Sorcier/Sorcière

Today was Schmoo's school play and she had to go in dressed up as a witch. As we were leaving I said to her, 'Quelle belle petite sorcière!' ('What a pretty little witch!'), but I obviously pronounced it wrong, because she immediately corrected me, 'Pas sorcier, maman, sorcière! C'est sorcier pour les garcons et sorcière pour les filles!' ('Not wizard, mum, witch! It's wizard for boys and witch for girls!'). I love that she's starting to correct me now, though it's probably another sign that it's time to switch the home language to English, something I've been planning for a while. Schmoo's getting all the French input she needs from the mother tongue teachers at her immersion French school, so it seems redundant to keep exposing her to my franglais (though I'm learning quite a lot!).

Immersion French

Savez-vous qui a 5 ans, mes amis, mes amis?
Savez-vous qui a 5 ans, dans la classe aujourd'hui?
C'est Schmoo qui a 5 ans, mes amis, mes amis!
C'est Schmoo qui a 5 ans, dans la classe aujourd'hui!*
(To the tune of Savez-vous planter les choux )

Since September, Schmoo has finally finally finally entered the immersion French class at school :-) It feels like we've been waiting several aeons for this, with the carrot dangling tantalisingly the whole time (in a French school, but stuck in the English section!). And wow! What a difference it has made! Her accent is suddenly pitch perfect, her French vocabulary has just exploded. Her intonation still needs some work, after 5 years of listening to my Franglais, but for very short phrases it's spot on, in fact she often sounds like a surly French teenager ("Maman, c'est trop cool!" etc).
The good thing about having spent 2 years in the English section is that she can now read in English. Her recent school report from the French section said that she models her French reading on English, so we're working on that now - she reads me one book in English and one in French each night. She's getting used to the differences and the way words like 'part' are pronounced differently depending on the language.

Pan-Pan will go directly into the French section in September and I'm hoping his French will take off in the same way. He's talking well in both languages now and quickly figures out who speaks French and who speaks English (although he doesn't call them that yet!). Some of his French corrupted words are so cute, eg: 'Conne ça' for 'Comme ça'.

The kids speak a mish-mash of French and English together. I try to reinforce the French with the odd reminder that we must help Pan-Pan learn French!




*Do you know who's 5 years' old, my friends, my friends?
Do you know who's 5 years' old, in the class today?
It's Schmoo who's 5 years' old, my friends, my friends!
It's Schmoo who's 5 years' old, in the class today!

Survey results

Here's the link to the survey results! Keep your responses coming (see bottom of page): http://control.smart-survey.co.uk/data/results/send.asp?t=2&i=6479&f=

Changing the lingo

This is a tricky thing to manage, but often a necessary change for bilingual families.
Suppose you're raising your children with Japanese in an English-speaking country but then move to Japan. Logically, you'd now want to start using English with the children, but that's easier said than done, as talking a particular language with someone is a very hard habbit to break. The language you speak with someone gives that language a certain value, as well as forming part of the identity of that person and the relationship you have with them.
Sometimes it's the parents who want to switch languages.
Suppose (once again) you're raising your children with Japanese in an English-speaking country, but this time your children's school teacher tells you their English is not as strong as it should be. To introduce more English into their environment, you may wish to start talking in English with your partner, or even encourage grandparents to do so.
In our case, where the Twi is so weak (due to lack of time with their father and our late start, making it difficult to use Twi all the time), I have decided to start using Twi with Papa whenever possible (not too often, given my current Twi abilities!). I am hoping this will also improve my own Twi. It's challenging, but with the natural dominance of the Majority Language (English in our case), there's no harm in switching to a bit of Twi. Also, hearing their parents use Twi together will hopefully raise the value of the language for the children.
They already both have pitch-perfect Twi accents and sing happily along to Twi songs in the car, plus good passive knowledge, so the basis is there. My hope is that the next time we take them to Ghana (should be 2010), they will switch from passive to active knowledge in their play with local children :-)

Questions kids ask...

Now that Schmoo has reached the question phase (just after the 'why' phase!), we are getting some crackers, like 'How do cats laugh?' (she was pretending to be a cat) and 'Why are we animals?' when I tried to explain that humans are animals too...

Citronnade - Lemonade or Lemon squash (apparently!)

I'm very excited as Schmoo has just used a word I've never heard in French!! She asked me if she could have some 'citronnade'. Well, I guessed this meant lemonade, but I only know the word 'limonade', so I wondered if she'd made it up. But when I checked wordreference, there it was! I wonder where she picked it up from, probably school, but perhaps one of her French DVDs or books. Luckily her citronnade was homemade, she'd poured a load of lemon juice into a bowl and chucked some smarties in and asked if she could have a bit - well, it's not my idea of a yummy drink, but she was happy ;-)

Plus ça change...

It's been a while since I've updated my Bilingual Babes, so there've been some quite dramatic changes. The main one has been in Pan-Pan's speech - he now talks all day long! He usually combines 2 words into little sentences, and it's almost always in French. He does use a couple of Twi words with Papa and seems to know not to use these with me. It's lovely that he and Schmoo speak French together, something that will help them maintain their language once I make the switch to English later on. I can't believe Pan-Pan is due to start school next year, he still seems more of a baby than a little boy, but I know from Schmoo that so much changes happen in a year - in fact, it will be almost two years, as his first term will not be until September.

The other change has been in our Twi - at first our aim was that Schmoo would learn to speak it (ie active bilingualism), but this involved 2 problems, first that Papa is not as militant as me and I found I was spending all my time saying 'Don't forget to repeat that in Twi', which was not conducive to good family relations! and secondly we were concerned about her English, which wasn't getting very much exposure. We feel, of the 3 languages, English has to take priority - we live in an English-speaking country, in a world where English is the main international language, so we really want both our Babes to have English as one, if not their only, mother tongue. At the moment, French is still slightly dominant, so some English exposure from Papa is very important. Our current compromise is that he speaks mainly Twi to them (Schmoo understands, but responds in English) and switches to English for complex discussions or reading. This way, she is building up a good passive knowledge of Twi, without losing a strong English influence. Long-term, I hope our Babes will be able to switch from passive to active Twi by spending time in Ghana, as we are certain to have many trips there once they are a little older, and most of the children they spend time with there will only be able to communicate in Twi. The other hope is that as all conversations with Pan-Pan are still very simple, Papa only speaks Twi with him, so he may well end up talking back in Twi, which would give Schmoo a strong motivation to join in! Only time will tell..!

Terms of affection

Since I decided to speak French with my two, I've needed to find a few equivalents for 'sweetie'! These seem to be the most common:

Mon coeur
Ma puce/pupuce
Ma cocotte
Ma belle
Mon ange
Ma poupée

Skipping rope

Schmoo is getting very precocious and now fills in my vocab gaps for me! Today, looking at one of her books, I was racking my brains for the word 'skipping rope' in French. I said, 'I can't remember what this is called.' She looked at me in surprise and said, 'Corde a sauter'!

Just to update this post a few days on: Schmoo was watching one of her French cartoons with me when an eel swam by. I couldn't remember the word for eel, so I just said, 'Oh, look at the snake!' She said, 'That's not a snake, it's an eel!' I've always longed for the day when she would be able to do this - teach me words and remind me of ones I've forgotten. It's a good incentive to spend a bit more time improving my own French as well, as I can get quite lazy about it!

Talking baby!

Pan-Pan is just starting to talk now, and his French vocabulary has a clear head-start! I'm sure his Twi and English won't be far behind though...

Words Pan-Pan can say:
French:
Bébé [Baby]
Coin coin [Quack quack]
Non [No]
Caca [Poopoo]
Do-do [Nap time]
Miam-miam [Yummy-yummy, ie Food!]
Boire [Drink]
Ciseaux [Scissors]

Twi:
Gi [Take it]

English:
Bye-bye

I'm not sure yet how much Pan-Pan grasps of the fact that he is surrounded by 3 languages (or 4, including baby signing), but I remember how quickly Schmoo sorted it all out and is still very clear which language she should speak with who. Recently, she was on the phone to her grandma and was switching easily and naturally between French with me standing next to her and English on the phone!