which case it might even sound like an "l." When she speaks English, the "r" sound usually comes out sounding more like a "w." Other difficult sounds include the English interdentals: the first sounds in words like those and think. These come out as "d" and "t," respectively.

 In terms of morphology and syntax, it's pretty much a textbook case. She uses regular verb forms even on irregular verbs, which is pretty typical. This means that, for example, she says, "It breaked" rather than "it broke" and "taked" rather then "took." The possessive pronouns are still coming. She doesn't really know those yet, so she uses the possessive -s to make a subject pronoun into possessive form. So, for example, she says, "The bear found she's bed," rather than "The bear found her bed." She doesn't seem to have dative pronouns yet, either -- or maybe they are just starting to come. She she says, for example, "Give it to I" rather than "Give it to me."

In general, there's lots and lots of creative stuff coming out in her language these days. She is definitely in the potty mouth stage, so there is lots of talk about poop and pee in every language. I'm looking forward for this stage to pass ... She sings a lot of songs and uses words from each language, sometimes within the same song. So what about the title of this blog post? I am not sure if it's a mixture of Swedish and English, or if it was just a funny thing to say in English. What I loved, though, was that I corrected her: "No, don't drop me," and then she corrected me. "No, mamma, not drop, don't fall me!"