So, I've been asking "¿Inglés o Español?" before each bedtime story recently, and tonight Laniña wasn´t paying attention because she wanted to play tent with the blanket and so I just went on ahead in Spanish. Suddenly she poked her head out and asked "¿Inglés o Español?", so I asked her that same question. She had a wee think, smiled, and then answered "¡Inglés!"
Cheeky thing!
That said, I´m on hols at the minute, and she´s had a couple days off nursery and it is immediately noticeable that she is just automatically speaking more Spanish. This has come so effortlessly that it really reassures me that she will just automatically adjust her balance of language to suit her environment - I wonder what will happen when we go to Spain for a week?
Thursday, 20 March 2008
Monday, 3 March 2008
Where's me?
Well, sorry it's been a while - I've been busy.
Thanks to the folks at Multilingualmunchkins for the encouragement.
Anyway, I did do a couple more blog entries in January, but i thought I would be clever and record them as audio podcasts, but I've run into problems with getting somewhere to host the files - I think I've got it sorted now, so you can expect to see (hear!) them here soon.
Laniña´s speech and language is improving every day - mostly in English! She´s got to the point of making cute grammatical mistakes, and when she hides she now has in fact left "Where´s me?" behind and has started to ask "Where´s my me?" instead!!
Her Spanish mistakes aren´t as cute, I´m afraid: wrong verb endings and she does still insist on calling me yo instead of tú (because I call myself yo of course!)
She speaks much less Spanish, but still uses certain words like biblioteca especially if it´s something that she does principally with me. When she clearly knows a word in both languages there is a definite delay as she chooses which one to use, and seems to look for reassurance afterwards. She is much more confident in English. This is only to be expected.
Periodically, though, she asks to see Español , which is the DVD of the Usbourne first Spanish book. And in the last week, I myself found one of her counting books so boring that I asked if she wanted it in Spanish - she enthusiastically did indeed want to hear it in Spanish! Now I have been asking if she wants her bedtime story-books ¿en inglés o en español? and she has responded Español every single time. Very encouraging. I don´t really translate the story, though - we just chat about the pictures on the page.
Up until now, while I have obviously been reading her Spanish books in Spanish, I´ve been reading her English books in English - I mean sometimes she really wants Green Eggs And Ham (good luck with trying to translate that one!). My concern is that I feel she will start to pay attention to the words soon and I really don´t want to mess up her reading! I´ll let you know how it goes...
Thanks to the folks at Multilingualmunchkins for the encouragement.
Anyway, I did do a couple more blog entries in January, but i thought I would be clever and record them as audio podcasts, but I've run into problems with getting somewhere to host the files - I think I've got it sorted now, so you can expect to see (hear!) them here soon.
Laniña´s speech and language is improving every day - mostly in English! She´s got to the point of making cute grammatical mistakes, and when she hides she now has in fact left "Where´s me?" behind and has started to ask "Where´s my me?" instead!!
Her Spanish mistakes aren´t as cute, I´m afraid: wrong verb endings and she does still insist on calling me yo instead of tú (because I call myself yo of course!)
She speaks much less Spanish, but still uses certain words like biblioteca especially if it´s something that she does principally with me. When she clearly knows a word in both languages there is a definite delay as she chooses which one to use, and seems to look for reassurance afterwards. She is much more confident in English. This is only to be expected.
Periodically, though, she asks to see Español , which is the DVD of the Usbourne first Spanish book. And in the last week, I myself found one of her counting books so boring that I asked if she wanted it in Spanish - she enthusiastically did indeed want to hear it in Spanish! Now I have been asking if she wants her bedtime story-books ¿en inglés o en español? and she has responded Español every single time. Very encouraging. I don´t really translate the story, though - we just chat about the pictures on the page.
Up until now, while I have obviously been reading her Spanish books in Spanish, I´ve been reading her English books in English - I mean sometimes she really wants Green Eggs And Ham (good luck with trying to translate that one!). My concern is that I feel she will start to pay attention to the words soon and I really don´t want to mess up her reading! I´ll let you know how it goes...
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