’French Children Don’t Throw Food’ is the title of a book I recently read. Written by an American mother, Pamela, living in Paris with his British husband and 3 young kids born in Paris, the book attempts to analyze the difference between French (or rather Parisian) parenting and Anglo-Saxon parenting. She has decided that she is a fan of French parenting, in which parents still have a life and children behave at dinner table.

After reading each chapter, I would ask Nicolas if he thinks it’s true or not from his childhood memories.

– ‘Did you always have 4pm snack and nothing else in the between of all meals’?

– ‘Of course’!

(Now I know why he always wonders around the kitchen about that time if at home, and how come he can wait till 8pm or later for dinner at working days while I’m usually hungry to death by then.)

– ‘Is a child not saying ‘bonjour’ (good morning/afternoon/hello) considered impolite’?

– ‘Of course!’

– ‘Did you spend weekends making cakes with your mom’?

– ‘Of course’!

(This explains why he makes heavenly delicious cakes. Lucky me.)

After a few ‘of course’ I stopped checking in with Nicolas. Of course he’s not going to oppose the idea that French parenting is the best parenting on this entire planet!

Yet, I’m not too sure about certain things that she talks about in the book. For example, according to her, French babies will all start to sleep through the night from 3 months on. And the reason? Because they know that their moms are going back to work after 3 months! I do personally know a few French mothers who took longer-than-three-month maternity leave, and I did hear the stories of their babies waking up at night long after 3 months …

With that said, I did observe from a few French children around me that they tend to behave, better than I would have expected. At least, they would always ask if they can leave the dining table if everyone else is still there. What I particularly like about French table manner is that there is NEVER TV at the background. No TV, no ipad, no phone, no newspaper. Meal time is conversation time with food and drink. What a contrast from many meals I had back at my home country, sadly.

To better validate what the book is talking about, I decided to consult the expert. So I asked my mother-in-law to try to find the book in France (I would guess this book has been translated in French?) and then tell me what she thinks about it. I will perhaps get more than ‘of course’ as response.

Being bilingual ‘boosts brain power’ – I didn’t say this, but from some scientists!

I came across this article from BBC today: US researchers from Northwestern University say bilingualism is a form of brain training – a mental “work out” that fine-tunes the mind.

Quote from the article:

‘Speaking two languages profoundly affects the brain and changes how the nervous system responds to sound, lab tests revealed.’

Prof Nina Kraus, who led the research, said: “The bilingual’s enhanced experience with sound results in an auditory system that is highly efficient, flexible and focused in its automatic sound processing, especially in challenging or novel listening conditions.”

Co-author Viorica Marian said: “People do crossword puzzles and other activities to keep their minds sharp. But the advantages we’ve discovered in dual language speakers come automatically simply from knowing and using two languages.

“It seems that the benefits of bilingualism are particularly powerful and broad, and include attention, inhibition and encoding of sound.”

Isn’t it a great news for all bilinguals/multilinguals, and the future ones!

Strictly speaking, my mother tongue – if the definition of mother tongue is the one that you hear/speak throughout childhood – is not Mandarin Chinese but Fenghua Hua, the dialect from my hometown where I grew up and lived till 17 years old before I left for university in Shangahi. Mandarin is a language that I learnt when I started school at the age of six. (by the way, isn’t it a proof that a new language can be learnt at a rather ‘late’ age of six?)

Yet, I am not teaching Nina Fenghua Hua, but Mandarin Chinese only. Even my mom said that she would make an effort to speak Mandarin with Nina. The reason? ‘Because Fenghua Hua has no real value’, quote from my mom.

Is it true that the dialect has no value?

I was chatting with L. who has a daughter about same age as Nina and an older son of 3 years old. L is origionally from North-East part of India while her husband is from South India. They each speak different regional languages (I didn’t manage to remember the names of languages, shame on me!) so English becomes the common language between them. Their older son speaks some words of L’s local language thanks to L’s mother’s effort, but their younger daughter will not, because they have decided not to teach her that language.

It also leads me to think of my 8-year-old niece (my sister’s daughter) who lives in a city not far from our hometown. She can understand Fenghua Hua because that’s pretty much the only language that her great-grandparents speak, however she would always reply back in Mandarin because that’s what she has been talked to by her parents and in school from birth. No one including her great-grandparents seems to be bothered.

On a different note, Shanghai Hua is getting a momentum from its locals – those whose parents are Shanghainese too, NOT those ‘new Shanghainese’ who are recent migrants to the city like myself – to be spoken more not only on the street but also in more public areas including bus & metro for the stop announcement for example. It is a movement that gets more and more supports in recent years. It’s not uncommon to see a passage on weibo (a Chinese version of facebook and twitter combined) in standard Chinese characters but would make sense only when pronounced in Shanghai Hua. I have many friends from Shanghai talking to their kids in Shanghai Hua only at home.

So why Fenghua Hua & L’s language and Shanghai Hua are getting so different treatment from its own people? Is it because people from Shanghai feel more strongly about their heritage? Or simply down to the fact that Shanghai has a large enough population to support the evolvement of its dialect? Or perhaps because Shanghai holds such an important place as a city and an economy in the whole country that its people feel their dialect deserves a special place to match?

I don’t have an answer. There perhaps isn’t a simple answer.

For now, I continue to speak Fenghua Hua with my mom and Mandarin with my daughter.

It’s incredible how one person can NOT hear a converstation at all when the conversation is in a language that one doesn’t understand.

In case you haven’t seen my previous blog, my mom is staying with us for three months after Nina was born. She speaks a Chinese dialet – Fenghua hua, and my husband speaks French. They don’t understand each other’s language.

So this is what happens quite often. My husband would ask me  a question in French, and just when I am about to answer or half way through the conversation, my mom would start a conversation with me, as if she doesn’t hear that there is already another conversation going on, and I cannot answer two questions at the same time! My husband sometimes would do the same, but ever since I protested once he pays a lot of attention not starting a second conversation. Alas, my mom still does …

I don’t think they are being rude to cut an on-going conversation. It’s just that, since they don’t understand the other language, they don’t register the fact that there is another converstation. It’s like the brain auto-filters the strange language. When you think of it, brain sometimes can ignore things that it doesn’t pay attention to. That’s how brain survives – if it has to register everything single information happening at the same time, it would go insane!

Now I think back when I just arrived in France, when my French was less than so-so, my brain sometimes totally switched off that I didn’t hear a single French word even when I was surrounded by French conversation. It might be the same thing for my mom and my husband.

Hopefully, Nina won’t filter out Chinese and French in the future.