Bilingual communication strategies

[pne]

"Daddy, Erik has a Playmobil advent calendar! And today he had... (turns to Stella) Mami, eine Playmobil-Palme!"

Or, in which she Amy avoids speaking German to me even when she doesn't know the English word :)

I'm also amused by the fact that there seem to be a number of words which she knows in English but not in German, her stronger language! For example, teaspoon, tablespoon, and eyebrows.

Comments

[jpallan.livejournal.com]

I'm wondering if she has it somewhere in her head that Daddy and Deutsch don't go together. :)

[pne.livejournal.com]

Almost certainly!

Also, the other day I read here on LiveJournal from someone who spoke Turkish to her mother and Persian to her father and thought that her parents didn't understand one another - until she heard her father speak Turkish at around age five, at which point she switched to Turkish only.

I highly doubt that Amy harbours any such notion, since she must have heard me speak German to Stella and other people - so I'm even more glad that she speaks English (and only English) to me.

[jpallan.livejournal.com]

What a pity to lose her Farsi. Did she ever regain it?

And I wouldn't be surprised if Amy does harbour such an idea. Children are odd ducks and don't notice details we think are obvious and do notice details we think they miss. So it's possible -- even likely -- that she simply doesn't think of you as a Deutschsprecher.

But it is equally likely that she sees English as a secret Daddy-only code, sort of like the Voynich manuscript. ;)

[pne.livejournal.com]

What a pity to lose her Farsi. Did she ever regain it?

She says, "I used to be fluent but now when I speak I have an unfortunate American accent and I stammer a lot," (http://community.livejournal.com/linguaphiles/4180158.html) and she's now considering learning to read and write Persian. So it appears that she didn't lose it completely, it just fell into disuse and acquired some rust.

But it is equally likely that she sees English as a secret Daddy-only code

It would certainly explain her reluctance to speak English to anyone else!

Though Virginia, one of her kindergarten teachers, says that Amy will occasionally speak English with her now.

(On the other hand, she doesn't know many people who count as "English speakers"; I think that if someone counts as bilingual -- such as a German who has learned English --, they'll get addressed in German. Perhaps a candidate might be my father, but I don't think she's spoken to him at all yet -- but I attribute that more to shyness and not knowing him well enough yet due to not seeing him all that often rather than to the language issue. But you never know what goes on in children's heads, as you say.)

[conuly]

I know a girl whose mother used to speak Dutch to her until one day her kid realized that Mommy speaks English. From that day on, whenever her mother spoke Dutch, her kid would scream. So she stopped, because really, what was she going to do, make it a power play?

[pne.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of the story of the person who spoke Klingon to his child - he stopped after the child became unwilling to continue speaking the language, too.

Yes, stopping sounds like a good idea in such a scenario. Being bilingual can be good, but not at the expense of your relationship with your child.

(Though if the child is willing to accept being spoken to in another language, it may be worth continuing, to make the child a passive bilingual, possibly later to (re)activate their latent knowledge; but that wasn't the case in the situation you mentioned.)

[conuly]

I heard that story about Latin. Wonder if it happens a lot, or if the stories we heard are urban legendifying?

The Dutch story is true though, that or the woman in question is a pathological liar :)

And yeah. The woman had considered signing her kid up for Dutch lessons, but they were in Jersey and going over the bridge is such a timewasting experience...!

[pne.livejournal.com]

The story about Klingon has a name associated with it: d'Armond Speers (aka Holtej); I believe his son is called Alec or Alex.

[pne.livejournal.com]

With the name, I meant to say: I doubt the Klingon story I heard is an urban legend.

So I imagine this simply happens a lot. After all, it happens with non-"silly" languages, too, where children simply refuse to speak more than one language at some point - and then it becomes, as you said, a power play if the adult insists on maintaining the second language.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I had something like this happen with me. I used to speak only German to the son of the resident heads in my college dormitory. By the time I left for my year abroad, he had learned how to say tschüs and one or two other words. But when I returned, not only had he forgotten them, but he greeted any attempt of mine to speak German to him with, "Stop talking funny!" or "Stop making funny words!"