Tuesday, December 3, 2013
Three trees
"Three trees" is a hard phrase to say. It's those damn interdentals again. V has just recently started distinguishing interdentals from stops within the past few weeks.
In fact, there was a particular moment. Looking out our kitchen window one day, she wondered, "Tree and tree. Tree, like those things out there, and tree, like this." And she showed me three fingers. She hadn't yet figured out that the words even sound different, let alone that they are pronounced differently.
Not that I am trying to torture my child with pronunciation exercises, but I have to admit that at that point I had been trying to see for a while already if she seemed physically capable of producing the "th" sound, in a word like think. I showed her how my own tongue was right between my teeth when I said the first sound in think or in three. She tried with all her might, but the sound came out sounding more like some kind of combination of /l/ and /θ/, like the lateral fricatives in Welsh, in words like Llewelyn.
She's been working on it, though. Right now, the system is in flux. The number "3" sometimes comes out as "tree" and sometimes as "three." That is what is demonstrated in the video.
The first time she says "3" in the video, she nails it. It's got a perfectly enunciated interdental. The second time, it comes out as "tree." I suppose it will only be a matter of weeks at this point before she has fully acquired the interdentals. And, at the age of 5, this is right on target -- exactly what research on the acquisition of English as a mother tongue tells us to expect.
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Long overdue post
V is a big girl now! She is just a few months shy of 5 years now. As would be expected, her language skills are pretty high--normal for a child her age.
She talks a lot in every language! For the last couple of summers, we have spent a month in the United States. This has been really good for her aptitude in English, and we are fortunate that we have been able to make the trips. People in the U.S. keep telling me that V has a foreign accent, but of course I can't hear it. To me, she sounds just like any other American kid. When we come back from the States, especially last summer, her other languages have been heavily influenced by English--even more so than usual. This seems to last for a couple of weeks, until she gets her head back into Nordic mode again.
Whew, that was close!
V's Finnish language skills have suffered during our trips to the States. Last summer was especially harrowing; while we were away, she developed really strong attitudes against Finnish. When we got back last summer, V didn't want to speak Finnish, she didn't want to hear it, and, furthermore, she didn't even want to talk about it! This is clearly a problem, as we happen to live in Finland ...
Our solution to this problem was to do heavy marketing for Finnish. V's dad and I really talked up Finnish--Mummu (V's Finnish grandmother), her aunties, her sister, Muumi, Santa Claus --they all speak Finnish. Isn't Finnish a beautiful language? Isn't it great to be able to speak Finnish? We bolstered Finnish like crazy. We had her sit and watch Finnish kids' programs, even though she didn't want to. It was tough work, but in the end it paid off. She was teetering on the brink there for a while, but eventually she came back around to thinking of Finnish as an acceptable language. Last fall and winter, we tried to further encourage her interest in Finnish by having her participate in fun activities in Finnish, such as a crafts class, a ballet class, a singing group, and I tried to arrange play times for her with Finnish-speaking children. Each time she started one of the classes, I explained to the teacher that we speak English and Swedish at home, but that V has Finnish skills and that she needs the practice--so in other words, to please not think they were doing V a "favor" by speaking English with her. This seemed to work out OK. The end result is that V is basically able to participate in these classes, although you might characterize her involvement as somewhat "spacey." I am not sure how much of this is a language issue and how much of it is just her personality. Most likely, it's not an either/or thing. I do think that a lot of what is said in Finnish goes over her head, so she kind of naturally tunes out and is in her own little world (I am familiar with this myself: as a foreigner, I have learned to tune out Finnish. On the other hand, when I hear English, my initial reaction is always that someone is talking to ME.). In her dance class, for example, on the one day parents were allowed to observe, we noticed that she was continuously about four steps behind the other children. But you know what? She was happy. She was very clearly enjoying her dance class--in Finnish--like crazy. Furthermore, the dance teacher confirmed that V's skills in Finnish had developed a lot during the course, to the point where V would answer her in Finnish. Hurray, mission accomplished! Imagine the teacher's disappointment when I had to tell her that, well, actually, V knew Finnish before the dance class, so it wasn't actually the teacher who had taught her how to speak ...
We didn't notice so much of a dip in the Finnish skills after this year's trip to the USA. I think it helped this year that we paid a visit to V's Finnish speaking aunties almost immediately after our return to Finland. In general, you could say that V is quite unwilling to speak Finnish. It depends on whom she is with. With Finnish speaking children, for example, or in everyday Finnish language situations, V is incredibly shy and insecure--and understandably so. With her aunties and her grandmother, however, because of the love and comfort she has with them, Finnish is the default language. She is able to communicate with them in Finnish, but her speech is quite faltering (lots of "um ... um ... um ...") and filled with grammatical inconsistencies (for example, using a third person verb with the Finnish word for "I," so, "Minä on ..."). However, it is still there, rudimentary as it is, and sometimes she lets guard down and really tries. She has the basic grammar, she has quite a large vocabulary, and she is basically able to communicate. I can say from firsthand experience that it is a really intimidating experience to try and express yourself in a language you don't have mastery of, so I am really impressed with her bravery.
Most people, of course, wouldn't be able to understand her Finnish, and monolingual Finnish children do make fun of her because of her inability to express herself ("What's the matter with you? Why can't you talk?"). Not only is the grammar imperfect, but she also tends to substitute Swedish words when she can't come up with the Finnish equivalent. For a Swedish (and English) speaking child, though, she is doing OK. The reality for a lot of Swedish speaking children in Finland is that they really don't speak the dominant language (i.e., Finnish), until they start learning it in school. If Swedish is spoken as a home language, then there is simply not the opportunity to hear Finnish. This is a common topic of conversation among parents at V's Swedish-speaking day care. No one wants their child to be at a disadvantage, but it's not like this is a new situation in Finland. There have been Swedish speakers in Finland for a long time, and somehow they manage to get along.
But that's a much bigger issue. Back to V's languages.
On grammar
At this point, V's Swedish and English skills are probably about equal. There is a fair amount of mixing between them, but that is perfectly normal and does not alarm us in the slightest. An example of Swedish influence on her English is found in the words that are similar between the languages. For example, in Swedish, the word helikopter is clearly similar to English helicopter, it's mostly just an issue of which syllable is stressed. So when V uses the word in English, she says "heliCOPter" rather than "HELicopter." She does the same thing with the word telephone--she tends to pronounce it "telePHONE" in English. She continues to anglicize Swedish words such as trappor 'stairs' into "traps" in English. This is, of course, mildly problematic when we visit the States ... one of the best examples from last summer was with a great-aunt who has a slightly dirty mind. Imagine her surprise when Vera informed her that she was drawing "pricks" on her piece of paper. Prickar means 'polka dots' in Swedish. I am still trying to convince V that she should call them "spots" or "dots" in English.
When she speaks Swedish, it's pretty common to hear V say things like, "Har du beena i Stockholm?" Here, she has substituted the English verb been rather than using the Swedish verb varit. She also tends to say things like "Kan hon talkar i Svenska?" Here, she has used the English verb talk and given it a Swedish verb ending.
Now for some specifics about her English language development. I would say her English phonology is more or less in place. She can say the /r/ sound without any trouble, regardless of word position, although occasionally it might still alternate with the [w] sound. The same goes for /l/. The other day, for example, she did a stunning rendition of the word pterodactyl, but the last sound came out as "w" instead of "l." The most stubborn sound is the "th" sound, or in other words /θ/ and /ð/. The books say, though, that these--along with certain consonant clusters--are among the last sounds mastered, somewhere between ages 4 and 6, so we are still on target. In terms of consonant clusters, she has some pretty interesting features. She can say words like squirrel with no problem, even with the rather hefty [skw] combination there. More interesting is her pronunciation of words like after, which for some reason she pronounced like "actor" for a very long time -- that is, with a [k.t] sequence rather than a [f.t] sequence. And she is just now starting to pronounce the word only with a [n.l] sequence. For the longest time, she has pronounced only as "omly," and sometimes even as "ombly," with an intrusive [b]--very weird, but also very interesting. I guess she has some kind of bilabial trend going on there.
One of the things that has been cracking me about V's language is her use of the word otherwise. Of all the adverbs, how did she get on this one? She uses it pretty much grammatically, but it’s the frequency of it that amuses me. You could definitely say it's her favorite adverb. "Otherwise, you won't be able to hear me." "Otherwise, Sally won't wake up in time." "Otherwise, we have to tell Pappa that he doesn't get any."
Lately, however, it's another adverb, filler, discourse marker--whatever you want to call it--that has crept into her language. At the tender age of 4 plus some, my child has developed the use of like. Don't ask me how or why, but there it is. She has started to use like both as a discourse marker and a quotative. Here is an example of like as a discourse marker: "It's, like, as tall as Sally." Here is an example of like as a quotative: "She's like, 'I'm not going to eat cheese.'
A few more details about V's grammar: she doesn't seem to have the dative pronouns yet, or at least not in the first person singular. Here is an example. The other day--I can't remember what we were talking about--she said, "You're going to lock I up when I'm a teenager." OK, this is a highly incriminating sentence she said, but, meaning aside, it's a great example of her use of dative pronouns. She routinely says things like, "Give it to I," "It's for I," etc.
Finally, I want to mention the use of past tense in English. Everyone knows that in English we have certain verbs that we call "irregular" in the past tense. These include go --> went, be --> was, and, in terms of pronunciation, even verbs like sleep --> slept and say --> said. The typical thing to do is to "regularize" these verbs, and that is exactly what V does. For her, the past tense of go is "goed," sleep is "sleeped," and the past tense of be is "were." For example, "I were at JoAnn's house yesterday." She also regularizes the pronunciation of other verbs, for example do can come out as "duuz."
She talks a lot in every language! For the last couple of summers, we have spent a month in the United States. This has been really good for her aptitude in English, and we are fortunate that we have been able to make the trips. People in the U.S. keep telling me that V has a foreign accent, but of course I can't hear it. To me, she sounds just like any other American kid. When we come back from the States, especially last summer, her other languages have been heavily influenced by English--even more so than usual. This seems to last for a couple of weeks, until she gets her head back into Nordic mode again.
Whew, that was close!
V's Finnish language skills have suffered during our trips to the States. Last summer was especially harrowing; while we were away, she developed really strong attitudes against Finnish. When we got back last summer, V didn't want to speak Finnish, she didn't want to hear it, and, furthermore, she didn't even want to talk about it! This is clearly a problem, as we happen to live in Finland ...
Our solution to this problem was to do heavy marketing for Finnish. V's dad and I really talked up Finnish--Mummu (V's Finnish grandmother), her aunties, her sister, Muumi, Santa Claus --they all speak Finnish. Isn't Finnish a beautiful language? Isn't it great to be able to speak Finnish? We bolstered Finnish like crazy. We had her sit and watch Finnish kids' programs, even though she didn't want to. It was tough work, but in the end it paid off. She was teetering on the brink there for a while, but eventually she came back around to thinking of Finnish as an acceptable language. Last fall and winter, we tried to further encourage her interest in Finnish by having her participate in fun activities in Finnish, such as a crafts class, a ballet class, a singing group, and I tried to arrange play times for her with Finnish-speaking children. Each time she started one of the classes, I explained to the teacher that we speak English and Swedish at home, but that V has Finnish skills and that she needs the practice--so in other words, to please not think they were doing V a "favor" by speaking English with her. This seemed to work out OK. The end result is that V is basically able to participate in these classes, although you might characterize her involvement as somewhat "spacey." I am not sure how much of this is a language issue and how much of it is just her personality. Most likely, it's not an either/or thing. I do think that a lot of what is said in Finnish goes over her head, so she kind of naturally tunes out and is in her own little world (I am familiar with this myself: as a foreigner, I have learned to tune out Finnish. On the other hand, when I hear English, my initial reaction is always that someone is talking to ME.). In her dance class, for example, on the one day parents were allowed to observe, we noticed that she was continuously about four steps behind the other children. But you know what? She was happy. She was very clearly enjoying her dance class--in Finnish--like crazy. Furthermore, the dance teacher confirmed that V's skills in Finnish had developed a lot during the course, to the point where V would answer her in Finnish. Hurray, mission accomplished! Imagine the teacher's disappointment when I had to tell her that, well, actually, V knew Finnish before the dance class, so it wasn't actually the teacher who had taught her how to speak ...
We didn't notice so much of a dip in the Finnish skills after this year's trip to the USA. I think it helped this year that we paid a visit to V's Finnish speaking aunties almost immediately after our return to Finland. In general, you could say that V is quite unwilling to speak Finnish. It depends on whom she is with. With Finnish speaking children, for example, or in everyday Finnish language situations, V is incredibly shy and insecure--and understandably so. With her aunties and her grandmother, however, because of the love and comfort she has with them, Finnish is the default language. She is able to communicate with them in Finnish, but her speech is quite faltering (lots of "um ... um ... um ...") and filled with grammatical inconsistencies (for example, using a third person verb with the Finnish word for "I," so, "Minä on ..."). However, it is still there, rudimentary as it is, and sometimes she lets guard down and really tries. She has the basic grammar, she has quite a large vocabulary, and she is basically able to communicate. I can say from firsthand experience that it is a really intimidating experience to try and express yourself in a language you don't have mastery of, so I am really impressed with her bravery.
Most people, of course, wouldn't be able to understand her Finnish, and monolingual Finnish children do make fun of her because of her inability to express herself ("What's the matter with you? Why can't you talk?"). Not only is the grammar imperfect, but she also tends to substitute Swedish words when she can't come up with the Finnish equivalent. For a Swedish (and English) speaking child, though, she is doing OK. The reality for a lot of Swedish speaking children in Finland is that they really don't speak the dominant language (i.e., Finnish), until they start learning it in school. If Swedish is spoken as a home language, then there is simply not the opportunity to hear Finnish. This is a common topic of conversation among parents at V's Swedish-speaking day care. No one wants their child to be at a disadvantage, but it's not like this is a new situation in Finland. There have been Swedish speakers in Finland for a long time, and somehow they manage to get along.
But that's a much bigger issue. Back to V's languages.
On grammar
At this point, V's Swedish and English skills are probably about equal. There is a fair amount of mixing between them, but that is perfectly normal and does not alarm us in the slightest. An example of Swedish influence on her English is found in the words that are similar between the languages. For example, in Swedish, the word helikopter is clearly similar to English helicopter, it's mostly just an issue of which syllable is stressed. So when V uses the word in English, she says "heliCOPter" rather than "HELicopter." She does the same thing with the word telephone--she tends to pronounce it "telePHONE" in English. She continues to anglicize Swedish words such as trappor 'stairs' into "traps" in English. This is, of course, mildly problematic when we visit the States ... one of the best examples from last summer was with a great-aunt who has a slightly dirty mind. Imagine her surprise when Vera informed her that she was drawing "pricks" on her piece of paper. Prickar means 'polka dots' in Swedish. I am still trying to convince V that she should call them "spots" or "dots" in English.
When she speaks Swedish, it's pretty common to hear V say things like, "Har du beena i Stockholm?" Here, she has substituted the English verb been rather than using the Swedish verb varit. She also tends to say things like "Kan hon talkar i Svenska?" Here, she has used the English verb talk and given it a Swedish verb ending.
Now for some specifics about her English language development. I would say her English phonology is more or less in place. She can say the /r/ sound without any trouble, regardless of word position, although occasionally it might still alternate with the [w] sound. The same goes for /l/. The other day, for example, she did a stunning rendition of the word pterodactyl, but the last sound came out as "w" instead of "l." The most stubborn sound is the "th" sound, or in other words /θ/ and /ð/. The books say, though, that these--along with certain consonant clusters--are among the last sounds mastered, somewhere between ages 4 and 6, so we are still on target. In terms of consonant clusters, she has some pretty interesting features. She can say words like squirrel with no problem, even with the rather hefty [skw] combination there. More interesting is her pronunciation of words like after, which for some reason she pronounced like "actor" for a very long time -- that is, with a [k.t] sequence rather than a [f.t] sequence. And she is just now starting to pronounce the word only with a [n.l] sequence. For the longest time, she has pronounced only as "omly," and sometimes even as "ombly," with an intrusive [b]--very weird, but also very interesting. I guess she has some kind of bilabial trend going on there.
One of the things that has been cracking me about V's language is her use of the word otherwise. Of all the adverbs, how did she get on this one? She uses it pretty much grammatically, but it’s the frequency of it that amuses me. You could definitely say it's her favorite adverb. "Otherwise, you won't be able to hear me." "Otherwise, Sally won't wake up in time." "Otherwise, we have to tell Pappa that he doesn't get any."
Lately, however, it's another adverb, filler, discourse marker--whatever you want to call it--that has crept into her language. At the tender age of 4 plus some, my child has developed the use of like. Don't ask me how or why, but there it is. She has started to use like both as a discourse marker and a quotative. Here is an example of like as a discourse marker: "It's, like, as tall as Sally." Here is an example of like as a quotative: "She's like, 'I'm not going to eat cheese.'
A few more details about V's grammar: she doesn't seem to have the dative pronouns yet, or at least not in the first person singular. Here is an example. The other day--I can't remember what we were talking about--she said, "You're going to lock I up when I'm a teenager." OK, this is a highly incriminating sentence she said, but, meaning aside, it's a great example of her use of dative pronouns. She routinely says things like, "Give it to I," "It's for I," etc.
Finally, I want to mention the use of past tense in English. Everyone knows that in English we have certain verbs that we call "irregular" in the past tense. These include go --> went, be --> was, and, in terms of pronunciation, even verbs like sleep --> slept and say --> said. The typical thing to do is to "regularize" these verbs, and that is exactly what V does. For her, the past tense of go is "goed," sleep is "sleeped," and the past tense of be is "were." For example, "I were at JoAnn's house yesterday." She also regularizes the pronunciation of other verbs, for example do can come out as "duuz."
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