Non-Native Thought for the Day #5

One remarkable and definitely enviable thing about learning languages consecutively from birth is that the words come with no baggage, no preconceived ideas about what does and doesn't sound right and no mental blocks around the pronunciation of certain sounds.

The languages simply are what they are.

What a wonderful way to be able to see the world. From a position of acceptance, free of questions, doubts and insecurities.

I often get a reminder of this wonderful phenomenon when I listen to Poppette speak. She often freely uses words that I remember finding either hard to learn or perhaps ones that in the past I had avoided using as they just sounded odd to someone who's brain is hard wired first and foremost to the sounds of the English language.

This morning was a great example. Poppette (28 months) bounded out of the front door and exclaimed " [ Il ] fait [ du ] brouillard [it's foggy]. Now you don't get many words less English sounding and, therefore, more technically difficult to grasp as a starting French language learner than brouillard!

When words and phrases like this jump out of her mouth it makes me very happy that we chose to teach her both her languages together. It reminds me that there are so many benefits to doing it this way.

Another very handy benefit is never having to learn the gender of nouns! Oh what a delight... imagine just knowing that, regardless of whether it's a boy or a girl, a baby is un bébé and that an apple is une pomme whilst a grape is un raisin. I am so happy that my children will never have to grapple with genders because they will just instinctively know....

The flip side of that is, of course, that I need to be darned careful about making mistakes just in case they become hardwired into their little brains....grrrr.....more revision then!

Non-Native Thought for the Day #4

As I heard Poppette (25.5 months) "reading" out loud to herself in French recently, it struck me that there are ways in which her use of her minority language can be optimised. As you can imagine, this brought quite a smile to my face :D

When I say "reading", I mean that Poppette was telling herself the story from memory as she looked at the pages in her book. Toddler's memories are like sponges and Poppette has memorised loads of her favourite stories.

Some of Poppette and Little Man's books are in both languages, others are in just one. Where Poppette has only heard a story in French, naturally, when she "reads" it to herself, she does so in French.... and when I think about it, it's obviously the same for experiences that she has only experienced in French too such as un tour de manège [a ride on the merry go round] which she excitedly chatters about all the time at the moment.

So....my new non-native resolution is to try and step up the new experiences and language learning opportunities that we have and help Poppette to learn about these things in French first. I'm really hoping that this will help to keep the language as alive as possible, give Poppette a very good reason to continue to speak French and, hopefully, help to prevent the English immersion experience at nursery from overpowering our bilingual endeavour.

Non-Native Thought for the Day #3

According to Wikipedia .... a homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another, but differs in meaning. Such words may be spelled the same such as un tour [a tour] and une tour [a tower] or differently, such as vert [green], verre [glass] and ver [earthworm].

Needless to say, these sets of words have been exercising my brain!

The fact that the French use the same word to  refer to a plant pot and a potty left Poppette scratching her head when I asked her if she wanted to sit on le pot. I have since made a point of differentiating the plant pot by calling it a pot de fleurs!

Likewise, I find it a little hard to get my head around the fact that, in French, the word balançoire means both swing and seesaw...oh yeah! When I asked a French friend if she didn't find this a little confusing, she simply said, why should she. She said it was totally normal and actually she thought it a little odd that we have separate words. Right...well, I do see her point. I pushed on....asking her how on earth she would know what her son wanted to do if he said he wanted to play on the balançoire. How could she be certain not to disappoint him by taking him on the wrong ride? Simple, she said, I would just ask him whether he wanted to go on the balançoire that goes up and down or the one that goes forwards and backwards!

Belgian Maman has been having similar issues with English homophones whilst speaking non-native English with her son. "Don't touch the glasses", she said to him. He looked at her rather puzzled wondering why he would be committing an act of naughtiness by touching his lunettes [reading glasses] when his Maman was, in fact, referring to les verres [drinking glasses].

The conclusion I have come to, however, is that homophones are of no consequence to a native language speaker. You just don't think about them because you know them and have always known them and just absorb them throughout your language learning years through context and repetition and you instinctively know that your children will do the same. The issue when speaking a non-native language is that you question yourself more....if two (or more) words sound the same, you assume that your child will be confused because these words aren't second nature to you.

So...I am just getting on with it. Just because the word for sea [la mer] and mother [la mère] sound the same, doesn't mean that Poppette will be confused....at her tender age it's a question of context and, at a later stage, once she is able to read, all will become even clearer.

Click here to see a useful list of French homophones.

Have you any examples of how homophones have affected you in either a native or non-native context?

Non-Native Thought for the Day #2

As sure as eggs is eggs, if you are your child's sole input in the minority language, they will absorb and repeat any pronunciation errors you make.

What a depressing thought.

I have noticed recently that, sometimes, Poppette exaggerates her French 'R'. Particularly when saying words like 'Trou' [hole], 'Trotteur' [Baby Walker], 'Mer' [sea] and 'Par Terre' [on the floor].

Guess what.... I feel really bad about this.

It's bizarre really, because when I hear Poppette mispronounce a word in English, I don't bat an eyelid... I just accept that that's the way things start out when little ones are learning to speak. I  get much more caught up on the French side of things is because she has a much smaller sphere of input i.e. mainly me.

A simple answer to the problem came from another non-native Maman friend of mine when I asked for her advice on the issue. She simply said, 'Practice, practice and, then, practice some more'. So... practicing I am.

Two things spring to mind.

The first is a real conundrum - When I speak French to adults, I don't seem to have this pronunciation problem. It only seems to exist in my 'child friendly voice'....(you know, that slower, more deliberate and higher pitched voice that seems to come out when you address a baby or toddler no matter what language you are speaking). It crossed my mind to try to chat to Poppette and Little man as though I were chatting to an adult friend... but it just doesn't feel right. I'm not sure what the answer is....

The second thought is a lot more positive - Just over a week ago Poppette suddenly started to say 'peinture' [paint], 'ceinture' [belt] and 'voiture' [car]' correctly, whereas she had previously always  pronounced the 'ure' at the end of such words as  'choos' e.g. peintchoos.  I was beaming...and still am. This makes me feel that all will be well in the world. Provided Poppette is exposed to correctly pronounced words, she will self correct over time. So, if I can either iron out my own foibles or increase Poppette's exposure to other Francophones or, ideally both, then we are on to a winner.

Whilst on the topic of increased exposure to the minority language, I have to say that, although I have always been dubious as to whether DVDs could provide valuable language input, I am starting to believe that they can. Poppette only watches cartoons in French and her and Little Man listen to French nursery rhyme Cd's and francophone children's radio stations. Just recently, Poppette has started to show that she knows words to rhymes she has heard and from cartoons she has watched. So, I can stop flogging myself to death for letting my children watch cartoons and pat myself on the back for giving them a minority language fix! Fabulous!

UPDATE 4th October 2012

I'm feeling quite buoyed after a chat with Belgian Maman (who you can read a little more about here and here), earlier this week, about Poppette's current over emphasis of the French R.... It turns out that her son went through a phase of doing exactly the same thing (making the R sound gutteral and almost Germanic).

Bearing in mind that Belgian Maman's little boy is being raised by two native French speakers (albeit that Belgian Maman only speaks her non-native English with him) in the French speaking part of Belgium, it leads me to wonder whether this is an altogether more common occurrence during early French language acquisition and not necessarily linked to our non-native situation.....

Non-Native Thought for the Day #1

I have been thinking a lot recently about bilingualism and the idiosyncrasies that go hand in hand with choosing the non-native approach.

There seem to be some strange traps and curve-balls that I don't think you can necessarily foresee at the outset. As such, I have decided to note them here on my blog as they occur. Hopefully, in addition to helping me remember the finer details of this journey, it will help others by flagging potential issues that may lay ahead of them.

I have come to a frustrating realisation: when a child is learning to speak, it often mispronounces its words. Somehow, when this is done in the listener's native tongue, their brain subconsciously sifts through the myriad possibilities to come up with a possible match for the sounds it has just heard. This means, more often than not, that the child's meaning deduced... Even if it takes a few guesses.

My experience (which is soooo frustrating and disappointing) is that, where a non-native language is concerned, the brain just doesn't seem to process these sound variations quite so well. It's as though its catalogue of possible options is incomplete.

It is frustrating for both parties :-(

This weekend, for example, Poppette kept saying 'Mazaza'. I just couldn't glean a meaning... She repeated it three or four times and then, simply said 'Shop'.

Oh.

Of course. She had been saying 'Magasin'.

I came away from that exchange feeling as though she must be thinking 'Wait a minute! Aren't you the one that's supposed to be able to speak French???'.

Arghhhh.

Not really sure what can be done about this. I must try harder....