Det är amazing

The past few weeks have been amazing in many ways, not limited to linguistic development, but certainly the linguistic developments have been a high point (let's hear it again for dorky linguist parents!).

First, a report on a big moment for V and her pappa. Have I mentioned that V likes pictures and books? She could easily spend as many hours a day poring over books as we would let her. One of her favorite books has pictures of her with people she knows and loves. She was looking at this book with her pappa, and he asked her (in Swedish, of course), "Where's mamma?" V pointed, and answered, plain as day, "Där är mamma!" This gorgeous little utterance was her first complete sentence in Swedish, and Pete nearly jumped out of his chair for joy. I have to say I was quite impressed, as well.

Her Swedish continues to develop, but in a different direction than her English. As I have mentioned before, this seems to be bound up with the personal relationships; in other words, the output depends on who says what to her. One of the things she does with her dad is to look at pictures of animals. At this point, she knows how to respond to most of the "What does the ---- say?" questions, but mostly in Swedish. The only animal names she knows in English so far are cat and dog, and she can respond with what they say. In Swedish she knows cow, pig, horse, etc.

This is interesting: before, I wrote that she seems to have only one word per concept, without overlap. In other words, she doesn't really seem to have two languages yet, just language. However, we have now seen our first element of overlap, and it is with her favorite thing of all: the dog. She knows the word hund in Swedish, and she knows the word dog in English. When her pappa asks, "Vad säger hunden?" she answers "woof." When I ask, "What does the dog say?" she also answers "woof." This is the very first example we have of her identifying the same concept in two languages, and this is EXCITING. Let the bilingualism begin!

Her semantic field is changing, too. I wrote sometime before that, for example, all food was "bread" to her. That has changed as of a couple of weeks ago. Now, just bread is bread. If she doesn't know the word for some kind of food she wants, she might still call it "bread." Like her nighttime bottle, for instance. However, she calls a banana "banana" and cheese "cheese." She also says "apple" (she says it and certain other two-syllable words in a really cute way: she emphasizes the second syllable and give it a rising pitch, so it comes out like "app-ELL?"). This is where it gets interesting: it seems to be the case that any round fruit is, in her mind, an apple. If she sees an orange, a mango, a kiwi--whatever--she points and says, "apple." The same thing still goes for dogs: any animal with four legs that she doesn't have another name for (zebra, horse, etc.) is a dog.

There is a lot of mimicking going on, no matter what language or sounds she hears. So, for example, if her German or Finnish friends are around, she mimicks "nein, nein, nein," or "voi, voi, voi, voi, voi," clearly because she likes the sound of it, not because she knows what it means. A few days ago, a friend of ours said, "Voi, voi, voi, voi, voi," in Finnish, which means something like "Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear," and Vera just loved it. She kept saying this "voi, voi" thing at all the right moments in the subsequent conversation, and the laughter she elicited every time absolutely thrilled her. It's amazing how fast they learn through such positive feedback.

I have been pleased with her recent acquisition of the word more. I believe this is the first word she has used that doesn't fit into a noun or verb category. She really gets this word, too. Another exciting milestone for the linguist mom.

Is there any evidence that she is trilingual at this point? Not much, I'd say. She seems to know a few words in Finnish, but at this point they are just mixed in with her language (remember, for the most part she doesn't seem to have languages--with a plural--yet). I might be making this up, but I think she seems genuinely confused when we enter into a Finnish speaking situation, and especially when she hears me speaking Finnish. Actually, she probably is old enough to get the difference, now that I think about it. When her Finnish grandmother is around, for example, V says the words she knows in Swedish and English and isn't responsive to the Finnish her grandmother says. The other day when I took her to her little music class, she seemed confused as to what was happening in a way I hadn't noticed during previous classes. I am sure this is because her comprehension, especially in English, is very high already. For example, if I tell her to bring me her shoes, socks, her toothbrush, or a book, she readily does as requested. What I am getting at is that it must be confusing for her when we enter into a situation where she suddenly can't understand anything (like when we are with Finnish speakers). I'll be watching closely for signs that she is beginning to realize that these are different languages.