English as a Multilingual Language: Part One - Chips

The Germans!  Matthew and Aidan with Levi, whose Mum also hails from Schwabenland.

IF I can EVER get a series going, this English thing should be it.

Am I raising my children bilingually?  You betcha!

We were discussing the German-thing at a friend's first birthday party recently.  I told the other parents that my kids don't listen well in at least THREE to possibly even FOUR languages.

In addition to ignoring me in English and German,  the kids refuse to cooperate in French and Spanish as well.  (And the school is wondering why the twins need speech therapy for English!)

They should at least be able to understand "I don't know.",  "I don't understand." and "I am very very tired." in French.  Just rolls off the tongue.

The twins!  Thomas and Lachlan as Hawaians.

Why is it that they haven't picked this up,  I asked rhetorically.

To which Ryan replied, in a halfway decent accent, "Je ne sais pas."

Wise - ass.

Turns out the twins will deign to understand German as well, when it is something that it is in their best interests to understand.  Not just , "Get into bed now before I turn you into a Weiner-Schnitzel" but also dessert choices and whether or not they would like to turn on the Fernseher.

Thanks to the forty-five minute carride to riding on Saturday afternoons, I've got them singing more that Shakira songs in Spanish.  So that if the need ever arises, when we visit Spain, to point to their ears, eyes and nose, they will be on top of it.

Then three of us will be able to excuse ourselves in Cantonese.

The Americans!  Jack as an Eskimo, with two American Indians and a Hawaian.

We've got summer vacation coming up and will be homeschooling again.  More as a form of crowd control than as a need for more knowledge.  I thought about adding baby sign language to the roster.  Because nothing was more fun the first time around than two babies animatedly pointing to their mouths and demanding to be fed.

But this English thing is completely baffling.

Take Friday night, at Andrew's baseball game, when Aidan came over to ask if they could buy chips. 

"Chips.  Why sure honey.  How much are they?"  I asked.  (I do admit freely to bribing them with their weekly allotment of coca-cola and sweets in order to get them to consent to being dragged to their older siblings' sports activities.)

"And what kind of chips do you mean?"   You only get this kind of question from an American mother.

Bob as cowboy.  AMERICAN cowboy.

Aidan looked completely dumb-founded.  He meant the chips they'd had at school. 

"Do you mean potato chips, chips or do you mean French fries, chips?" I elaborated.

Uh. 

(Having never lived in America, or spent much time with Americans besides Damon and I,  it shouldn't come as a shock that American terms don't mean much to my children either, but somehow it always is.  Even in English, my children are often learning a different language than my native American.)

"Pommes frites?"  I tried in German.  And French.

Still nothing.

"We call the potato chips "crisps"  in Scotland."  Help from the crowd that was listening in on this rather interesting - and amusing- exchange.

It's A Small World, as demonstrated by the Preps.

"Would you like crisps, love?  Or chips?"  (Great.  Now we'd added ANOTHER English language into the mix.)

As if poor Aidan hadn't made himself clear.

"Hot or cold?"  a friend continued.

Hot.

As in chips.

Andrew poses for his biggest fan!

The disgusted look on Aidan's face by the end of this exchange was plain to interpret.

Was he not making himself clear?

Was Mommy going to be needing medication?

Can we really call ourselves multilingual when we can't even understand eachother in English?!

Odd Aussie Customs: Sooks and Socks

For the record, sook is actually a word.  A sook is someone who sulks.  Obviously. 

In New Zealand and Australia that is.  Apparently derived from old English/Scottish.  In the midwestern U.S, it is apparently used to call cows in from pasture.  Whatever.

Picture found next to the word 'sook' in the dictionary!

Amazing what you pick up at Friday morning tea.  (Amazing that folks are actually reading my blog, especially given my lackadaisical writing habits lately.  For you, I chose to do this today rather than clean the fridge and bathrooms as planned.  A hardship, I know.)

The other English/Aussie terms that are tough for an American to come to terms with mostly have to do with articles of clothing and car parts.  (A robot, for all you South Africans, is obviously just a secret code you people have to identify eachother.  The rest of us call them traffic lights.) 

Although she can be a love too!   (Look at that view!)

A bonnet is the hood of a car, not something to put on a baby's head.  A boot is the trunk of a car, not...well you get the point.  But we HAVE had to point and pantomime to learn that a tow-bar is a hitch and a float is a trailer. 

A ute is a pick-up.  Apparently not invented by Ford after all, just enlarged and Americanized.  (IF that is a word, it HAS to be spelled with a zee - not a zed - and certainly not with an s.)  You aren't a true Aussie unless you own a ute.  And yes, here in Queensland you can tie your dogs - mostly cattle dogs, sheep dogs and Staffies -  in the back.  Although new seatbelt laws prohibit you from doing the same with your children. 

Staffies are pit bulls.  No matter what you call 'em.   But I'm not saying that to the bloke in the ute with the "Fuck Off.  We're Full." sticker stuck on the back!

We've already been through the bathing suit, bathing costume, togs and cossie fiasco.  http://twintensity.blogspot.com/2011/05/bathing-whats.html

Aidan proving that the word 'sook' is gender neutral.

Jumpers are sweatshirts.  Tennies are sneakers.  Sports articles are different too, but somehow self-explanatory.   I believe they call sweatpants 'joggers?'   Or perhaps those are tennies too.  Hmm.  It seems that the same rules for understanding a foreign language apply to learning Aussie English.  Listen to it in context and make an educated guess.

Also realise that Australia is the only place in the world where grown men have no problem abbreviating long words into cute-sounding abbreviations.  Chrissy for Christmas.  Mossie for Mosquito.  Maybe because they've grown up in places like Toowoomba and Indooropilly that sound like Disney-Land amusement parks anywhere else.

Luke and Padme flanked by two "Ritter"

Important to remember that a cooler - to hold your beer, preferably Australian - is an Esky. 

Obviously.

Football is either soccer, rugby, Australian rules or, in last place, that woosy game the Americans play with padding.  But you call it footy.  And still sound like a man.  As in ' Have you got an esky for the footy tomorrow, mate?' 

Rugby is either league or union.  I believe the league is the one I like, lighter builds, more like touch-football.  Union are the guys with no necks.  Who play other guys with no necks from South Africa and New Zealand for some trophy noone else in the rest of the world has ever heard of.  Not to belittle it.  It's big.  Just tucked into the lower right hand corner of the map.

Rugby cool with or without the proper footwear.

I believe I might be getting the hang of it!

Enough to correct the twins when they come home from school sounding out B...B...B... cookie!  (Biscuit in English, Bikkie in Aussie - as in "Throw some bikkies in the esky for the footy, mate.)
Or L...L...L...candy!  (Lolly)

I gotta love a country that not only calls McDonald's "Mackers" but uses the abbreviated form in it's advertisements.  When in Oz.

Aidan pitches.

So that the vocabulary isn't at all as difficult to accept as this thing with the socks.

First off, you can STILL spot my boys as the only ones wearing socks with their sandals.  Honestly, I am trying to break them of the habit.  Secondly, you can spot them as the only ones WEARING sandals, with or without socks.  Barefoot is best, saves loads on footwear too. 

This winter I saw a barefoot teenager shopping with his mother.  Who was wearing Uggs.  With shorts.  Not only do we have the climate you can do that in - winter boots for cold toes at the same time your hot-blooded teenager is running around half-naked, but we have the attitude for it too.  Whatever.  They're your feet.

A bit nippy for all but the German-blooded!

I love it here.

The only thing the German in me absolutely, positively cannot deal with is the kids running around in their socks.  Outdoors.  Playing footy.  Of any variety.  Put on shoes or take off the socks.  It's so simple. 

Also apparently an outrageous request.

Noone else gets it.  What's the big deal?  Their feet are a bit chilly maybe.  (THEN PUT ON THE SHOES!)  Once again, we have that rare climate where one COULD run around in socks - grass is dry, dirt is dry, it's fairly warm.  The snakes and spiders not half as prevalent in the suburbs as one has been led to believe.

Matthew swings.

If you ran around in socks in Germany you'd end up with mud.

So that my poor kids are the only ones barefoot while the Aussie kids have socks on.  Honestly, who needs to add that to the laundry pile?  Buying new ones every week just isn't an option for this all-too frugal German mindset.

Call me a sook.  A sook about socks.  And I still love it here.

Zed

The kids at school still find me awfully funny, but I'm not sure they actually trust anything I am trying to teach them.

After the seasons and number of days in the year fiasco last month (still to be posted - turns out the seasons in Australia don't start on the same day as the rest of the world and um, yeah, there are 365 NOT 356 days in the year ANYWHERE on the globe!) the school is still letting me come in and volunteer in the classrooms.

Must be desperate for volunteers!

Yesterday was fun though.  I get to do writing with Andrew's 3/4 class.  The kids really inspired me with their fantastically imaginative descriptions of an ancient castle sitting in the middle of a misty lake.  (And yes, I had trouble writing that sentence after all the more evocative descriptions I read yesterday.)

I have definitely got to pick Sophie's mind for some of her stories.  Tyla too.  I'm thinking of a book of childrens' stories about the floods last year.

Then there's the poetry.  I'm sure it comes as no surprise to anyone in my former writers' group that the kids are way better at it than I ever was.  Never mind that they are supposed to be writing in complete sentences.  Correcting Samantha's free flow of words would have destroyed it entirely.  Beautiful.  She would have gotten an "F" in Germany - not a complete sentence on the page.  Here, we figure we'll work on the sentences later and recognise the thoughts and flow.  Work in progress and all that!

Spelling, for the most part, was not the strong point.  I helped the best I could.  (I know now, for instance that 'gray' is spelled 'grey'.)

When Connor asked me to spell 'frozen' though, we hit the latest snag.  He had the F and R so I continued with O and Z.  He looked at me as if I came from another planet.  Which, I guess I do.

Zee?  ZEE?  WHAT THE HECK IS THIS LADY TALKING ABOUT?!

Andrew, one row back, was probably snickering his little butt off - it's a running battle in our house and has been ever since Boeblingen English Playgroup in Germany.  (You have never seen the alphabet song become such a battleground, the Americans and - well, the rest of the English-speaking world - belting out their versions of that final letter at top decibel!  I have never been too committed to Americanisations - but fondly remember my mother and father battling it out laughingly over that same letter.  I choose to continue the struggle for the sheer fun and history of it.)

By the time I corrected myself to ZED, little Connor had convinced himself it was spelled with an S anyway.  Although I DO admit to mixing up Zed and S on a regular basis - Americanization, for example  (Is that even a word?!),  I am fairly certain that frozen is spelled with a zee.

Connor chose to look it up in the dictionary.

Which I like to think means that I am teaching the kids something after all!

Sooky

It's only recently that I've realised the twins no longer understand German. 
What's odd about this is that I continue to reprimand them in German and they continue to quiet down and behave when I do so.

Turns out noone is listening to what I say anyway.

They just know enough to keep quiet when I start yelling in any language.

Odd though that they follow directions in German too.  Probably just because when I'm screaming "ins Bett.  JETZT!" they already know the safest thing to do is to crawl into bed and be quiet, no matter WHAT it is I'm saying.

They still use some German verbs though.  Mostly when announcing their intentions to go to the bathroom. 

And, as wrong as I think it is to turn German into my language of fear and punishment, well frankly, I can't think of a better language for instilling fear and punishment.

You should have seen the look on the face of the women sitting in front of us at the Medieval Festival a few months ago when I broke out with   "Faire Attention!  Muss das sein!  You people are going to fall off the bleachers."  Yes, three languages at once.  Not one of which my kids probably paid any attention too.

Then I promptly forgot how to ask for the time in English and asked Damon "Kile ou genyen?"  which is Haitian Creole for  "Qui L'heure" or however it is the French ask for the time.

Multilingual maybe.  But still very few people who will understand me!

And speaking all these languages at home - I use "Je suis tres fatige" on a regular basis - just makes me realize that noone is listening to me anyway no matter WHAT language I speak.

At least I amuse myself.  J'adore francais.

We're also getting a big kick out of being multilingual in English.  Damon's "winching" was topped this week by Andrew patiently explaining a new word to us all over dinner.

Ryan was being 'sooky', he told us.  Sooky?  Yeah, he assured us, it means pouty.

Pouty? Sooky?  I thought about the accent, I thought about how an Australian would say it. And yes, I am fairly certain that 'sooky' is actually spelled 'sulky'!

Although I can totally see Aidan and Matthew's Scottish prep school aide pronouncing it 'sooky' as well.

Last week I had to write a note to Aidan's speech therapist asking her if she really thought he had a problem pronouncing his "o's" - as in dog and hog - because we found him quite clear and were wondering if it might just be an American accent.  Pronounce 'dog' the way a person who might pronounce 'sulky' as 'sooky' might and you'll be able to see the confusion!

Andrew still gets a German accent when giving a presentation in front of the class.  Just like his Opa.

And it's been suggested that a few of the Prep kids might be intimidated by me because they think I am famous.  You know, that glamorous Hollywood accent!

Last week Damon noticed the twins were singing in Spanish.  Shakira for 45 minutes on the way to riding on Saturdays.  Each way.

And the twins answer "ling" when I catch them doing something they shouldn't be doing and ask them what it is.  "Ling" is Chinese for 'zero' but I'll take it.

Am I raising my kids bilingually?  Heck - they're trilingual in ENGLISH alone!

And they are bright enough to ignore me in just about any language I throw at them!

Your Family Speaks WHAT Language at Home?!

German pride last June 2010 during the World Cup Soccer  (The night Germany won, the USA tied England and I believe Australia won as well! )

I remember this time in Frankfurt, when my parents were visiting us from the U.S.A. 

After taking our orders the waitress finally worked up the courage to ask what was on her mind.

"Where ARE you people from?"  she asked.  (Or would have if she spoke English.)

My Dad is a native German speaker, originally from East Germany, who has spent the last thirty odd years in the USA picking up an American flavour to his German.  My Mom studied German at school, to the point where she sounds native European anyway,  possibly Swedish.  Because no AMERICANS can speak German that well!  Damon has picked up enough of the southern dialect to have politer folks ask him if he is Dutch.  Because, once again, no AMERICAN would speak German that well.  I speak German fluently, and with enough native touch - it WAS my first language, after all - to confuse the heck out of people.  Another region perhaps?  Ryan's German was pretty good.  The twins were only two but speaking a mix of English and Schwabisch, the southern German dialect Germans down there like to consider German but Germans anywhere else - like in Frankfurt - refuse to understand. 

Andrew tries ou the bucking bronco at the Dayboro Rodeo on May 1, 2011

And Andrew had that really thick southern dialect down pat.

So that we're pretty used to sounding like a hodge-podge of foreigners thrown haphazardly together for a convention.

Not that our nuclear family is going to sound any LESS like a multi-national corporation when we speak English than when we speak German.

Cowgirls, Aussie-style.  With a salute to that OTHER cowgirl country.

I think it's been pretty well-established that Damon and I come from North America anyway.  Canada perhaps.  Because Americans don't tend to wander this far away from their military bases.   The kids are losing their German accents - which noone here ever picked up on since they assumed it was American.  Andrew finally sounds American now.  Ryan too.

And although the speech therapist has told us she thought Aidan and Matthew had a German accent rather than a speech impediment, we NOW have problems differentiating their 5-year old errors from their AUSSIE accents.  Was that an R or a W?  Or just an accent? The twins can count to thirty.  Except they pronounce it thewty.  Very carefully.  A result of the speech therapist and lots of work to come up with an accent that sounds like a speech impediment to a North American.

Meaning that the kids pronounce Justine Bieber, Justin Biebah.  And Usher, Ushah.  And we all have to pronounce the neighbouring town of Kallangur as Kallangah in order for anyone else to know what the heck we are talking about.

Aidan and Matthew are yelling at me because their girlfriend's name in Saphyre.  Pronounced Saphiah unless I want to be accused of mocking them.

And I still have one friend - who sounds like she comes out of a Dickens novel herself, or at the very least the Broadway version of Les Miserables (hmmm...why all those British accents for a French novel?!) - who still laughs out loud everytime she hears me say 'tomato.'  Or coffee for that matter.  Which I apparently pronounce KAFFEE.

So that I have taken to speaking in my American accent MOST of the time, but changing little bits and pieces here and there just so that people will understand me.  And so I don't get mocked.

(Do you call this a mobil phone, I asked at the phone store when we first got here.  Uh yeah, we call a mobil phone a mobil phone, I got as a reply.  Smart -ass.  Because it's called a cell phone in the USA and a Handy in Germany.  So pardon ME for asking.)

Ms.  Dance was taking roll call before the Prep Class field trip a while back.  Heah.  Heah.  Heah.  All down the line.  Until they got to me.  Would I sound funny if I said 'Heah.' too?  And so I decided to go with "here" in my native American.  All of which prompted a round of HERRRRRE'S when I was done.

The kids at school have a running joke where they get me to pronounce words they know I can't say - words like 'How are you?'   Who knew I sounded like such a cowboy?!

Hmm.  The working cowboys we saw in Arizona DID manage to stay ON the bucking broncos.  However, the weekend cowboys in Dayboro sure looked a heck of a lot better OFF of them!

I remember the first accent I ever noticed.  It was a beautiful woman speaking German when I was a child in Germany.  Turns out she was Spanish.  And I thought of how romantic it would be to have an accent too.

Over thirty years later I heard myself on my answering machine in Germany.  And realised I LIKED my accent.  And that it WAS romantic.  (My friends in France supposedly liked my accent there too.  And I remember Sarah telling me, in Haiti, that I was the first American she'd ever met who spoke Creole with a German accent!)

It's hard for me to believe that this flat, North-American twang is actually exotic down here.  Young girls at the mall telling me how much they love it.

My OWN cowboy, American AND Aussie!

Do I even HAVE a native language?

And what will the kids sound like in another year or two?

And does it matter?

All that matters is that we are HEAH now.  And loving it in any language.  Or accent.

Bathing WHAT'S?!

July 28, 2010 in Altdorf.  High summer in the Northern Hemisphere, in case any of you were in doubt.

So Liesel calls me last May to tell me we should bring costumes when we come over.  It being Germany in May, with the kids still wearing their winter coats to school, I clarify that she means BATHING costumes and not the dress-up funny for make-believe kind.

"Oh silly."  says Liesel.  "You'll have to learn to speak proper English if you're planning to move to Australia." 

I then call Lynn-Anne to tell her about the costumes.  "You mean BATHING costumes, right?" she asks.  Because, although she is, like Liesel, from a PROPER English-speaking country....South Africa IS a Commonwealth Nation after all - well, it IS May in Germany and none of us have put away the winter coats yet.

Note the wool sweaters.  Some folks also had gloves.  On July 28.

Anita has spent enough time with Americans to know what I mean when I tell her about the bathing suits.  If an American mentions anything about costumes we are talking either about Halloween or about formal attire.

So that, in addition to being grilled on rugby and cricket, and telling me what I've mean missing out on by NOT being a member of a Commonwealth Nation (cricket and rugby matches, apparently, as well as the ability to drink tea properly) my friends had prepared me for the whole bathing costume jargon over here in Australia.

Problem is they call them 'togs' over here.  In Queensland anyway.  Which wasn't too much of a problem since by now we had realised that we were in fact AT LEAST bi or tr-lingual - and this just in regards to our ENGLISH.  We know American English, British English and Aussie English - which is often divided into Queensland versus New South Wales dialects.

So that it is nice to see the bathing APPAREL hanging underneath the sale sign for 'togs.'  And also to have friends who will clarify and call them 'bathing togs' for those of us non-native Aussie English speakers.

Looking good, no matter WHAT you call 'em!

Until Easter Sunday when Ryan and I were sitting on the beach watching a girl her age walk by with her father.  I didn't realise we were staring - the girl was only wearing briefs and no top and I was wondering if they were European - when the father laughed and said something about ...blah blah garble garble hah hah hah.

I laughed too but had no idea what he was talking about. 

So Ryan, obviously adapting to the native tongue faster than her Mum, turns to me and asks 'what are cosies?'  Cosies?  Turns out the man was explaining to us that his daughter had forgotten her cosies.

No way, man.  To borrow an American expression.  YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!  I've got bathing suits, bathing costumes AND bathing togs...and now you throw ANOTHER one at me?! 

Autumn in Queensland.  YAY ME!

OH YES!  I know enough Australian English by now to pick that up on THAT abbreviation.

And that, my friends, is how you say bathing suit/costume/togs in New South Wales.

Making us truly multi-lingual even in what we thought was our native tongue.

Big Horse

The school principal came up to me after the monthly Parents' and Citizens' meeting the other night. (Notice how calmly I wrote that, when all I want to do is scream ''MONTHLY MEETING. MONTHLY MEETING.'' Oops, guess I shouted after all!)

She mentioned how well Andrew's teacher said he was doing in class. And then she laughed. Turns out he had diligently – and correctly, I believe – spelled the words 'big horse' when the word his teacher had been looking for – and trying to pronounce!- was 'because.'

''Having your kids around will force us to work on our pronunciation.'' she joked.

THEIR pronunciation?! Noone has noticed the kids' strong German accent because of their mild American one. If they DO notice something odd, they assume we are Canadian! And I realize that the most English the kids have heard comes from a mix of English, Irish, South Africans, Americans with one New Zealander thrown in for good measure. I think its the English who pronounce 'big horse' like the Australian 'because.' Bighorse it isn't the Americans!

We've had some other doozies as well. You've gotta see the look on some folks faces when we ask them to repeat basic English to native English speakers! Who knew learning your own language all over again could be so amusing?! The other day in the pool (!!!!!) the only other resident in our community so far asked how we were managing without a phone. (It's why I haven't called, honest!) When I told him that we had been to Telstra, the phone company, that morning, he suggested going with something else he called ''Wallace.'' Bighorse we couldn't wait for Telstra. Then he gave me a really dumb look – the same look I got when I didn't know what a 'nappy' was 8 years ago in France – when I asked him whether you spelled it ''Wallace'' or ''Wallis.'' Here I thought I was being clever. Here he is telling me to go with WIRELESS. Oh. Duh.

Spelling's a good one too. Should we tell them that they misspelled the billboard for their media centre?! How DOES one spell enrolment? And would I go somewhere to enquire or inquire about that?! As if reading German for 7 years wasn't enough to destroy my grasp of written English!

I'm still not sure how to pronounce '' Milo'' either. But I do know at least two different ways to prepare it – one with hot water to dissolve the Milo and one with cold milk only so that the chunks float on the milk – both methods having their proponents apparently. And I know now – after having people back away from me when I asked, as if whatever brain disease I had was catching – that it is NOT chocolate milk.

Right-o, mate.