Me: Wessy, today is Halloween. That means later we are going to go walk down the street and ask for candy. Do you know what you say when you ask for candy?
Wessy: Pleeeeease!
Tuesday, October 31, 2017
Sunday, October 8, 2017
Bilingual Baby
As you probably already know, we are trying to raise Wessy as an English/Spanish bilingual. For these first two years of his life, we have had a Spanish-speaking au pair and have also mostly spoken to Wessy in Spanish ourselves. Just recently, he also started a Spanish-immersion preschool. All of that effort is paying off, as Wessy now speaks at least as much Spanish as English and seems to prefer it.
Watching his language acquisition brought me back to my own days of learning Spanish--except that while I was doing it all at age 18, he was doing it at age 18 months. Like mine, his language started with emphatic, common nouns. MAMA! PAPA! LECHE! GATO! Over time, he began to add verbs, mainly in the infinitive and gerund forms (IR, COMER, CORRER). Slowly, he began to conjugate the verbs--though he has gotten a little stuck in a phase where he uses the correct tense but refers to himself in the second person (I assume this is a quirk of being almost exclusively spoken TO in Spanish but mostly hearing ambient English.). This is slowly correcting itself, though.
One by one, he has added articles, pronouns, possessives and direct and indirect objects. His speech seems to grow in nuance and complexity daily. Basically, he advances through the equivalent of a semester of high school Spanishevery 2-3 weeks. This all happened in the last 6-8 months. It took me, oh, I don't know, 6-8 YEARS. Literacy and some more complex vocabulary withstanding, he has already zoomed past me.
As an additional trick, he can translate English into Spanish and vice versa. He is able to innately sense (or observe?) to whom he should be speaking each language and he will adjust accordingly. If you look like a gringo, he will start with English. Sometimes he will say something in Spanish to someone who does not speak Spanish and then, if met with confusion, he will, unbidden, quickly provide a translation.
An example: Yesterday we were climbing the steps to our house. He grabbed the handrail and said BARANDAL (bannister). I looked at him, confused (I didn't know that word.). "Que es esto, Wessy?," I asked. He looked at me, put his hand back on the railing and gently explained, "BARANDAL, MAMA. ES ESPANOL." Good thing he doesn't know how to roll his eyes yet-- though given Daddy's impressive skillz in this regard, it can't be long.
Being schooled about my vocabulary notwithstanding, I'm so thrilled he is learning Spanish as a child. His ability to shock people by being a very Anglo-looking child who speaks perfect unaccented Spanish is priceless. More importantly, I hope that it will open up new worlds and all kinds of opportunities for him like it has for us.
Watching his language acquisition brought me back to my own days of learning Spanish--except that while I was doing it all at age 18, he was doing it at age 18 months. Like mine, his language started with emphatic, common nouns. MAMA! PAPA! LECHE! GATO! Over time, he began to add verbs, mainly in the infinitive and gerund forms (IR, COMER, CORRER). Slowly, he began to conjugate the verbs--though he has gotten a little stuck in a phase where he uses the correct tense but refers to himself in the second person (I assume this is a quirk of being almost exclusively spoken TO in Spanish but mostly hearing ambient English.). This is slowly correcting itself, though.
One by one, he has added articles, pronouns, possessives and direct and indirect objects. His speech seems to grow in nuance and complexity daily. Basically, he advances through the equivalent of a semester of high school Spanishevery 2-3 weeks. This all happened in the last 6-8 months. It took me, oh, I don't know, 6-8 YEARS. Literacy and some more complex vocabulary withstanding, he has already zoomed past me.
As an additional trick, he can translate English into Spanish and vice versa. He is able to innately sense (or observe?) to whom he should be speaking each language and he will adjust accordingly. If you look like a gringo, he will start with English. Sometimes he will say something in Spanish to someone who does not speak Spanish and then, if met with confusion, he will, unbidden, quickly provide a translation.
An example: Yesterday we were climbing the steps to our house. He grabbed the handrail and said BARANDAL (bannister). I looked at him, confused (I didn't know that word.). "Que es esto, Wessy?," I asked. He looked at me, put his hand back on the railing and gently explained, "BARANDAL, MAMA. ES ESPANOL." Good thing he doesn't know how to roll his eyes yet-- though given Daddy's impressive skillz in this regard, it can't be long.
Being schooled about my vocabulary notwithstanding, I'm so thrilled he is learning Spanish as a child. His ability to shock people by being a very Anglo-looking child who speaks perfect unaccented Spanish is priceless. More importantly, I hope that it will open up new worlds and all kinds of opportunities for him like it has for us.
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