Mishmash

Here's another general update about V's languages.

First of all, she is pretty comfortable in all language settings, especially Finnish and English. I have noticed a couple of times that when we are around Swedish speaking kids that she doesn't know, she doesn't try to talk to them. It seems like she is trying to figure out, "Hmmm. I am not quite sure what to say to these people." And yet she watches them with distinct interest, and she clearly understands what they are saying. Sometimes I feel like her use of languages impedes her willingness to get in and mix with other kids, because she is standing back, trying to relate to what she hears going on around her. For example, the other day I took her to a gymnastics class for toddlers, and she spent most of the time going around listening to what the other kids were saying, rather than playing, jumping and shouting the way they all did. There were Finnish, English and Swedish speaking kids there, and it seemed to kind of throw her off. Of course, this could just be her personality: she has always been a "thinker" rather than being the first kid to jump in and start doing stuff.

I never really hear her speak Swedish outside the context of our home, however, which I find interesting. It's as if she hasn't quite figured out that this language transfers to other situations, as well--like English and Finnish do. This will surely change: we recently made the (very difficult) decision to send V to Swedish speaking nursery school here in Helsinki, followed by education in Swedish, so I fully suspect that Swedish will eventually be her dominant language.

The amount of vocabulary that comes out in all her languages is really something. She mentions words and names of people that she has encountered only once, and sometimes many weeks previously. Where do kids this age store all this information? It amazes me. This is kind of a weird example, but the other day I pulled something out of the fridge (can't remember what it was) and said, smelled it, and said, "Oh, this looks like it got old." V looked at it and said, "It's oldy." I didn't understand what she meant. "Do you mean it's old?" I asked. I could see the wheels turning in her head for a second, then she said, "It's moldy. Moldy." She had been searching for that word and couldn't find it, but then she accessed it and used it in exactly the right circumstances. A couple of points worth mentioning here: I don't know when I had ever used the word moldy around her, but clearly I had at some point, and second, I would like to defend my housekeeping skills and say that she was actually wrong--the food was not moldy!

The sounds are coming out quite on target in all her languages. I think the sound that gives her the hardest time is the Finnish/Swedish r, which is rolled like it would be in Spanish or Italian. Depending on the word, she says this sound either as an [l] or a [d]. In English, however, she says the r sound perfectly.

The other sound that seems to give her a hard time is s, if it comes at the beginning of a word before another consonant. She leaves the s sound out, so that, for example, "stinky" is tinky and "Steve" is teve. We've been practicing this lately, though, and she can produce the s sound if we really focus on it: "ssssssssssstinky."

I have noted previously that her grammar had lacked target-like negation and use of first and second person pronouns. This has changed. Only once in a while does she produce a non-target negative statement. The other day, for example, she came up with an interesting one. Our friend who helps us with the cleaning was here, and V likes to follow her around the house saying, "She's so busy. She's so busy." This particular day, she came to me and said many times, "Mamma not so busy." OK, this is quite an embarrassing observation for me, but what I want to point out is that it's still pretty close to the target: She is just missing the copula -s.

V can count to 8 in English, but not in other languages.

It's interesting that she knows her letters of the alphabet in Swedish, but not in English. She spends quite a bit of time with her dad looking at her alphabet magnets and also books in Swedish. This is one domain in which she transfers labels from one language to the other: she hasn't yet figured out, it seems, that the letters have different names in her languages. In Swedish, for example, the letter "i" is called ee, like the English letter "e." You can see where this would be potentially confusing, but I'm sure she'll work it out eventually.

One thing that amazed a visitor we had here recently was how V has different animal sounds for each language. I guess I had already gotten used to that fact, but it blew him away! Speaking of this friend, he happened to be travelling with a banjo (you have to love someone who comes from New York carrying a banjo!), and, naturally, V was blown away by that. She got her very first banjo lesson, and then, after a few minutes, she left the room, saying, "I have a banjo, too." Well, we were all very curious to see what she considered "her" banjo to be.

She soon came back into the room blowing into her little toy clarinet. It's easy to see the logic she was using: "A banjo is something that plays music, so this thing must be a banjo, too."

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.