I read
some time ago about transferences from one language to the other as
bilingual children grow to 3-4 years old, and now that we are
experiencing it I can say they are both fascinating and also really
fun. In our case transferences usually take place in Spanish, when our boy
refers to a word that he is normally using more in English (i.e.
speaking with “Papi”), here are some examples:
“Blanca” instead
of “manta” because of “blanket”: “Papi no se moja en la
moto cuando llueve porque lleva una BLANCA”.
“Lanchar”
instead of “lanzar” because of “to launch”: and he
conjugates the verb in Spanish “Voy a LANCHAR estos coches con el
LAUNCHER”.
“No
me DESCUBRAS!”instead of “no me DESTAPES”, as a direct
translation of “uncover”. He said that while playing in bed,
although it should be “don´t take my covers off” or something
similar…
“Carpeta”
instead of “alfombra” because of “carpet”. This is an old
one, and he is still stuck here, but we don´t put any pressure on
correcting him directly so far.
“Ella ES 0 años”
instead of “ella TIENE…” . Direct
translation for “she is 0 years old”. In Spanish we use the verb to
HAVE X yo.
“… y voy a GIRAR
en un monstruo!!” instead of “…y me voy a convertir en un
monstruo!!”. In fact he is translating directly
from “I´m going to TURN into a monster!!”. He always translates
TURN as GIRAR in Spanish, and he does the same with words that are
used for different purposes. I guess this must be confusing for him,
but once he hears me use TURN again he goes with the flow without
questioning, so I guess it´s ok.
I´ve
been more at home lately, therefore his daily exposure has increased,
and I think this is one of the main reasons for these events. We also
see that he switches into English and initiates conversations in
English from scratch more often, and also more easily every time.
Another thing that has progressively changed is that he doesn´t take
very well when mummy speaks English, so we could say he is becoming
stricter when it comes to sticking to OPOL. Either I read one story
in English or Mum does it in Spanish, but he rarely accepts Mum
reading the same story in English. When he asks about something in
English and Mummy answers he sometimes goes like “No Mummy, not you! I´m
speaking English with Papi!!”, meaning that if the question is in
English, it´s me who must answer.
Reverse
story telling:
I´m
very glad to see that another milestone has been accomplished in
terms of speech production!! Our little punk has started to be the
story teller
in our daily storytelling session at bedtime… I had to hold myself
back for not to crack up laughing.
Last
night as I was tucking him in bed, we were going through what we had
done during the weekend, and he came up with “Papi, I´m going to
tell you a story: This time it is about a shinny car, and he was
going very fast along the road, and suddenly he got a flat tire, and
then he called the tow truck, and it came and it hooked him up and
took him to the repair shop…” and he went on and on, using
different plots and situations recently played with his cars. He had
done this before but only with random sentences, not building a whole
story by himself and never at this speed.
I thought it was very
remarkable as he was keeping a very good fluency. Something
interesting as an observation is that he has started stressing the
–ed words (in past) and polishing his pronunciation, as he speaks
more clearly now in English, getting closer to the level of clarity
that he has in Spanish, which everybody says is really good. His
accent is somehow strange, and the poor thing is not obviously the
one to blame. I trust in his future exposure to native speakers at
school and some reinforcement that we will provide with summer camps
and other resources.
Another
observation is that he is also figuring out the grammar rules, for
instance “…and then the plane run along the runway and TAKED
off!” I read on a book about bilingualism, that this type of
constructions reveals a step forward in language awareness. Even
though he normally said “the plane took off” in a sentence, this
“correctness” was a result of memorizing the set of words, and
now he is building the language by reasoning the structures and
figuring out the grammatical rules. As always I don´t correct him
directly, but I use the same structure in the correct way one or two
sentences after.
Correcting
“WHY” questions:
As I mentioned
before, our boy is constantly asking “WHY… everything
imaginable”, and he connects every answer to one further question.
So far so good, only that he uses the Spanish structures (order of
words) for English questions. He is having some difficulties
integrating the auxiliary verbs here; and he uses them right in other
cases, but apparently not in this one. A typical conversation goes
like:
- Papi
why is that car going so fast? (he is 100% into cars now…)
- Maybe
the driver is in a hurry.
- Why
HE IS in a hurry? (instead of “is he”.
- Maybe
because he wants to pick up his children from school and he is late.
- Why
HE WANTS to pick up his children from school? (instead of “why
does he want...”)
And
it goes on and on… Seriously, it can last 12 rounds! I think this
routine is a great field to promote the right use, since he
reformulates naturally everything one says. What I do here is that after
some “wrong” sentences, I ask him a question with the right
structure, and if he insists on the Spanish pattern then I explain
him briefly that we have to say it differently in English. I think he
appreciates these explanations because immediately after he stumbles
a bit but tries to follow the right path, at least for 2 or 3 questions after
coming back to the Spanish structure (sigh)…
Have your children gone through a phase of transferences between their languages?
What patterns does your family use to "correct/redirect" wrong grammar, and how strict are you applying them?
