tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9901881507214511422012-02-10T23:37:24.510Z¡Hola! I am writing as Rocinante (not my real name - I'm shy!) and my daughter is Laniña - also not her real name! She's four now. I speak to her in Spanish, even though that´s not my own first language. We are just seeing how it goes, and that´s what this blog is about. Hope you find it interesting and encouraging if you are in a similar situation, or considering trying it out.rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.comBlogger361100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-63467164127381235902009-05-22T00:10:00.002Z2009-05-22T00:28:13.051Z

People sometimes aren´t sure what to expect from a 4-year-old bilingual, and sometimes think that they can get Laniña to "perform" her Spanish for them - with very mixed results. One friend recently exclaimed, "Oh, I thought she was fluent!" which at least gave us a chance to talk about it; I can only assume that many others are thinking inwardly how mad I must be to keep talking Spanish to a

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-20393379204121309742009-05-15T19:41:00.002Z2009-05-15T19:50:32.348Z

Oh dear...At the end of reading a Spanish fairy tale, one commonly says this:Colorín coloradoEste cuento se ha acabadoIt's just the ritual end, like we always say "...and they all lived happily ever after."Colorín colorado, however, doesn't really mean anything sensible, and este cuento se ha acabado simply means "this story has finished".This evening, though, my brain wasn't working too well and

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-33690682946504798762009-05-13T18:15:00.003Z2009-05-13T18:29:08.182Z

I got a list of these on a leaflet; thanks SG!http://www.biculturalfamily.org/magazine.htmlhttp://www.bilingualfamilynewsletter.com/http://www.wfbilingual.org.ukhttp://www.multilingualmunchkins.comhttp://www.multilingualchildren.org/I haven't even managed to look at some of these yet, but I do know the multilingualmunchkins list is great; enjoy exploring them!More about Laniña soon!

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-7694734491680430442009-04-09T15:27:00.002Z2009-04-09T15:37:55.486Z

So, I was out of the country for a week and usually when I'm out of the picture for a while Laniña uses markedly less Spanish. This time, however, things were markedly different:Laniña and her mother were in the playpark and chanced to meet another young chap from Laniña's nursery class. They have had an ongoing competitive game going for a while of the "My x is better than yours" sort of thing

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-25822905935301295662009-02-26T07:35:00.003Z2009-02-26T07:43:16.270Z

Strange conversation at breakfast, don't know what sparked the original question: - Where Bak Omama live? - ¿Cómo? Oh, Barak Obama? - Yup. - En América. En la Casa Blanca - Yup and in English is the White House!So, we googled it and showed her a picture of the White House and she said "That's like holidays"If only our hotel was ever that nice!

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-52085241236111152832009-02-23T23:14:00.002Z2009-02-23T23:26:11.267Z

Well, 4th birthday came and went and with it came SCHOOL! Well, sort-of school. It's called a reception class and is in a school, but they really just play and it's only for a couple of hours each day. But, goodness, Laniña´s English has rocketed! Chat chat chat...Well, for over a month I swear she didn´t speak a single word of Spanish. I told myself to stay cool... Time passed. Then I

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-48802319622658082012008-11-24T22:46:00.002Z2008-11-24T22:55:54.661Z

Sometimes I wonder, especially when picking Laniña up from the nursery, do other people think I´m mad. There I am, speaking foreign to a child who is resolutely answering only in English! What on earth, they must think, am I doing?But then, like today for instance, as soon as we get into the car she´ll say, "Look Estrellas!"Today she went on to add, "An I can say it in English - it´s STARS!"So

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-10688904051878156012008-11-21T16:48:00.002Z2008-11-21T16:54:30.488Z

Laniña´s pronunciation has become pretty good. Clear and distinct, where a year ago she might have mumbled or otherwise failed to pronounce certain sounds or words correctly. This is in both English and Spanish, I mean. But now she seems to have most sounds pretty well mastered in both languages - and she´ll not be 4 until December! Some more tricky words still cause difficulties, of course,

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-4711522749252190382008-11-03T11:37:00.002Z2008-11-03T11:42:57.068Z

If you´ve got kids, you´re very likely already aware that Nickjr.com has some simple online games featuring their key characters like Dora, Diego and the Backyardigans. Over the last few weeks, Laniña has grown to like these very much - possibly too much!I had been frustrated in not being able to find a Spanish version of any of these games, and in a sudden flash of inspiration I gave up on

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-8587220748915504592008-10-29T21:51:00.002Z2008-10-29T22:11:55.426Z

This was a tricky one - I really didn't know how we would sort this out at all, and in fact I guess we're still in the middle of it, and may well be for a while yet!Laniña had been becoming increasingly interested in letters - without any pressure from us, I may add - and has been able to sort of write her name for a good few weeks now. And then there was the alphabet song which she must have

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-72012317330449611452008-09-29T10:54:00.004Z2008-09-29T11:06:26.601Z

Well sometimes Laniña uses her Spanish in very particular ways. Being a very bad father, I have taught her how to use computer games, which she quite enjoys. She only does this with me. Now the Spanish word juego is for any type of game, but Laniña now uses juego like this: "I wanna do a juego" meaning that she wants to play a computer game. I think there´s a word in linguistics for this;

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-83773653339118682042008-09-14T19:43:00.003Z2008-09-14T20:05:08.036Z

So, finally we got to head back to Spain for a week - Laniña was also there with us for a week about the same time last year, but she didn´t really have any memories of it at all. Laniña and I had talked about it a good bit beforehand, including pointing out that everyone there would speak Spanish and that she would have to speak Spanish to them too. And when we got there, the amazing thing was

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-22195329689964515132008-07-15T15:47:00.002Z2008-07-15T16:06:59.563Z

Well, it's the holidays and that means that Laniña gets to see - and hear - a lot more of me. I´ve been off work for about two weeks now and have noticed two fascinating, yet probably quite obvious things:First week off and I was away on my own, minus partner and sproglet. When I returned I noticed that Laniña´s ENGLISH had improved tremendously. Interesting. Her English is within normal

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-55178718907064027622008-07-14T15:27:00.003Z2008-11-26T19:29:57.435Z

So, I sometimes get uncomfortable about the fact that we're really just making a lot of our bilingual-metholodogy (so to speak) up as we go along. There are several good sources of advice, including multilingual munchkins (which is a yahoo email newsgroup or something) and a couple of friends who are doing similar things. But at the same time, all kids are different, and all our situations are

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-38958229795078718382008-05-31T09:01:00.002Z2008-05-31T09:04:33.425Z

Discussing what bowl to have breakfast in:Laniña: Yeh, a verde bowl. An in Spanish is GREEN!!ummm... nope, sorry - other way round! Shame, she seemed so pleased with herself...

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-79803950641197916652008-05-23T22:56:00.002Z2008-05-23T23:16:21.196Z

Hide and speak Spanish (humph, can't believe they've no picture!)So, Laniña generally gets me to read something in Spanish these evenings as a bedtime story (that said, I did have to read Peppa Pig in English last night - she's only three; she's allowed to be fickle! And I'm not prepared to pretend that I can't speak English when I clearly can!)But there's one book in particular that she often

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-2081299882495994952008-05-21T20:59:00.003Z2008-05-21T21:18:38.273Z

First, the missing blog post: during one of those periods when I haven't been posting very much, I experimented a bit with making this blog a podcast and recorded a couple of very interesting (if I do say so myself) pieces before running into a couple of difficulties. I've now sort of figured out how to resolve these, but only by moving the whole thing away from blogger or by paying for a service

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-54752566384973078312008-05-17T13:31:00.002Z2008-05-17T13:41:12.523Z

OK, hands up if you remember Dogtanian?? If you've been paying close attention, you'll notice that my video bar (above) has changed recently, and now features highlights from that masterpiece of animation from my childhood! In Spanish!! Did you know that it was made in Spain? That's why the English lip-synching was so dodgy - the cartoons are really speaking Spanish!! The original name of the

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-70055050272811395572008-05-12T21:43:00.002Z2008-05-12T22:00:20.519Z

No, she didn't say that Not really.Laniña was in the supermarket car park with her mother a couple of days ago and they saw a car which was a truly horrific shade of orange. "Look at that car!" said mother, "What colour is that?""s orange" said Laniña. Clever girl."And what colour is our car?""Silver. An in Spanish is plata"Well, goodness me. It is, too! Clever girl, indeed! I did say she

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-39250814473249214972008-05-08T18:29:00.003Z2008-05-08T18:41:45.912Z

Diego is Dora's cousin - both are young bilingual adventurers from the Nick Jr. channel. Diego is aimed at an older (and more male) audience than Dora, but the activities are just as interactive and there is a current of Spanish running throughout - Laniña loves all the stuff about animals, too! (Diego is an Animal Rescuer, and all the episodes have an animal theme)It is also possible to import

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-33575276651696423802008-05-08T11:59:00.004Z2008-05-12T22:02:18.885Z

Laniña has funny wee moods. She loves Go Diego Go! and we watch it a lot on dvd - in English, because those dvd´s don´t have Spanish on them. But sometimes she changes the language herself and I have often caught her really enjoying listening to French or Danish. Even when there is a Spanish soundtrack on a dvd, she still changes it to e.g. Catalán or, I dunno, Hebrew or something. I have decided

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-41531737813004447032008-03-20T22:25:00.003Z2008-03-20T22:34:11.189Z

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

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-27471465105378716832008-03-03T22:51:00.002Z2008-03-03T23:14:01.969Z

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

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-49180123611012052512007-12-08T00:30:00.000Z2007-12-08T00:42:03.607Z

So, Laniña has really come on in her English over the last few weeks, which is great. She has, however, started speaking English to me, which she never used to do. I get up to 70% English perhaps, though she still hangs onto her favourite Spanish words like niños - I don´t think she ever calls them children!But we did have a wee Spanish breakthrough today: we were playing running up and down,

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-76667916091008123612007-11-06T08:45:00.000Z2007-11-06T08:57:54.392Z

So, sometimes Laniña just babbles still, though increasingly it´s becoming clearer that some of what I can´t yet understand her saying is nevertheless an attempt to say something.A couple of days ago, in the car, she said "wa wa wa wo coche" with definite emphasis on coche, meaning car, since that´s a word she has known for ages and knows well. So this was definitely some sort of sentence; I

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-12966725652616002752007-11-03T17:32:00.000Z2007-11-03T17:40:04.739Z

Wow, interesting experience this afternoon - I was alone with Laniña; she was looking out the window and I was dictating notes into my mp3 player about an idea I had for another blog entry. Suddenly she began to shout at me, with great anger, "NO, PAPÁ STOP IT! STOP IT!"I couldn´t really figure out what the problem was, until I began dictating again, only this time in Spanish - she suddenly

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-9049952008927559082007-11-02T13:41:00.000Z2007-11-02T13:51:24.744Z

Laniña's pronunciation has been getting clearer over the last weeks and months. Sometimes, though, that just makes her mistakes easier to spot. She quite frequently gets consonants or whole syllables mixed round - two examples came up yesterday:in English, naming plastic fruit for her granny -[apple] "apple"[banana] "banana"[pear] "a fruit" (!)[lemon] "melon"Granny thought that she thought the

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-60987567615759940172007-11-02T00:12:00.000Z2007-11-02T00:18:32.274Z

Ok, this has little to do with Spanish or bilingualism, but I guess that other parents of toddlers between 2-3 years old might find it interesting to note that my daughter's favourite phrase at the moment is to shout, preferably at the most inopportune moment, "NO! STOP IT! DON'T TOUCH IT!"When she's being calmer and cuter she likes to introduce us as: "This is the Mummy one and this Daddy one."

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-51833399396132905772007-10-29T16:32:00.000Z2007-10-29T16:55:20.140Z

Here's an interesting conversation we had the other day; it was shortly after the appearance of Laniña's new obsession with pumpkins in the run up to Hallowe'en:Mummy: Tell Daddy what we did today.Laniña: Pumkin! Liddl punkin!Papá: Ooo ... una calabaza, ¡qué bien!Mummy: And what did we put in the little pumpkin?Laniña: On telly!Mummy: Yes, the pumpkin´s sitting on the TV. And what´s in the

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-69062204369326043572007-09-08T13:26:00.000Z2007-09-08T13:40:25.421Z

The best thing about using Spanish with my daughter is that we bought a lot of Spanish DVDs for her to watch and I therefore feel a lot less guilty than I otherwise would about letting her watch a lot of TV!!It has been interesting to see how quickly she learnt to master control of the DVD player, and soon found that she was able to change the language by pressing a particular button. At first

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com88tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-82498719503304380012007-09-06T22:10:00.000Z2007-09-06T22:28:05.152Z

Well, it's been a while and a lot has happened... what I had originally intended to be a chronological account of Laniña's linguistic development will now I think become random observations as they occour to me - that should be easier, so I might blog more often!This is from months ago, though, when she was 2 and a bit:We noticed that Laniña had suddenly started to ask for treats (y'know -

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-48190619775875812582007-05-21T22:04:00.000Z2007-05-21T22:25:30.771Z

In no particular order...pañalcacamariposamariquitagateargaviotacolchoncitotronacuencocolumpiostobogánpatinetecunamantitadeslizarbiberónhebillacan you guess what they are? The answers aren´t in the right order:swings, scooter, nappy, cot, poo, blanky, bowl, changing-mat, seagull, slide, to slide, butterfly, ladybird, buckle, to crawl, baby bottle

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-64247380162615773262007-05-21T21:43:00.000Z2007-05-21T22:04:12.776Z

Well, once I had decided to go for it, the other big decision was: Spanish or German?? German is my other other language, if you know what I mean. In it's favour were that we know another family who are raising their daughter bilingually with German, but I had been doing Spanish a lot longer, and my confidence with Spanish was much better. I was particularly conderned that I would mess up on

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-47088617488835562582007-04-21T07:38:00.000Z2007-04-21T07:42:31.330Z

Laniña is my daughter, by the way. It´s not her real name; "la niña" is Spanish for "the wee girl"I just don´t want for her to fall out with me when she finds out that I´ve been detailing her toddler years for everyone else to read!

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-80060228636468848122007-04-19T23:31:00.000Z2007-04-21T07:44:05.933Z

Well, I first heard about one other person who was speaking to their child in a non-native language... and then another... and, while I didn't know these people myself, reports were positive and kids un-messed up!I tried to practise with the cat, only communicating with him in Spanish. Well, perhaps not communicating... (bit demotivating that, actually. Don´t really recommend it)And then I just

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-990188150721451142.post-18423459522728763882007-04-17T20:56:00.000Z2007-04-17T22:08:55.042Z

I'd been in a dither all through the pregnancy, and indeed even before that! In fact I'd definitely said, having been asked, that I'd just speak to any child of mine in English - well, it'd be weird, wouldn't it, talking foreign? (Not really, as it turns out!)And there was a confidence issue also - I mean, my Spanish was good, I knew that. Fluent, even. But was it good enough? I mean, I didn't

rocinantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10081522366250504802noreply@blogger.com0