Articles Tagged with trilingual

Legally United

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Visa Restriction Index
Visa Restriction Index.
Number of countries that can be entered without a visa by a citizen of:
(source: https://www.henleyglobal.com/citizenship/visa-restrictions/)

This is it. Since Dec 13th 2013, for the first time in our trilingual family’s history, all three of us became the citizens of the same country: the lucky country of down under, Australia.

While Nina was born Australian, Nicolas took up Australian nationality in March this year (by keeping his French nationality) by the desire of it, I took the plunge only very lately, mostly by the necessity of it I have to admit.

The moment we started to contemplate the plan of travelling around the world (even when nowhere near the certainty that we were to carry it out), I decided that, if I was to continue to hold a Chinese passport, there won’t be a need to contemplate. It will be just the end of it. As the chart below shows the number of countries that can be entered without a visa by a citizen of various countries, it’s 44 by Chinese citizen and 167 by Australian citizen (and to the delight of Nicolas, it’s 170 by French citizen). If we wanted to travel with lots of spontaneity in terms of where to go and when, a Chinese passport unfortunately became a permit not to travel.

The real issue is not about the taking up of Australian citizenship, nevertheless. The real issue is about the giving up of Chinese citizenship. Chinese government doesn’t accept dual nationality like France and some other countries.

This was the reason that has caused my hesitation up till this point. This was also the reason that many people were quite shocked when hearing my decision of becoming Australian.

Among those who were not shocked are Chinese, including my own family. It seems it’s such a popular thing to do to migrate to another country for Chinese these days, and every Chinese who travels or wants to travel regularly knows the pain of applying for visas, it hardly became surprising to hear such news. As my sister put it ‘as long as you are Chinese in heart, the rest is just the formality’.

Or is it?

When you think of it, there are just a few occasions in life that are REALLY defining moments, such as the birth, the death, the wedding, the birth of your own child. And there is the acquisition of a different nationality – which is not a given but something of enough importance that triggers some philosophical reflection. What does a nationality stand for: is it the loyalty to a country? Is it the root of where you come from? Is it your beliefs and disbeliefs? Is it who you would cheer for in the Olympic Games? Is it the law that governs it and the rights that are granted to its citizens?

Does the change of a nationality takes all these away from you?

Or rather, the change of a nationality takes a little bit of myself away. As much as I would like to think it’s more a matter of formality and a piece of paper – on top of a genuine fondness of Australia as a country – I still cannot shake off the sense of making a choice that betrayed the country I was born in. Or at least the sense of giving up, finally, despite years of resistance. It’s a feeling hard to shake off.

Someone has suggested that China – at least the one that is governed by the current government – is not one that is to be loyal to. But it’s not really the point. It’s where I was born and it’s where I grew up, regardless of its geographic location or political reality. No matter whether it’s in the heart of the best place in the world, or it’s in the middle of nowhere, it remains a very special place. To publicly announce that I am no longer officially part of it, no matter how special it remains in my heart forever, is not an easy thing to do.

Yet I made the choice.

It’s probably nothing but my conscious – and unconscious – desire of making our trip a reality that was demonstrating itself. The trip ought to be special with a major decision like this.

P.S: to follow our RTW experience: Trilingual Family blog, or join Trilingual Family facebook group.

The Survival of A 36-Hour Trip

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Our luggage, minus one pram and one toddler.
Our luggage, minus one pram and one toddler.

It’s a miracle that we made it to the home in France in one piece! By ‘we’, I meant Nicolas, Nina, myself, plus one suitcase, one backpack, three day bags, and a pram. By ‘one piece’, I meant all these pieces together.

The journey started way before the plane took off in Sydney, of course. It started when we planned what to pack and how to pack. You see, among three of us, we have two working human beings and one human being that needs help to work. So in total we have two working pairs of hands and two working upper bodies that can carry stuff. So our plan was: one working human being took the suitcase and carried one day bag, another working human being carried one backpack and pushed the pram with Nina in it with one day bag tugged under in the storage space and another small day bag hooked onto it.

It worked! Of course it means Nina wasn’t allowed to get off the pram whenever we had all luggage with us. Nina didn’t seem to understand this though, so we had a few occasion when one adult guarded all our worldly possessions and another adult ran after a super active toddler in public. Fun!

Anyway, come back to our 36-hour trip, composed of an 1-hour drive from home to Sydney airport (with a 3-hour most lovey afternoon tea stop at friends’ place with their new-born), 10-hour flight from Sydney to Tokyo, 5 hours layover in Tokyo airport, 12-hour flight from Tokyo to Paris, 2.5hr drive from Paris to Boulogne-sur-Mer (our very first stop, Nicolas’ home town), and a bit of airport chores as we all know that sometimes takes hours.

The first flight (10 hours from Sydney to Tokyo) was a breeze. A 10pm flight turned out to be the best kind of flight travelling with a toddler – Nina was so tired running around waiting in the airport that she promptly fell asleep when taking off before even seat belt sign was switched off! She remained in that status just one hour before arrival. She did invade both her parents’ seats during her sleep though, ruthlessly. At one point, I found myself being squeezed into the corner of my own seat by her beautiful sleeping head that I was only half sitting, so I had to drag her further back into her dad’s seat. Nicolas didn’t seem to be very impressed with that move but he was too sleepy to fight back at that point. After Nina woke up, with breakfast being served by her loving mother, she remained seated on her own with safety belt on. I thought this long plane ride thing was a piece of cake. Until I remembered that there was another long flight right after that. We were nowhere near our destination, yet.

We were in Tokyo airport. For 5 hours. When I had long connecting hours in the pre-child days, I sometimes left airport and did a bit of visiting. Or I watched a movie or paid myself a massage. This time, I was discovering the kids’ play room and parents’ room (very impressive facilities I have to say – a changing table that can convert into a small cot, kitchen for parents, hot water, a basin that is big enough to bath an infant). The most graceful was that Japan Airlines had a pram ready at the gate on arrival for us to use as our pram was checked in till Paris. We made the request at check-in in Sydney not expecting anything really, so it was such a pleasant surprise to see a smiling Japanese lady with the pram with our name on it. One had to love Japan.

The 2nd flight (Tokyo to Paris) was long. Nina slept 1.5 hrs for nap, then less than one hour just before arrival (which was 3:30pm local time and 1:30am Sydney time). She kept moving and walked down the aisle 50 times maybe. The only saving grace was that she didn’t cry or became grumpy. She was just excited about everything. The kid’s channel, the non-stop snacks (cute Japanese snacks), the magazines, the movies that her parents were watching (trying anyway, I settled on just-for-laugh episodes which were short enough and no regrets to be caused if I didn’t manage to watch till the end), the nice passengers that played game with her, the business class that she was not allowed to go to, the ‘attendant’ button in the toilet, the flush of the toilet, the ‘attendant only’ food preparation area of the plane, the lunch provided (oh, the BEST ever airplane lunch. And the sake on a plane!).

We let her play. Did we have choice not to anyway? 🙂 At some point I lost courage to look at the flight path map as it was always showing us too far away from the destination. So we decided on the new strategy: each parent would take turn to rest. It was with indescribable delight that I found 3 vacant seats at the back of the plane halfway through the flight, and I didn’t hesitate to occupy them for a 2-hour sleep (forget gracefulness and social ethic, I am a tired parent). I then reluctantly called Nicolas over for his turn and gathered enough energy to face the reality again.

By the time we finally saw my mother-in-law who was waiting for us at the arrival gate, Nina was officially exhausted. She fell sleep in the car. Me too. The only thing I realized was how early it became dark – it was already dark at 5pm. Coming from the summer in Sydney where sun sets at 8pm these days, what I had in mind was: soon, very soon, I will be sleeping in a bed… and soon, very soon, I will be refreshed enough to eat my croissant … bzzzzzzzz

 

P.S: to follow our RTW experience: Trilingual Family blog, or join Trilingual Family facebook group.

桃子/Tao Zi, or Tao Zu

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41mRjN7NvRL__SL500_AA300_At the moment, Nina is a big fan of 小桃子, the main character – a baby named Tao Zi – in a cartoon book series, translated from Japanese to Chinese. There are about 10 books in the series – all with 小桃子 doing something very simple but cute in each of them, such as seek-and-hike with a boat/car/plane, share lunch with a lion dad and lion baby, bath with her 3 best friends (gold fish, cactus, angel – I can’t help but add here that only a Japanese/Asia children’s book would have such beings as best friends for a baby – cactus for goodness sake!), going for a walk and then fall, swing at midnight. Simple stories, simple drawing, each with some very simple words (in Chinese) on each page. Perfect book for Nina’s age. Even I fell in love with 小桃子。

Nina has started to say 桃子 when we read the books together. The interesting thing is the way she pronounces 桃子 – she pronounces it as Tao Zu, instead of Tao Zi the correct pronunciation. It just occurred to me this morning that Tao Zu actually sounds really like how when a non-Chinese adult would try to pronounce the word!

I don’t know if it’s just a natural phase for any child to not have perfect pronunciation at the beginning, in any language regardless whether she’s monolingual or multilingual. Or it’s actually already an evidence that multilingual children would – at some stage – mix languages, even at pronunciation level (note: the mixing itself doesn’t worry me because it would disappear after a while – it’s just a phase, not the end result. I will have a separate post on the  mixing issue).

I’m very curious to see her progress with the pronunciation of 桃子, which hopefully will give some idea as to the real reason behind.

Dilemma on Reading

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maclaryWe have books for Nina in all three languages that she’s growing up with. So far, Nicolas and I stick to OPOL (One Parent One Language) quite religiously, which also applies to the book reading time. It means that when I read a book with Nina I read in Chinese, and when Nicolas reads a book with Nina he reads in French.

So here is the dilemma. When we read a book that’s not written in ‘our language’ basically what we do is speaking ‘our language’ (by live translating or simply improvising) while looking at the written language of the book. One of Nina’s favorite books at the moment is ‘Hairy MacLary from Donaldson’s Dairy’, a picture book in English about the little hairy black dog Maclary going out and about running into other dogs. It’s a beautiful book both in drawing and in text. The text rhymes, but of course it rhymes in English only! So when I read – meaning Speaking by half translating half improvising the story in Chinese – the rhyme is totally gone!

While it serves the purpose – from linguistic point of view – on providing Chinese language input in this case, it loses the beauty of its original language (in English in this case).

So I wonder if there are times, such as reading books, when it’s better to just follow the language that the book is written in?

—

<update on Oct 19th>

I shared my dilemma with ‘Raising Multilingual Children’ group on facebook, and got some fantastic insights from the members there! It’s relieving to read that I am certainly not the only person with the dilemma – there are many others out there facing the similar challenge and come up with their own solution with trials and errors. A more popular practice through these comments is to eventually read the book in  the language that the book is written in. However there is one practice that I particularly like, which is to make sure at least certain amount of time every day (20 minutes in that case) to read the ‘minority language’ books. I like this practice because: 1) it ensures the quantity of the exposure of the minority language (in reading/speaking/hearing)  on regular basis; 2) it respects all the languages that the books are written in, hence ensures the quality of exposure of all languages by helping the children to build the connection between the written form and the spoken form of these languages.

So I decided to give a try this morning – not live translating non-Chinese books into Chinese, and read only Chinese books in Chinese. Nina picked up one of her favorite French books (Tchoupi Part En Vacances), and came sitting next to me signaling me to read the book to her. I have read this book many times with her in Chinese, but this time I started to read … in FRENCH! After I read the first phrase or so, I saw Nina literally turning her head from the book to me, looking at me … puzzled/surprised. Did she realize that I was not using the ‘normal’ language? Did she notice something different? Was she saying ‘why are you reading this book like papa’?

It’s absolutely fascinating to see how much a child at her age (merely 21 months, who has only less than 2 dozens of vocabularies) is aware of what’s going on around her, from linguistic perspective. She knows what mama is talking about in which language, and picks up immediately when mama starts to do things differently. They are exquisite observers, which make them the most exquisite learners.

Now what’s left to do is to make sure we build a good collection of books in Chinese and French (the more difficult ones being in Australia), and read English books in English.

Reading To Her – The Little Prince

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It just so happens that one of my all-time favorite books is ‘The Little Prince’, way before I had the knowledge that it was originally written in French as ‘Le Petit Prince’ by Antoine de Saint-Exupery (who was from Lyon, a city that named its airport after him and has a main square in the city center with a very very lovely statue of the little prince, and of course a few painted walls dedicated to him). Many (many) years back when I was learning French in Shanghai, I bought this Chinese/French bilingual version of 小王子/Le Petit Prince, and have ever since always been keeping it with me (along with nearly 15 times of moving from country to country).

So what is a better book to read to Nina than this one? The bonus is that Nicolas and I are able to read Chinese and French version respectively from the same book. What a visionary I was back in time! ;p

I always knew that I would read to Nina from very early on, and I started within the first week of Nina’s birth. Of course I know that she wouldn’t understand a word, and she doesn’t care what I am reading, and she wouldn’t even know that this is called reading. I am not expecting any of these. The idea here – which is not mine but linguists and scientists’ – is to allow her build  the neural connections (or rather not to lose the capability of building them) that enables her to distinguish the tonality of the language(s) we wish her to speak, and to relate reading as something joyful and interesting part of daily routine.

Research shows that infants are tuned to all the tonalities and nuances in all languages at birth, IF given opportunites for stimulation and exposure. However by the age of 1-2 years or so (I have read different versions, and it’s apparent not hard science), if not given opportunities, they lose the ability to hear the differences.

Of course, Nina would get her normal dose of Chinese/French from the daily conversation (as any parent would be advised, talking to the child is one great way of bonding even it’s a one-way communication verbally to start with), reading from a book certainly expands the variety of tonalities and expression.

On top of it (or rather more importantly), it has always been a pleasure to read this timeless masterpiece. Every time I read this book, I felt peace. Now I’m sharing this with Nina. I hope you like it, 小南。