Articles Tagged with french

More, 还要啊, & Encore

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Nina and Laura the cat
Nina and Laura the cat

One of the first words Nina started to speak was ‘more’, to indicate that she wanted more food, or she liked the game, or to identify anything that she liked.

One month later, she started to say ‘还要啊’ when hearing many time from me to ask for more food.

Since we arrived in France almost three weeks ago, she quickly learnt that most people here would react favourably to her demand when she said ‘encore’.

Now she tries her luck often in all three versions of asking for more, so to increase her chance of success. Of course if she got what she wanted at the first try, this little person would just stop trying and got on with what she just got, which very often would be a mandarin!

This is the second word that she knows in all three languages (English, Mandarin, French). The first one was ‘ta (as in thanks)’, ‘merci’, and ‘谢谢’,although I suspect she already forgot ‘ta’ as I haven’t heard it for a while.

But with this said, you never know, because the duration of memory of a child is actually quite amazing as I learnt the other day. I was pointing to an Ostrich when saying 鸵鸟  to her. Just as I thought she perhaps didn’t register anything as it’s quite a difficult word to pronounce, she said ‘走啊走，走啊走’.　 I was amazed because indeed there was an ostrich in a Chinese book back at home in Sydney when it demonstrated how different animals walk with the rhyme of the text ‘走啊走，走啊走 that went with it. The last tine when we read the book was at least three weeks ago already, and we didn’t even read that book very often. Yet she remembered the text when seeing an ostrich.

If ever we were able to find a way to get into a child’s brain and see what happens there, it must be really amazing.

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

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?

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<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。

The Arrival of Nina B./ 俞凝南 & OPOL

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Nina B, aka 俞凝南, came to the world super on time on the 18th of January, 2012, 3:06pm local Sydney time. She’s a healthy 3.45kg / 51cm baby.

BTW, that made her one of the 5% babies who arrive on their due date (natural birth). One friend commented: ‘she’s already showing a talent of punctuality :)’. Indeed!

The first words spoken to her by her mum was: ‘你好 Nina’, and by her dad: ‘bonjours Nina’. Both mean ‘hello Nina’. With big smiles and amazement of the magical creature we spoke these words. And for me with enormous relief that the labour was F I N A L L Y over. I had a natural delivery using only gas – the official document says that the labour lasted only 5 hours 44 minutes. What the official document didn’t say was the one whole day of pre-labour I had gone through before that 5 hours 44 minutes, the last 9+ hours of which were already painful enough for me to head to hospital believing that labour already started. By the time I realized that gas would not be sufficient and it was getting way too much, I was told it’s too late to use any other drugs because the baby was coming. So I had to push it through, literally. Nothing, I mean really nothing, had prepared me for THAT level of pain and I think my mind had to detach from my body to remain somehow half-conscious, and Nicolas said that he never realized I had so much force that his arms were almost twisted broken by me, lol (he was such a fabulous supporter during whole process, merci palomito). It was an outer-body experience, to say the least.

Enough rambling, back to the serious staff 🙂 So by day 1, Nicolas and I started with the OPOL – one parent one language – approach. In this approach, each parent speaks respective language with the child, under all circumstances, so that the child gets enough exposure to all languages in the most natural way. I read that young children will have this natural ability to distinguish the languages and acknowledge the fact that mum and dad are each speaking a different language to them, and in return would establish a language-per-parent communication system. They would have no problem switching between/among languages depending on the audience.

My delivery doctor Dr. Seeho (who’s btw a fantastic doctor, I couldn’t ask for more) and quite a few midwives at the Mater (hospital where Nina was born) are interested in – positively – the fact that we speak different languages to Nina. This allows us to be confident and comfortable in speaking ‘minority’ languages (Chinese/French vs English as mainstream language in Australia) with Nina even when there are other English-speaking person present. This takes off one of the most common pressures that many bi/tri-lingual parents face – feeling awkward/misunderstood/un-acknolweged/rude/embarrassed in using a minority language in a social environment, as suggested by researches. It takes some determination, confidence, persistence, and sometimes a bit of luck to overcome this challenge.

I’m grateful that we are in a supportive environment to start with. Way to go.

Which Language to Speak In a Bilingual Couple

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In a bilingual couple, you tend to stick to the language you used when you first met.

At least, this is the theory I have to explain why between Nicolas and I French continues to be our daily language, although I think English would have been a more fair ground, and probably makes more sense now that we live in Aussieland, an English speaking country.

We met in France, at a time when I had lived in the country for about two years and my spoken French really picked up after working for a local French company for almost 6 months. Our first interaction was in a French-speaking party, and we naturally went on conversation in French afterwards as well –  although he did impress me with his Chinese particularly during a karaoke soiree in one of our first hang-outs.

As I said, my spoken French picked up, but at the time it was far from fluent. One of my first and best French friends I met outside of school and work, Thierry, still recalls that during our phone conversation at the beginning he really struggled to understand me and make me understood. The feeling was mutual, monsieur ! But I sort of hanged on to it, thanks to my friends as well as a few of my VERY patient colleagues at the time, who at times had to slow down, repeat, and explain what I didn’t understand and tried to find the correct words/expression for what they guessed what I wanted to say. Thank goodness, we never switched to English as a result of frustration.

Neither did Nicolas and I switch to English. During the first two years when our relationship blossomed, my French did too. Not only was I working in a French speaking environment, but also I was woven into this vast and day-to-day French social environment. I had to meet Nicolas’ friends, his parents and family, get introduced to social events, and understand French way of being in a relationship. I had no choice (I chose to have no choice …) and sometimes struggled to grasp the subtlety and the ‘non-dit’s, but fortunately I enjoyed most of time.

So French became part of our relationship, even when we moved to Shanghai. Nicolas’ Chinese improved by taking more lessons and living there simply. We had talks about using more Chinese between us for the sake of his Chinese practice, however we somehow never managed to do so. We would start a conversation in Chinese, then slowly French or English words would creep in, until almost always French took over. It’s a bit like any routine – once you establish one, it becomes really difficult to change it.

The pattern continues after we moved to Sydney. Both of us speak fluent English and that’s the language we use for work and most of the social activities. However in our private world, French rules. Of course we throw in words/expressions from other languages that we both associate to in regularly basis. In a French sentence, we would use some English or Chinese vocabulary, and for the sake of fun pronounce them with deliberately strong French accent, or vise versa. We enjoy the game. Our daily language is quite a mix-and-match indeed.

Now that we’re going to raise a trilingual child, we probably need to be more conscious about the mix-and-match of our language so that it doesn’t unnecessarily confuse the child (or would it?). We both want her to be a REAL Chinese, French, and English speaker, and from what I read so far (I will be sharing my learning in this blog), it takes more than a laissez-faire approach, so the linguistic dynamics in the family is going to change I sense.

That will be a whole new discussion. For now and in the forseeable future, between Nicolas and I, francais will continue to rule.