Tren, Zug...

The linguistic capabilities of our little European experiment are progressing so fast I find it difficult to document the process.

I was planning to write about how Daniel is already able to say what he wants in Czech, at least whenever it is apparent German will not take him very far, however, our future pocket dictionary already surprised us with a three languages combo. And of course I will bore you with the details:

Last weekend we went on a car trip. Going out of Nuremberg one often follows the railways tracks and this is something that makes my son completely crazy. After twenty minutes of Zug! Zug! Zug! Mummy got tired of answering “yes, love, it is a train” and ignored the little parrot to set up the right address in the navigator. Then, Daniel, probably worried about the fact that mummy was missing the view of such lovely piece of machinery, tried something else “Ten! Ten, Ten! Of course I got moved by my son’s Spanish, I turned myself into Mary Poppins’ corny sibling and continued repeating “yes, love, it is a train” with more enthusiasm than ever, which is of course just what my little manipulator wanted.

So we continued the trip with Zugs and Tens, and the occasional contribution from Martin in Kafka’s tongue. We left behind the rails and moved on to cows, which don’t have wheels, and are not even comparable to a proper wagon “look, Dani, it is a cow!” No reaction. Eventually Dani fell slept and mummy and daddy could enjoy those rare, lovely moments of driving without non stop singing “más, tata, ja? ¿Uno?”

We were reaching our destination when we heard a voice coming from the back. “Fuck, Fuck!” Martin and I looked amazed at each other. Then, we changed to the look that means “he heard it from you” and eventually we stopped looking at each other and peeked instead out of the window, were, sure enough, as the reader already guessed, there was a train, or a Zug, or, of course, a vlak!

Do you remember how my mother used to say “you have to make it easy, for the poor thing”. I’m very much afraid the poor thing understood already, after two year living with us, that it is him who will have to make it easy for us.