[Leica] PAW 34 dlridings

[dlridings at gmail.com (Daniel Ridings)]

On 8/27/06, Peter Klein <pklein@2alpha.net> wrote:
> Is Rebecca
> stubbornly clinging to her American half in Yankee-Doodle fashion?  Does
> English have a "coolness" cachet in Scandinavia?  Or am I just being
> excessively postmodern, turning night into day and lingonberry pancakes
> into sourdough flapjacks?
>
> Inquiring minds wanna know. . .   :-)    :-)    :-)

Peter,

When my first child was born I was already proficient in Swedish, to
put it mildly (I have been the expert representative for the Swedish
language in EU research projects contexts).

But I decided that I would never be able to get mad at them in Swedish
and we all know, you have to be able to get mad at your children. So I
decided to speak English and nothing else to them from day one.

I did this with all three children. They grew up not realizing that
there were two languages, English and Swedish. When my wife and I
would take Simon on an even stroll and pass under street lights that
would cast each of our shadows in front of him, he would say: Mammas
skugga, pappa's shadow. (skugga is the Swedish equivalent of shadow).

But they would not speak to me in English. They figured that I
understood Swedish (they heard Ewa and I interact and heard others
interact in Swedish with me) so why bother?

At times I'd try and get them to speak English. They'd look at me
totally confused: What _is_ it that this guy wants? They simply didn't
fathom that there were two languages.

"You know, mamma says "soffa" and pappa says "coach", now that's what
I mean by "English", now say something in English."

"Couch"

:-(

The very first time I asked Rebecca to say something in English (she
was about 3) she said:

"Sweetheart"

The rest you can probably figure out.

She caught on to the fact that she could win some favors with me if
she spoke English. The boys eventually noticed this and picked it up
too.

Jonathan was a bit stubborn. Ok, he'd agree to speak English in the
US, because they spoke English in the US.

But when my mother came to Sweden, he insisted she spoke Swedish. She
didn't, of course.

The next time he went to the US, he refused to speak English.

But now everything is evened out. They are good writers in Swedish and
English. Being bilingual has raised their language awareness in
general and their Swedish is several notches above even those who
write well.

Long story ...

Daniel