Dartacan

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 show was Dartacan y los tres Mosqueperros. Dartacan is a word-play which works in much the same way as Dogtanian. So, I downloaded the whole series (in Spanish, of course), looking forward to re-living part of my childhood with my daughter... but she doesn't really care for it I'm afraid.

Ho hum, I guess they all have their own personalities after all. Or maybe she's just a bit young yet. Yes, I'll try again when she's older!

This is the link to the DVD, but as far as I can tell it's only in English, which is why I downloaded it (shhh... don't tell anyone!):

Pretty car!

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 was becoming more aware of there being more than one language, didn't I?!

Totally cheered me up, it did.

Go Diego Go!

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 the dvds from America and on those ones have an alternative Spanish soundtrack, but with activities to learn English! I found the latin-american Spanish quite grating to be honest - I usually like it, but the command forms were all very formal even though it´s a kids show - but Laniña loved it!

I like comiendo Krispies!

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 not to worry about this; she has shown increasing awareness of Spanish and English actually being two different languages that other people speak and I think she enjoys experimenting with listening to other languages too - it´s good to learn early that we live in a very multilingual world! She has also been experimenting with making up her own language and talking blah-pluh nonsense in roleplaying with her toys, and sometimes with us, too. She thinks it´s funny, but really I think she was experimenting to see if made-up words might somehow mean something. It´s good that she´s experimenting with concepts of language.

We got her a doll´s house last weekend - she didn´t really know what to do with it, so I acted out wee stories to Spanish commentary as I moved the figures from room to room. She would watch me and then role play what she´d seen - great fun!

She still mixes languages a good bit in talking to me, but hardly ever mixes Spanish with English in talking to her mother. Sometimes she has a long hesitation before she can think of a word and I have to supply it for her:

¿Dónde hiciste el pic-nic? (Where did you have the pic-nic?)
Inna... Inna... um...
¿En el salón o en el jardín? (In the living room or in the garden?)
In a jardín!!

¡Qué descarada!

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?

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...

¡Preparados, listos, YA!

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, saying Preparados, listos, YA (ready, steady, GO) and she started bossing me, saying who´s turn it was to say the words. And for the first time she got the idea of me/you correct!! Hooray!

(She should, of course, say me toca a mí - it´s my turn; or te toca a tí - it´s your turn. Instead, though, she has had a tendency to use me toca papá, trying to say Daddy´s go. Of course this is because me toca is what I say when it is my go, so she copies that. Logical, really!)