Profile: THW's non-native Francophone family in Trinidad and Tobago

More inspiration! THW is proof that you can learn a second language as an adult and then teach it to your child, even in a country where very few people speak that language or even understand why you're putting so much effort into raising a bilingual family. (Her situation is nearly the exact opposite of Nic's family, recently profiled on this blog.) She has also put a lot of effort into answering my questions--thank you for sharing all this detail with me and my readers! Your experiences will help us a lot. Perhaps we can do an update to this profile when Z starts school? It sounds like he will be a balanced bilingual by then!

MOTHER
Name: THW
Age: 41
Country of Residence: Trinidad and Tobago
Nationality: Trinidadian
Occupation: Production Manager for television station / Translator-editor for French multinational consortium

FATHER
Name: EAW
Age: 36
Country of Residence: Trinidad and Tobago
Nationality: British / Trinidadian / Jamaican
Occupation: Meteorologist and Presenter for television station

CHILD
Name: ZMAW
Age: 2
Country of Residence: Trinidad and Tobago
Nationality: British / Trinidadian
Occupation: Cutest baby on the face of the planet! ;-)

1) What is your language background and history?

I grew up in an Anglophone family; the national educational policy mandates a foreign language in secondary school, and I chose Spanish – which I actively disliked (even though I was good at it), and promptly forgot as soon as I left school. Many years later, I decided to take up French, but since I had neither room in my work schedule nor the extra money to spend on classes, I decided to try to learn it on my own. I gave up reading English (newspapers, internet, books) completely, converted my computer to French (keyboard, programme menus, operating system, everything!), cut every possible expense to the absolute minimum in order to subscribe to French satellite television, joined the Alliance Française – basically I did anything and everything I could to immerse myself in the language.

I was not sure that it was working too well, because I had little exposure to the spoken language (French expats like to practice their English, lol) until I had major surgery about 10 years ago and woke up in the recovery room unable to speak English for several days. Literally. I could understand the language, and I swore up and down that I was replying in English, but in fact, I could only speak French. Language schizophrenia. Not sure if it is a real condition, but that’s the best the doctors could do for a diagnosis. Since then, I’ve been fluent in both languages. During the last 6 months I have been using the language in a professional capacity for the first time, and although I love it and I am really happy, I will have to change jobs soon for financial reasons.

2) Where do you currently live?

I live in Trinidad and Tobago, an archipelagic republic in the Caribbean Sea, just off the coast of Venezuela. In spite of our proximity to Latin America, and our chequered past (Amerindian natives; colonized and/or governed by the English, French, Dutch, Latvian, Spanish, German, Irish, Scots and Portuguese; influenced by African, Chinese, Syrian-Lebanese and East Indian slaves/immigrants/indentured labourers), the population is staunchly English-speaking. We have a distinct “Trini” dialect in force, and there are some communities that speak “patois” (French Créole) or Hindi, but it is an oral tradition and almost never seen in written form. The Government has made some noises recently about making Spanish “the First Foreign Language”, but the official policy is neither well-defined nor well implemented.

3) What languages are spoken by the adult(s) in your household and at what level of proficiency?

Father – Native English, Intermediate French; Mother – Native English, Fluent French

4) How old are your children?

I have one son, Z, aged two.

5) If any of the adults in the household are non-native speakers of the language they use with the children, please tell us a little about how that works for your family.

I (the mother) have to work extra hard sometimes NOT to slip into English. I have tried sporadically to only speak French, period, at home, but this is difficult since my husband is not as fluent as I am.

6) What languages are you exposing your children to, and how?

Z is learning French and English using the OPOL method – Mother in French (fluent French/English), Father in English (fluent English, smattering of French) – in an English-speaking/Créole environment. Because of my husband’s work hours, Z will usually accompany me to most French events and receptions, where he gets to hear Maman and her friends talk, but at the moment there are very few children his age with whom he can interact in French.

7) Why do you want your child to know more than one language?

Life experience: Learning French broadened my horizons in a way that I normally would never have experienced, simply because travel abroad is a real challenge for Trinbagonians. Remember, we have to leave the island to go on a trip, whether by boat or plane, and we have a very unfavourable exchange rate (TTD 6.30 to USD 1.00) so even for the upper-middle class, the cost (monetary, time and logistics) of visiting anywhere other than North America and the Caribbean is prohibitive; our exposure to non-English speakers is VERY limited. My husband and I wanted Z to have the opportunity to experience another culture, even if we can’t afford to visit the country.

History: There are so many aspects of life in T&T which have been strongly influenced by our French history (dialect, place names, foods, culture, like our Carnival, for example) that Z really will understand and appreciate at a very early age – I don’t want him to feel that connection to and grounding in our history at age 30, but much, much earlier!

Job opportunities: In an increasingly multi-cultural world, companies and recruiters are looking for polyglots; they have a distinct advantage over other candidates pursuing limited employment opportunities. And with our educational system, he won’t get anywhere near fluency in French without a considerable head start. And even if the Government’s “Spanish as the First Foreign Language” idea takes off, with Spanish language teaching from age 5, he’ll still come out ahead.

Intellect: Thinking in a second language expanded my mind; I am a more precise, efficient, logical, rational, out-of-the-box, holistic thinker. Learning new concepts and understanding new ideas has been so much easier, not just because I think better, but because I have twice as many sources of information and explanation at my disposal.

Bonding: Maybe Z’ll understand Maman, and her obsession with France and all things French a little better, if he can at least speak the language! I hope!

8) How does your child feel about the different languages? What does he prefer?

Because of our schedules, Z gets approximately the same number of daily contact hours in French and English, even though we live in an Anglophone country. My husband will play Z’s French CDs and DVDs in between reading English books together during the morning period. At day-care (noon to 5pm), he is exposed to English only, but once he comes home with me, it’s French only until bedtime.

He’s only just started to say recognisable words, but he understands a lot more than he says. And yes, I know that all parents say that, but it’s true, because he will obey instructions from my husband in English, but he will studiously ignore him if he tries to speak French, and vice versa – absolutely no comprehension problems there! This is a problem in potentially dangerous situations, but fortunately “No!” and “Non!” are interchangeable.

Z is training his parents to be pretty precise in their language – confronted with the question “Where is the car?” in the middle of a parking lot, he will just stand there and, as they say here, “look at me in a tone of voice!” (lol), until I clarify “Where is the RED car?”

All the usual things – colours, numbers, parts of the body, furniture, kitchen utensils and common everyday objects and animals – he knows these in French for sure, a little less so in English. In terms of preferences – he generally chooses the easier word to say, to either parent, so we have “cow”, but not “vache”, “air-p” (airplane) but not “avion”, “bi-bon” (bibéron) but not bottle, “couche” but not “diaper”, “eau” but not “water”, “nez” but not “nose”.

Z sings along to his French nursery rhymes but not the English ones and parrots/acts out the scenes in his favourite DVDs. Even as a tiny baby, he very obviously reacted more to French than to English, paying attention and interacting when strangers spoke French to him and ignoring or rejecting contact with English speakers.

9) How have you been able to expose your child to the culture(s) where the different languages are spoken?

Z has French children’s books, CDs and DVDs, either bought over the Internet, from second-hand sales or as gifts from French expatriates returning home. The Alliance Française of Trinidad and Tobago and the expat community in general has also been a great support, morally and intellectually, even organising outings and get-togethers in which we can participate as a family. And we are planning to go to France for a couple of weeks at least three times in the next decade, before he turns twelve and we have to pay for a full fare!

10) What challenges have occurred as you raise your child with more than one language?

Environmental/Economic: The education system here is a rat-race that starts early – parents register their children at birth for select primary schools. In fact, the intake for Z’s year (2012 or ’13) is already complete in all the “good schools”, where the children would be more or less on the right track for the better secondary schools and any chance of a university place. So, almost every educational decision and/or extracurricular activity is based on the likely outcome for a secure, well-paying job. Language learning in such a difficult economic climate is a luxury, even under the best of conditions and we are definitely going against the grain with our choice of French, when everything around us insists that Spanish is more “practical”. There are no support structures for learning languages outside of the education system, and even in the schools the standards and methods vary so much that it is really the luck of the draw that will determine your success or failure at this venture. There is one (very) new kindergarten/elementary school which is bilingual Spanish/English, but even they insist that “He should have a good grounding in English before he can tackle Spanish.” (What the ...?)

Social: Frowns, general incomprehension and indifference from day-care personnel and some in the general public. I have also sensed a growing resistance over the past few years to any language other than Spanish, which hasn’t helped matters. Family has been generally medium-hot-to-lukewarm, but not hostile (thank God), though I do have to frequently reassure them about his developmental milestones. Friends have been more enthusiastic, lots of moral support and interest there.

Materials: None available to the general consumer for anyone under the age of 11. After that, only school texts, exam papers, dictionaries/grammar aides and the occasional “Learn XXX in YYY Time Period” boxed CD/DVD/Cassette set with easy-to-use manual. (sigh)

11) What resources and activities have been most useful to you? What, on the other hand, has not been useful?

The Internet, the World Wide Web and cyberspace! I’m not a terribly religious person, but I DO literally thank God everyday for this resource, which gives me:
• Information and research from experts and professionals
• Moral support and helpful hints from bloggers and parents
• Access to learning materials via internet shopping

Not useful? Children’s websites (whether stand-alone or linked to other media, like books or television channels), even those purporting to be geared for his age. They are generally very limited in scope and need better broadband connections than are available here.

12) What do you think parents, caretakers, teachers, and/or researchers need to know about teaching a second language to children? What do you wish you had known when you started? What, if anything, would you do differently now?

Perhaps it’s still a little early for me to answer this section. But I will share my mantra, which I whisper to myself, in French and English, whenever I get discouraged: The four P’s – persistence, perseverance, patience, and above all, passion.

Answer your own question now--what did I not ask about that you would like to comment on?

11) In dealing with the external reactions to bilingual education, which is harder to manage, indifference or hostility?

Indifference – definitely. You can feed off of the negative energy of a hostile environment and use it to power your way through to your goal, but working against indifference is like trying to run in mud up to your waist.

Sarah again here--Hey readers! Let's fight that indifference by telling the world about our vibrant, brilliant, bilingual (or multilingual) children! Please email me at babybilingual (at) gmail (dot) com if you'd like to nominate yourself or someone else to be featured in a profile on Bringing up Baby Bilingual. Thanks!

This post is part of the March 2010 Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism.

anything better than a "love cub"?

You might think that I disliked my son's name, based on how many other things I tend to call him--Griffy, Griffo, Spiffy Griffy, Nifty Grifty, Darlin', mon lionceau (my lion cub, because a gryphon is half lion, half eage), mon amour, mon chéri, mon chéri amour [n.b. as even Stevie Wonder knows, "mon chéri" is used when the recipient of your adoration is male; say "ma chérie" for females]. And when he's misbehaving or being particularly silly*, I roll my eyes and exclaim "Child!" with exasperation in my best southern accent.

But my favorite pet name for him is my own creation, an amalgam of "mon amour" (my love) and "ourson" (baby bear): mon amourson.

While I like thinking that my kid is the only one in town (in the country?) being called an "amourson," I do wonder what diminutives and baby-talk names native speakers of French use with their children. The only one I've heard often is "fiston" for a boy child, which for some reason just doesn't appeal to me.

Care to share any others or a link to a relevant website? My "love-cub" and I thank you in advance!

*By the way, I'm also in the market for a good equivalent of "silly" in French. Nothing seems to fit--"capricieux" has negative connotations, "bête" even more so, "rigolo" and "amusant" and "drôle" don't cut it either. I'm looking for an adjective that conveys my appreciation for his whimsy and silliness. Any ideas?

"First French Rhymes"--first choice for moi!

Nursery rhymes are the foundation on which childhood literacy and language acquisition are built. We may not feel that nursery rhymes play a role in our daily lives as adults, but I dare you to hear "hickory dickory dock" and not automatically think of mice. And I bet "the old woman who lived in a shoe/who had so many children she didn't know what to do" came to mind when you first learned of Nadya Suleman, the Octomom. Mary and her little lamb, Old Mother Hubbard, Little Boy Blue, a short and stout teapot, Thumbkin, the baker-man with his pattycakes...these characters peopled my childhood like aunts, uncles, and cousins I only saw once a year but heard about regularly.

Nursery rhymes teach lessons, present positive behaviors to emulate and naughty behaviors to avoid, explain how people interact, show that it's okay to play with language, and much more. Internalizing the rhymes and rhythms helps us learn to speak, and later, to read. They give us glimpses into history and cultures from centuries past and ensure that most speakers of a given language have a common base, a frame of reference, to build upon.

All this is why I felt it was crucial for me to use nursery rhymes in French (comptines) with my son. This meant that I needed to learn many more of them myself--I hadn't encountered too many when I studied French as a teen and young adult. When I taught college French, I found a few that I used when teaching, usually as an introduction to the vocabulary topic we were about to tackle. But that wasn't nearly enough!

In all, we now have four or five nursery rhyme books in French which I read often to Griffin. Some are large hardcovers, others have lengthly CDs, but the one I like the best is the smallest, cheapest one, and I whole-heartedly recommend it to other English-speaking parents like myself:

Un Deux Trois: First French Rhymes, edited by Opal Dunn

Dunn has gathered some of the most common comptines and arranged them by category--"dans la prairie" and "au cafe," for example--so that rhymes on similar topics are on the same two-page spread and that the illustration contains elements from all the rhymes printed on the two pages. She labels the relevant pictures in French without giving English translations.

In fact, she doesn't provide English translations for any of the comptines. Rather, at the back of the book, she explains what each rhyme is about or what it was used for, occasionally suggesting movements or fingerplays to accompany them. The teacher in me likes that she doesn't set up the idea that one line in French equals one line in English and also that the illustrations and her comments allow you to get the gist of the rhymes without needing to know what every word means. (At least, that's my impression--maybe someone who doesn't speak much French could weigh in on that?)

Moreover, the paperback comes with a half-hour-long CD of native speakers (one adult female, joined occasionally by children) reading all the comptines, repeating some of them several times. (Another technique that makes me the teacher nod approvingly.) And the best part? It sells for $9.95. What's not to love?

Please click on "comments" to let us know of any nursery rhyme books (English or French) that you adore (and tell us why)!

Griffins say the darnedest things!

At 25 months old, Griffin continues to say things that make us go "Wow!" or "Awwww" or "Oh!" or "Huh?" Here are a few recent notables:

Griffin had been fighting a persistent ear infection for a month when one night he grabbed his head and said "My ear hurt!" We were so glad to hear that--it was the first time he had ever articulated what exactly was causing him pain. "Ne t'inquiète pas, chéri," I told him. "J'ai tes médicaments ici. Ouvre la bouche!" I brandished the syringe of antibiotics and the second one of Tylenol and tried to get him to open his mouth. He looked at me, confused, angry, hurt, and shook his head, and clapped his hand on his ear again. "No bouche, oreille!" Poor kid--here he was, in pain and telling me about it, and I wanted to put the medicine for his ear in his mouth! No wonder he looked so misunderstood and betrayed.

As we wean him, I've been trying to replace the bedtime nursing with a different kind of special Maman-Griffin time, creating a routine of reading and singing to him. One night, while sitting in a comfy chair with just a lamp on above us, I looked him tenderly in the eyes and said, "Griffin, je t'aime de la tête aux pieds" (I love you from your head to your toes). Without missing a beat, he responded, "Je t'aime la tête à la lumière" (I love you your head to the light)! Now he says it to me every night (and sometimes even during the day).

One day, I was reading him a book that ended with the mommy walking out of the room after tucking the baby into bed. Griffin must have thought that I missed one important detail as I closed the book; he added "Bébé fait dodo. Maman fait pipi." (Baby's going to sleep. Mommy's going to the bathroom.)

At playgroup, Griffin and some of his friends were "cooking" at the toy kitchen. They would bring pots and bowls of plastic food around to us moms, and we'd oooh and ahhh over how yummy everything was. One mom asked him what kind of soup it was. Griffin paused a moment and then replied, "Hot!"

We went to the zoo this past weekend, which thrills him. I was asking him, in French, which animals he wanted to see there. He named things like elephants, lions, and giraffes--all pronounced more or less correctly in French!--and then concluded his list with "dinosaures." At least he said that one with a French accent too! (Oh, and his pronunciation of "hippopotame," hippopotamus, is adorable--he calls it a "hippo-madame.")

And finally, I taught him the word for "download," "télécharge," because sometimes when watching YouTube, the video would stop and splutter and we'd have to wait for it to finish downloading. I realized that he clearly understood the concept (if not the technical reasons behind it) when were listening to a cassette tape in the car. We came to the end of the tape, and it automatically turned over to the other side, but only after about a minute of dead air. Griffin didn't get mad, though; he just said, "Ça télécharge" and waited patiently!

Raise money for Reading Buddies (and get cheap kids' stuff too)!

Fellow Boulder/Denver families...

Make money for your family and for the Reading Buddies of Lafayette Public Library by signing up to consign your used kids' clothes/toys/books/gear and maternity clothes at the upcoming Shop Kids Event consignment sale at the Lafayette Rec Center, March 26-28. If you say you're a friend of Reading Buddies when you sign up, the organizer will donate your consignment fee directly to us. And if you bring a copy of the Reading Buddies flyer when you shop, we'll receive 5% of your total purchase price. (Email me at babybilingual at gmail dot com and I'll send you the flyer.)

Also cool: the organizer will donate any unsold, un-picked-up books and art supplies to Reading Buddies!

Reading Buddies, by the way, is the award-winning reading enrichment program that I coordinate at the Lafayette Public Library. Last year 250+ students participated in one (or more) of eleven different semester-long sessions, including 100+ teen mentors who volunteered their time. Not bad considering that we're not part of the city budget and we have to depend on grants, fundraising, and donations to stay alive!

Profile: Nic's multilingual family in Belgium

Here's a multilingual success story to inspire us all! Nic and his wife live in Brussels and raised a trilingual son who is now in his early 30s.

Nic grew up in Belgium with parents who spoke Flemish (Dutch) and had a grandmother and grandfather who spoke French. In his Dutch-speaking school, he was already learning other languages--French (two hours per week beginning in grade three or four), Latin (grades 6-12), and English (grades 9-12). At age 14 he moved to bilingual Brussels (Dutch and French). At age 15 he started attending a 90% French-speaking sailing camp, to which he returned on weekends and in the summers and became a bilingual sailing instructor.

Other ways in which Nic was exposed to other languages as a child and teen included vacations in Italy; listening to English, French, Spanish, and Latin American radio stations on a short-wave radio; watching television in Dutch and French; and studying German for a year in college. He then began working in a bank which required him to use several languages, including German Yiddish, so he started reading in German because he needed it. He eventually obtained his masters degree in political sciences and international politics from a Dutch-speaking university.

Nic's wife is similarly multilingual, but via a different path. She had French-speaking parents and grandparents who emigrated to Dutch-speaking parts of Belgium during World War Two. Her parents learned Dutch at school and at work. At age 16, her father was abducted to Germany where he then learned German. He had also studied Latin. Both of his wife's parents continued to study French in school after moving to Dutch-speaking cities.

As for his wife, she went to school in Dutch from preschool through grade 12, also studying French, English, Latin, German, and ancient Greek (whew). In college, she continued with French, Dutch, English, German, and Latin, finally receiving a masters degree in Romance languages and a postgraduate degree in pedagogy. She is now a French teacher.

When their son was in preschool, they spoke only Dutch with him and he attended a Dutch school, while his maternal grandparents spoke strictly only French with him. During his time at a Dutch elementary school, they spoke French at home and on vacation in France (they rented a bungalow in the same village every summer, so he had French friends he saw each year). He also picked up some Italian during spring break vacations in Rome.

Their son studied more languages in high school (Dutch-speaking): French, Latin, English, and German. They also encouraged him to work on his English at home via subtitled English movies and television series. He then spent six weeks in the United States as an exchange student at age 17. He attended a Dutch-speaking university and ultimately obtained a PhD in mathematics (for which he defended his dissertation in English). He now teaches math at a high school and is married to a woman with a similar language background (French-speaking family and elementary school followed by studies at Dutch schools).

I'll let Nic tell you the rest in his own words….

Why did you want your child to know more than one language?
This is a bilingual country; the European Union is multilingual.

How well does your child understand, speak, read, and write the different languages?

• Speaking, writing and reading Dutch: 100%
• Speaking, writing and reading French: 100% but writing is becoming less perfect since he graduated
• Speaking, writing and reading English: He did his PhD in English, wrote and presented PhD-level papers in English (with French and Dutch summaries).
• Goes to several professional seminars in English-language environment, uses Dutch and French daily.
• Speaks alternatively French and Dutch with his wife (as we do).
  

How were you able to expose your child to the cultures where the different languages are spoken?

• French: family, vacation, books, magazines, television, movies.
• English: Student exchange and media (books, magazines, television, movies).
  

What challenges occurred as you raised your child trilingually?

• Keeping in mind: each language has to be connected to one and only one environment until he is really fluent /that language. No language switching until he's good at it.
• Each year, when coming back to school after vacations, his Dutch grades were down.

What resources and activities have been most useful to you?

• Multilingual family
• Multilingual country
• Latin at school gives an excellent base to study other languages.
• Reading entire libraries of books.
• Subtitled movies (spoken and subtitled in the language to be learned)
• Long (1 month) vacations in France, his friends there
• Our own multilingual background was very useful.

What do you think parents, caretakers, teachers, and/or researchers need to know about teaching a second language to children?

• Each language has to be connected to one and only one environment until he is really fluent in that language. No language switching until he's good at it.
• Never underestimate the capacities a child has to learn/adopt a language "naturally."

What do you wish you had known when you started? What, if anything, would you do differently now?
Considering the success we (principally my wife!) had, we would do it in the same manner.

Answer your own question now--what did I not ask about that you would like to comment on?

1. As said above: never underestimate the natural learning capacities of a child.

2. But keep in mind that 15% of a given population is reported to have difficulties learning the mother tongue and seems not to have the capacities to learn a second language.

3. Language lessons at school are good but there are NOT enough of them: my wife is a teacher and knows she isn't able to get her classes to be really fluent in two hours per week. I would recommend more language-oriented student exchanges. My own experience, being "dropped" as a 15 yr old adolescent in a 90% French speaking sailing camp and being a bilingual instructor there, helped me a lot. (I learned an extended vocabulary of French vernacular too, of course.)

4. My parents had a great library and subscribed to various magazines and media. I haven't read any Harry Potter but my wife assures me they're a boon to get children reading. I read other books in my teen years.

5. There's one problem I do not see a solution to: contamination between different languages.

profiling

In the early days of this blog (2006!)--back before I actually had my own would-be bilingual baby--I combed the blogosphere to find other parents raising their kids with more than one language, especially those who were non-native speakers like me. I would then accost them--online, of course--and ask them to fill out a questionnaire about what worked for them, what didn't, and what they wish they had known when they started.

I "met" families who were bilingual, trilingual, and more; families who adopted children from other countries and want to keep the kids' birth culture and language in their lives; families who really focused on sign language with their babies; parents who were teaching themselves a foreign language as their older children studied it; even an uncle in America trying to teach English to his niece in Thailand via Skype! The answers were frequently fascinating, and they gave me all sorts of wonderful ideas of what to do with Carl, and later, Griffin. And I have kept in touch with some of them and been able to see their kids grow and change. Very cool.

Here are a few profiles that have in particular stuck with me: Santi's family (English, French, & Indonesian), Nadine's family (German & English), Boca Beth's family (Spanish & English), Liza's family (English & Hebrew), Carolyn's family (English, French, & Spanish), Jeanne's family (English, German, Spanish, & Swedish), and Alice's family (English, German, Spanish, & Korean), (You can also click on the label "profiles" below or in the sidebar and see all twenty-some in order.)

But for no particular reason (lassitude? inertia? laziness? feeling like my brain was "full"? the lack of time with a baby around? the thrill of gazing into a sleeping child's face or making a toddler laugh?), I stopped posting these profiles of bilingual and multilingual families. Well, now it's time to bring them back! Now that Griffin really is learning two languages, I need your advice more than ever. Plus, I really want to hear what the parents might have to say now, two or three years later. I'm hoping to revisit some of the same families. (Smashedpea, you're up next!)

But first, I want everyone's opinion on what questions to ask to begin with. Here are the questions I have asked in the past:

• What languages are you exposing your children to, and how?
• Why do you want your children to know more than one language?
• How well do your children understand, speak, read, and write the different languages? How do they feel about them? Do they have a preference for what they speak in which contexts? How has their language use evolved as they grow?
• How have you been able to expose your child to the culture(s) where the different languages are spoken?
• What challenges have occurred as you raise your children with more than one language??
• What resources and activities have been most useful to you? What, on the other hand, has not been useful?
• What do you think parents, caretakers, teachers, and/or researchers need to know about teaching a second language to children? What do you wish you had known when you started? What, if anything, would you do differently now?
• Answer your own question now--what did I not ask about that you would like to comment on?

Based on what you all would like to hear, would you make any recommendations for changes, deletions, or additions to these questions? And would you be willing to let me profile your family on this blog? Please let me know in the comments (and then email me at babybilingual (at) gmail (dot) com so I can send you the file with the questionnaire). Thanks!

Do non-native speakers make better parents?

Keda, whose baby daughter is a polyglot in the making, said this in response to my concerns about being a non-native speaker missing the intimacy that would otherwise come from speaking my mother tongue with Griffin:

"I don't think you need to worry. [An Italian woman] commented that what she noticed was that when you raise a child in your mother language, you tend to do what your parents did (or say). And this is true. When I speak Afrikaans to my little girl, I can just hear my mother speaking through me. But when I switch to English...I have to think up things to say, they don't come automatically. So when I speak English it is all me, but when I speak Afrikaans, it is my ancestors. ... [G]rammar and pronunciation can always be corrected, but you are doing your child a real service by speaking to him in another language simply because you are more you."

This intrigues me, this idea that we are perhaps more ourselves in a second language because we chose to learn it and now choose to speak it. We often plan, deliberate, organize our thoughts before we speak in our second languages rather than letting it flow. Since it doesn't come automatically (at least, not for me), that makes it more purposeful, and thus more "us."

Does it? Do I agree? I'm not sure. I'm certainly more comfortable with the moi who speaks English. When I was a student in France, I used the unfamiliar language as a mask, trying out different personas before finally settling on the whimsical, word-loving, open-minded one. (Oh wait--maybe that wasn't so different from the original.) Living in Europe, attending university classes with native speakers, traveling on a shoestring, eating noxiously stinky cheeses in chalets without electricity or running water (and loving it)--all that did make me more adventurous. And all that helps me as a parent, now that I think about it. (Stinky cheese, stinky diapers, whatever, right?)

Anyway, what do you all think? Are you more "you" in your second language? Do you parent better in your second language?