linguistic cocktail

When talking about raising bilingual children you hear all the time that the kids don’t mix the languages. Now they are talking to you in Spanish and suddenly they turn around and talk to daddy in English, going seamlessly from Jersey to Gandhia shore.

I’m not so sure about it.

If we can pick one example, the Spanish-German kids I know, they all speak flawless Germanish. Now se comen un Eier, then fahren en el Auto and finally tell you that tomorrow at three with some friends to the park if it is nice weather they going are.

Maybe it is one of those things that just improve with time, but I have my doubts. We, the adults, without being bilingual, can prepare amazing linguistic cocktails. Who amongst you, immigrants in Germany, didn’t Anmeldung in an Amt? I know my house is a bit particular, but does not matter in which language we communicate, we always eat Wurst with hranolky, Daniel wears poncochacek when is cold and until the little one decided water is called agua we always referred to it as vodicka.

The problem is not only home. The Spanish I work with must think I have some kind of mental issue because I often switch from Spanish to English in the middle of a conversation and don’t realize. It is enough to glance at an English email, and there I am, cheating in my mother tongue. And this it is not terrible, even if it makes me look slightly challenged. At least I can say I am fluent in both languages. I could live with the fact that I sometimes look like the niece of a Latin dictator giving a speech in Georgetown.

It is more problematic mixing the other languages, the ones I don’t master. Those situations when I am asked if I speak Czech and I answer Ja, Ja. When they keep on talking Czech and I keep on answering German absolutely incapable of remembering a word in the language I spent seven years trying to learn. It is when I ask for the bill in Nuremberg saying zaplatim and when Martin orders in Paris vino und agua. In these cases it appears it would be easier to remember the words in Swahilli rather than in the language you are trying to speak.

But the main problem is that all of this is observed by my child, our multilingual little project. And he has already enough in his plate, the poor thing. I worry not only about how embarrassed he is going to feel in ten years, when his parents keep on raping a number of central European languages in front of his friends. It is also the way he asked his father to sing the ovecka song “dupidupidup”.

“Más, tata, Ja?”

Three languages in so little words. Not bad, for someone who is not supposed to mix them.