Head on over to Spanglish Baby to see this month's Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism, a round-up of recent posts by bloggers who are raising their kids with more than one language. Read anecdotes and reflections, pick up some tips and tricks, and get inspired by what these creative, motivated folks are doing!
(And while you're at it, learn more about the Carnival here.)
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Saturday, February 27, 2010
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
so THAT'S what YouTube is all about!
I know, I know, everyone else has been watching stuff on YouTube for years, if not uploading everything from home video clips of their baby gurgling to abstruse original short films about gurgling babies exploding in outer space in multiple dimensions. Our Internet connection speed at home was so slow, though, that it would take ten minutes to download a three-minute video, each time we wanted to see it. So I never bothered exploring YouTube.
A couple of weeks ago, however, we increased our DSL bandwith and now I can click on a video and watch it instantly. Magic! This opens up a whole new French-speaking universe for Griffin and moi.
Here's my newest discovery which makes both of us happy: I can find animated comptines (nursery rhymes) in French, some of which are even bearable to watch repeatedly! The ones I like best (so far) are called "clipounets" and draw from the karaoke tradition by highlighting the lyrics word by word as they are sung. Griffin asks for "L'araignee Gypsie" over and over, singing along (and sounding so gosh durn cute).
The accompanying blurb directs us YouTubers to the clipounets website ("le site musical des touts-petits"), which seems extremely well-organized, even suggesting minimum viewing ages for the different songs (according to their level of sophistication? or perhaps the number of violent acts depicted in the nursery rhymes, some of which are unusually cruel and bloody?). The website also appears to offer stories and other materials to listen to.
I say "seems to" and "appears to" because apparently you have to subscribe in order to listen to everything on the site, not just the few teasers they have posted to YouTube. At seven euros a month for the subscription, it had better fold my laundry and do the dishes while it plays songs for my kid!
(Since it apparently doesn't, I haven't subscribed, natch.)
Over at Bilingual for Fun, they offered these words of wisdom about using YouTube when raising children with more than one language, making the point that anything that increases kids' motivation to see and hear other speakers is a good thing. (They also link to their playlists of videos for kids in other languages--thanks!)
Any other suggestions for using YouTube with our young'uns? And surely someone can direct us to more videos in French appropriate for toddlers like Griffin! Gurgle gurgle gurgle.
A couple of weeks ago, however, we increased our DSL bandwith and now I can click on a video and watch it instantly. Magic! This opens up a whole new French-speaking universe for Griffin and moi.
Here's my newest discovery which makes both of us happy: I can find animated comptines (nursery rhymes) in French, some of which are even bearable to watch repeatedly! The ones I like best (so far) are called "clipounets" and draw from the karaoke tradition by highlighting the lyrics word by word as they are sung. Griffin asks for "L'araignee Gypsie" over and over, singing along (and sounding so gosh durn cute).
The accompanying blurb directs us YouTubers to the clipounets website ("le site musical des touts-petits"), which seems extremely well-organized, even suggesting minimum viewing ages for the different songs (according to their level of sophistication? or perhaps the number of violent acts depicted in the nursery rhymes, some of which are unusually cruel and bloody?). The website also appears to offer stories and other materials to listen to.
I say "seems to" and "appears to" because apparently you have to subscribe in order to listen to everything on the site, not just the few teasers they have posted to YouTube. At seven euros a month for the subscription, it had better fold my laundry and do the dishes while it plays songs for my kid!
(Since it apparently doesn't, I haven't subscribed, natch.)
Over at Bilingual for Fun, they offered these words of wisdom about using YouTube when raising children with more than one language, making the point that anything that increases kids' motivation to see and hear other speakers is a good thing. (They also link to their playlists of videos for kids in other languages--thanks!)
Any other suggestions for using YouTube with our young'uns? And surely someone can direct us to more videos in French appropriate for toddlers like Griffin! Gurgle gurgle gurgle.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
on being a non-native speaker
This post is part of the February 2010 Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism.
Nearly four years into this blog, I still have doubts about the practicality of raising my son bilingually and the possibility of teaching my nephew French. These days, I don't see Carl (my four-year-old nephew) often enough or for long enough periods of time to reinforce what French he already knows, much less give him new words. And now that he can read by himself in English, he devours books and doesn't need us grown-ups to read to him as much. (We did have a lot of fun three weeks ago, though, reading a bilingal English-French book about a monkey; Carl read the English, I read the French translation, and occasionally he would join in on the simplest sentences in French.)
What I really want is for Griffin and Carl to speak French together, but it's too soon for that to happen effectively right now, given that Griffin, is, you know, a two-year-old who still mispronounces a lot of words, leaves out other words, and makes up his own expressions for a lot of things. Throw in some often-mispronounced French words into his English sentences, and, well, sometimes even his daddy needs me to translate from Griffinese to English! There's no way that Carl can follow much of what Griffin says. I'm worried that once Carl starts kindergarten next year and he meets a school-full of Anglophone kids he won't see any point in speaking French at all.
But I have dreams of French becoming a special language for Carl and Griffin (and any future siblings), one in which they can whisper secrets to each other, tell stories in sandboxes and treehouses, and giggle in while playing with flashlights in sleeping bags at cousin slumber parties. I can picture Carl coming over to our house for a sleepover en francais, where we have croques monsieur for dinner, then play board games like Loto and La roue de la fortune, and finally fall asleep watching Kirikou et la sorciere or Caillou.
I think for now what's important is for me to keep speaking French around Carl but not force him to respond in kind and to keep exposing him to fun stuff like music, books, and videos in French. Give it time. Just give it time and don't pressure him.
Then there's Griffin, our darling boy who has just entered the "terrific twos," who will walk down stairs holding my hand on one side and his daddy's hand on the other, and turn to him and say, "Be careful!" and then swivel his head to me and caution, "Doucement!" He'll ask Maman for a "bisou" and an instant later clamor for a "kiss!" from Daddy. Living in two languages doesn't seem to faze him in the least.
It fazes me, though. I'm not a native speaker of French; no one in our family is. I spent two school years in France (one as a college student and one as a high school English teachers), majored in French, got a masters degree in French, taught university French for seven years, and even directed plays in French; still, everyday interactions with Griffin send me flying to the dictionary.
At first it was baby-related vocabulary: my French textbooks never taught me how to say, for example, "After two hours of pushing and seventeen hours of labor without an epidural I just wanted him the hell out of my ya-ya" or "Griffin just had a diaper blow-out all over his onesie while he was sleeping in the bouncy chair."
Now it's a linguistic race to keep up with him and describe what we're doing and why and what next!
As he started to grow and pay attention to the world around him, I tried to narrate everything I did in French. Even when I was living in France I never spoke so much French in one day! In only three stituations have I spoken English to Griffin: when he's asleep and I feel like I'll burst if I don't address him in my mother tongue; when his daddy and I are singing duets; and when we attend storytime at the library (where it would be strange and rude for me not to participate).
Reading to Griffin usually entails a vocabulary challenge for me, because so often he hands me a book in English that I have to translate on the fly. Just yesterday, during Bear Snores On, I encountered the following words and expressions that I never had to say before in French: "badger," "wren," "gopher*," and "an itty-bitty mouse, pitter-pat, tip-toe, creep-crawls in the cave from the fluff-cold snow." I do a lot of circumlocuting these days!
And since I don't have time (or don't make time, rather) to read to myself in French these days or call my friends in France to chat, and I'm not hanging out with French teachers on a daily basis, my own French is degenerating. I have noticed sloppy pronunciation, incorrect articles and pronouns, imprecise vocabulary! (Does this mean I now sound like a child or teenager?) Even two and a half years ago, when I was still teaching at Colorado State, I worried that I wasn't good enough to teach French to my baby nephew.
This hit home last week when I was talking to Griffin at the library. A woman overheard us and expressed amazement--not that Griffin was being raised bilingually, but that she could understand me! "This is so great!" she enthused. "I never got it when my teachers spoke French to us, but I understand everything you say! You speak so nice and slow!"
Dear readers, I wasn't speaking slowly on purpose! It was my normal rate!
I am so far from being a native speaker of French I sometimes wonder if I'm doing him a disservice linguistically and (more importantly) will later regret depriving myself of that maternal intimacy that comes from speaking one's native language with one's child. And what will happen as he grows up and only has the kids at French playgroup to converse with?
I still strongly believe at birth is an ideal time to start teaching languages, and I do think that non-native speakers are very capable of teaching their second (or third or fourth...) language. I just have doubts sometime about this particular non-native speaker.
*I now know that, shockingly, "un gaufre" is a gopher and "une gaufre" is a waffle. Pity the sleepy diner who thinks she's ordering a delectable breakfast pastry and ends up with a rodent in maple syrup instead!
What I really want is for Griffin and Carl to speak French together, but it's too soon for that to happen effectively right now, given that Griffin, is, you know, a two-year-old who still mispronounces a lot of words, leaves out other words, and makes up his own expressions for a lot of things. Throw in some often-mispronounced French words into his English sentences, and, well, sometimes even his daddy needs me to translate from Griffinese to English! There's no way that Carl can follow much of what Griffin says. I'm worried that once Carl starts kindergarten next year and he meets a school-full of Anglophone kids he won't see any point in speaking French at all.
But I have dreams of French becoming a special language for Carl and Griffin (and any future siblings), one in which they can whisper secrets to each other, tell stories in sandboxes and treehouses, and giggle in while playing with flashlights in sleeping bags at cousin slumber parties. I can picture Carl coming over to our house for a sleepover en francais, where we have croques monsieur for dinner, then play board games like Loto and La roue de la fortune, and finally fall asleep watching Kirikou et la sorciere or Caillou.
I think for now what's important is for me to keep speaking French around Carl but not force him to respond in kind and to keep exposing him to fun stuff like music, books, and videos in French. Give it time. Just give it time and don't pressure him.
Then there's Griffin, our darling boy who has just entered the "terrific twos," who will walk down stairs holding my hand on one side and his daddy's hand on the other, and turn to him and say, "Be careful!" and then swivel his head to me and caution, "Doucement!" He'll ask Maman for a "bisou" and an instant later clamor for a "kiss!" from Daddy. Living in two languages doesn't seem to faze him in the least.
It fazes me, though. I'm not a native speaker of French; no one in our family is. I spent two school years in France (one as a college student and one as a high school English teachers), majored in French, got a masters degree in French, taught university French for seven years, and even directed plays in French; still, everyday interactions with Griffin send me flying to the dictionary.
At first it was baby-related vocabulary: my French textbooks never taught me how to say, for example, "After two hours of pushing and seventeen hours of labor without an epidural I just wanted him the hell out of my ya-ya" or "Griffin just had a diaper blow-out all over his onesie while he was sleeping in the bouncy chair."
Now it's a linguistic race to keep up with him and describe what we're doing and why and what next!
As he started to grow and pay attention to the world around him, I tried to narrate everything I did in French. Even when I was living in France I never spoke so much French in one day! In only three stituations have I spoken English to Griffin: when he's asleep and I feel like I'll burst if I don't address him in my mother tongue; when his daddy and I are singing duets; and when we attend storytime at the library (where it would be strange and rude for me not to participate).
Reading to Griffin usually entails a vocabulary challenge for me, because so often he hands me a book in English that I have to translate on the fly. Just yesterday, during Bear Snores On, I encountered the following words and expressions that I never had to say before in French: "badger," "wren," "gopher*," and "an itty-bitty mouse, pitter-pat, tip-toe, creep-crawls in the cave from the fluff-cold snow." I do a lot of circumlocuting these days!
And since I don't have time (or don't make time, rather) to read to myself in French these days or call my friends in France to chat, and I'm not hanging out with French teachers on a daily basis, my own French is degenerating. I have noticed sloppy pronunciation, incorrect articles and pronouns, imprecise vocabulary! (Does this mean I now sound like a child or teenager?) Even two and a half years ago, when I was still teaching at Colorado State, I worried that I wasn't good enough to teach French to my baby nephew.
This hit home last week when I was talking to Griffin at the library. A woman overheard us and expressed amazement--not that Griffin was being raised bilingually, but that she could understand me! "This is so great!" she enthused. "I never got it when my teachers spoke French to us, but I understand everything you say! You speak so nice and slow!"
Dear readers, I wasn't speaking slowly on purpose! It was my normal rate!
I am so far from being a native speaker of French I sometimes wonder if I'm doing him a disservice linguistically and (more importantly) will later regret depriving myself of that maternal intimacy that comes from speaking one's native language with one's child. And what will happen as he grows up and only has the kids at French playgroup to converse with?
I still strongly believe at birth is an ideal time to start teaching languages, and I do think that non-native speakers are very capable of teaching their second (or third or fourth...) language. I just have doubts sometime about this particular non-native speaker.
*I now know that, shockingly, "un gaufre" is a gopher and "une gaufre" is a waffle. Pity the sleepy diner who thinks she's ordering a delectable breakfast pastry and ends up with a rodent in maple syrup instead!
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Where to "commencer"?
commencer = to begin
In recent weeks, two vastly different moms have approached me for suggestions on helping their kids learn French. One is Adriana over at My Bilingual Boys, an experienced Spanish teacher whose two young sons already speak English and Spanish fluently. The other is the mother of a large home-schooled family, two of whose teenagers want to learn French.
The former has a multitude of resources available to her online and through her colleagues, plus the knowledge and experience that comes from already having raised her children with two languages, while the latter's resources consist exclusively of what she can access in the public library (no Internet at home and no possibility of buying books or materials for the kids to use at home) plus her memories of learning German when she was younger. And unfortunately, our library does not have extensive French learning materials--Muzzy, yes (for little kids), but Rosetta Stone, no.
My challenge for myself will be to go back through my previous posts and the French materials for kids that I have accumulated to figure out what I might recommend to both of these families (even though what works for two teenagers may have little in common with what appeals to younger children). This means that I will (probably) finally get around to posting reviews of the more of the books, games, and videos that I've used with Carl and now Griffin!
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Joyeux Jour de Saint Valentin!
Happy Valentine's Day to everyone who loves Griffin and whom Griffin loves in return--family, friends, his playgroup buddies and their mommies, the fantastic teachers at Take-a-Break, the library ladies, and maybe even a few folks out there in cyberspace!Thursday, February 11, 2010
thank you, Eve!
Dear Eve,
Look at this huge pile of books! You bought these tomes in France and brought them home to Colorado in overstuffed suitcases. Your husband's family, worried that the nephews/cousins/grandchildren would grow up without speaking French, sent them to you for holidays and birthdays. You collected DVDs in French for children and then taught yourself to reconfigure your DVD player so that your sons could watch "Les teletubbies" and "Kirikou" and "Dora l'exploratrice" and much more. You read and read and read to your boys, and now they are happily bilingual right here in northern Colorado!
And now that your sons have outgrown these children's books and DVDs, you reached out to a fellow blogger with a toddler and offered them to her. And what bounty! What variety! I had thought I had a decent selection of children's books in French, but most of mine are serious and educational. Now I have met a host of new characters--Foxy, Tibou, Samsam, T'choupi, and more--who go on adventures and misbehave and come home to their families who love them.
Merci mille fois to you and your husband and your sons for sharing these treasures with us. We are so grateful!
Look at this huge pile of books! You bought these tomes in France and brought them home to Colorado in overstuffed suitcases. Your husband's family, worried that the nephews/cousins/grandchildren would grow up without speaking French, sent them to you for holidays and birthdays. You collected DVDs in French for children and then taught yourself to reconfigure your DVD player so that your sons could watch "Les teletubbies" and "Kirikou" and "Dora l'exploratrice" and much more. You read and read and read to your boys, and now they are happily bilingual right here in northern Colorado!
And now that your sons have outgrown these children's books and DVDs, you reached out to a fellow blogger with a toddler and offered them to her. And what bounty! What variety! I had thought I had a decent selection of children's books in French, but most of mine are serious and educational. Now I have met a host of new characters--Foxy, Tibou, Samsam, T'choupi, and more--who go on adventures and misbehave and come home to their families who love them.
Merci mille fois to you and your husband and your sons for sharing these treasures with us. We are so grateful! 
Gros bisous,
Sarah & Griffin
Sunday, February 07, 2010
more Griffinisms
Just from today....
"My pants fall down again." (Why won't your parents buy you a belt, kid?)
"No don' put in mouth," as he chewed pensively on an uncapped marker.
"My ecrire!" as he grabs at a pen his maman is currently using. Ecrire means "to write" in French, but I don't know if he meant "I write" or "my pen," because he tends to use "my" as the first person subject pronoun (eg "My running! My off shoes! My take a bath!"). But I suppose that either way, it means the same thing to him: he wanted the pen and he wanted to write with it.
"My love oo Mommy, my love oo, je t'aime, je t'aime."
"My balloon!" Maman hands him a deflated balloon from a birthday party last weekend. Griffin holds balloon in the air. "Ballon haut, ballon bas, ballon." (Lyrics from a French song about a balloon flying up and down--from a CD we haven't listened to for several weeks!)
"My pants fall down again." (Why won't your parents buy you a belt, kid?)
"No don' put in mouth," as he chewed pensively on an uncapped marker.
"My ecrire!" as he grabs at a pen his maman is currently using. Ecrire means "to write" in French, but I don't know if he meant "I write" or "my pen," because he tends to use "my" as the first person subject pronoun (eg "My running! My off shoes! My take a bath!"). But I suppose that either way, it means the same thing to him: he wanted the pen and he wanted to write with it.
"My love oo Mommy, my love oo, je t'aime, je t'aime."
"My balloon!" Maman hands him a deflated balloon from a birthday party last weekend. Griffin holds balloon in the air. "Ballon haut, ballon bas, ballon." (Lyrics from a French song about a balloon flying up and down--from a CD we haven't listened to for several weeks!)
Thursday, February 04, 2010
babaganounours, rocky jammies, and a "fucky-gay" mommy
Griffin's sentences continue to grow longer and more elaborate, now involving prepositions and adverbs ("Daddy come in here now!"), pronouns ("My this!" for a new toy whose name he hadn't learned), and an increasing number of adjectives. He has moved beyond the simple naming of things and expressing physical needs, but will still happily discuss his "caca" (poop). He remains very bossy, yet very loving. (Sometimes simultaneously, in fact, as in when he ordered Ed one morning last week, who had kissed him good-bye and then me, "Daddy kiss Grandpa!")Griffin definitely speaks more English than French--of course, he hears it more often--but spices up a lot of his sentences to other people with words in French, and he's quite willing to speak French with me. Read on....
Griffin: "Mommy chatch off read-it book fauteuil bascu Mimi Bear come in!"
Translation: Mommy, take off the blanket (chatch is his pronunciation of couverture, "blanket") and read me a book in the rocking chair (un fauteuil à bascule). I want Mimi and Bear to sit with us too.
Griffin: "More babaganounours!"
Translation, or rather, explanation: Nounours is a teddy bear, and baba ganoush is a Middle Eastern eggplant dip. He had inadvertently combined the two words (in just about the cutest possible way!).
Maman: "On va aller au restaurant ce soir, n'est-ce pas?" [We're going to a restaurant tonight, right?]
Griffin: "No cooking!"
Maman, on her way out the door to go to work, leaving Griffin's grandfather in charge of lunchtime and naptime: "Griffin, finis ton tofu et puis fais dodo. Dodo bientôt." [Finish your tofu and then go nighty-night. Sleep soon!]
Griffin: "Griffy take nap. Grandad take nap."
Griffin, when his clothes are being changed: "Pantalon off! Rocky jammies! Griffy rocky pants! My rocky jammies!" [You're taking off my pants. I want my pajamas with the rockets on them. I want my pajama pants with the rockets on them.]
Maman: "Je t'aime, Griffin. Je t'aime même quand tu fais des bêtises. Mais je préfère que tu ne fasses pas de bêtises." [I love you, Griffin. I love you even when you're naughty. But I'd rather that you not be naughty.]
Griffin: "No throwing blocks!" [Throwing things is his most egregious and most common misbehavior. It's gotten to the point where I can look at him sternly as he raises his hand with a toy in it, say simply "Ne…", and he'll fill in the "jette pas." Of course, he might still throw the toy, but at least he can tell me in French that he knows he's not supposed to!]
Griffin, approaching the fire in the fireplace: "Griffin no don' touch the feu." (Do you think he's heard that phrase almost as often as "ne jette pas"?)
By the way, not only does Griffin use both languages within one sentence, he has even been known to do so within a single word! The clear example that comes to mind is "Oooors" followed by a person's name, which is an amalgam of "Where is...?" and the French "Où est...?" There's also his name for his stuffed pig, Groink, which seems to combine the English "oink" and the French "groin," both onomapoetic words for the sound the pig makes.
Griffin can also translate simple sentences from English to French (and probably the reverse, though I've never asked him to). If it's just the two of us together, and he says something like "more cheese please," I'll ask him what that means in French. He'll smile his sweet toothy toddler smile and respond, "Encore fromage silty-play."
He also assigns names and titles to things in ways that combine the two languages. For example, he enjoys watching on YouTube a certain classic Sesame Street sketch where Muppets clap and chant "clappety-clap" while they do so. YouTube has titled the segment "Clap, Clap, Clap," but Griffin will point at the computer and request "Tape on the Mains" ("clap on the hands").
And when it comes to singing songs, he is attuned to how a song is "supposed" to go (which can cause some stress as most folk songs' lyrics can vary according to the singer or the book in which the lyrics are printed.) Griffin will interrupt the singer to correct him or her:
Grammy, singing "The Farmer in the Dell": "The rat takes the mouse, the rat takes the mouse…."
Griffin: "Cheese! Rat takes cheese!"
Maman, distractedly singing the comptine "Tape, tape petites mains" while driving and following directions to a place she'd never been before: "Nage, nage petit oiseau…" [Swim, swim little bird--when the real line is "Nage, nage petit matelot”, swim, swim little sailor.]
Griffin, interrupting: "Vole oiseau! Vole oiseau!" [Fly, bird!]
And I'll conclude this ever-expanding list with the inevitable toddler mispronunciations that sound like swear words (I still smile when I think about how Carl said "dump truck" before he learned how to pronounce blends like "pr" and "tr"):
Griffin, whenever he sees the mailman, which is facteur in French: "Fucker! Fucker!"
Griffin, whenever Maman yawns loudly: "Mommy fucky-gay!" [his unfortunate pronunciation of fatiguée]
What in the world must they think of this kid at daycare???!!!
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