Bilingual twists

My kids are genious. Such a stereotype phrase coming from a mother´s mouth. But I am watching them learn to speak and I am speechless.

The other day, I was standing at the beach with G in my arms. Suddenly he becomes all excited and start making a sound that sounds like Pelé, Pelé. What, I think to myself, has my South American hubby already indoctrinated this kid with Brazilian football players name... I look for Brazilians on the beach... all I see is a bunch of Chileans and some dogs. My son goes; Pelé, Pelé, woff, woff. AAAH! He means PERRO. My son knows how to say dog in Spanish. He also knows how to count to three in both Swedish and Spanish. We start in both languages saying uno, dos..../ett, tvá... and he continues with a big smile saying "tleee"! Genious. Simply genious.

Our daugther started off speaking Swedish. We saw little interest from her side to express herself in Spanish before the age of 3 - although her dad insisted with his native tongue. Then suddenly, when the grandparents from Chile visited us last summer she realized that she was "frito". The girl loves to talk but without using Spanish the tatas would not understand a single word that she said. So suddenly she started constructing complete phrases. Bur for all of you out there that are learning a foreign language note this: her Spanish is by no means perfect. It is a myth that small children learn a second language by automation. It is hard work even for them. A´s Spanish is getting better every day but the grammatical errors she still makes would pass no school exam. The main point is that she is talking and making herself understood (something many of us should dare to do when we are learning new languages). I love her own twist to the language: "Mi quiere" instead of "yo quiero", "pero" instead of "perro" (typical mistake by foreigners, not to distinguish "r" from "rr"). During the past three weeks I hear her becoming more fluent every day and realize that it won´t take long now before the "mi quiere" disappears from her vocabulary (I will shed a teer the day that happens). The latest observation is how she is working on the intonation of the question phrases. It is so cute to hear her pose a question with the Spanish twist at the end (something I myself still can forget to do when I speak Spanish - stand there like a fool when people don´t understand that they should say something  based on my statement).

I love languages and I hope my kids will be blessed with many more than the two that are offered withing our family. The sooner the better.