Speaking in Tongues: Raising Bilingual Children

Hi Meltingpot Readers,

I hope everyone who had a holiday to celebrate this past weekend had a wonderful one. We did, but there was so much celebrating going on, I almost forgot it was Easter. We were celebrating my parents' retirement, my younger son's first Little League baseball game and my sister's birthday. And somewhere within all of that revelry, el esposo and I were hosting old friends whom we haven't seen for over five years. And that's what I want to talk about.

Imagine this scene, dear readers. Our friends who came to visit are both ethnically Chinese. The wife was born in Hong Kong and came to the United States with her family as a young girl. We met in New York City when we worked at the same magazine. Her husband, also Chinese, was born in France, but his mother is Spanish and his father is French. So the husband's first language is French, but he also speaks Spanish and Mandarin Chinese. They have two kids.

Because I love an excuse to entertain, we also invited another family over to eat with us. In this family, the father is German and Spanish, but raised in Madrid. Mom is Malaysian. They have two kids.

So, here you have a gathering of six kids, six adults and babygirl. One parent speaks to his children in French. One parent speaks to her kids in Cantonese. Two parents speak to the kids in Spanish. And two parents speak to their kids in English. And the kids, bless their multilingual hearts, respond in the proper language to the proper person. It was truly amazing to witness. And it was loud!

Us parents, we were having a great time discussing our own trials and tribulations trying to raise our children bilingually, or in some cases, tri-lingually. Every family had their own system but it all seemed to work. Our Chinese friends only allow their kids to watch TV in either Chinese or French. And both kids attend a French immersion school. El esposo has never spoken a word of English to our kids. Ever. Our German/Spanish friend initially spoke Spanish to his son on one day and then the next he would switch to German. That got old fast, so he quickly decided on Spanish and has been consistent every since. At the end of the day, everyone decided that consistency in whatever method one chooses, is the most important element of successfully raising bilingual kids.

What do you think? What's your secret to teaching your kids a second/third language?

I'm so listening. And in the meantime, here are some links to websites that might have some more answers.

Spanglish Baby
Growing Up Global
InCulture Parent


Peace!

Music Monday: "Tell Me if You're with Me or Against Me"

Hi Meltingpot Readers,

The whirlwind of the holidays has caught up with me. Every year I think I'm going to get better at planning and preparing. Every year I think I'm going to have a party, make dozens of cookies (without flour ), get my holiday cards sent before December 15 and look like Martha Stewart in the process. Instead, my house is devoid of any Christmas cheer, my oven is on the fritz and ask me if I've even addressed a single envelope.

But, I'm not complaining. Today in the Kinky Gazpacho household, we start making Christmas. We're going shopping. I decided if the oven doesn't work, we'll make rice krispie treats (no wheat there) and I'll have the kids address the envelopes. Whew. But that means I don't have much time to write, so I'm leaving you instead with a video of one of my favorite Spanish songs. Thanks to el esposo, I actually figured out the name of the artist. The name of the song is Kamikaze and the singer is Amaral. Imagine me listening to this song to keep me energized through the madness.

I hope you like it.




Do you have a go-to song to keep you sane when things get hectic. Please share!

I'm totally listening.

Peace!

Losing My Spanish

Hola Meltingpot Readers,

I have a confession to make. I'm losing my Spanish. Okay, let's be real, I've gone beyond losing and feel like I'm on the verge of lost. It's been two years since we've been to Spain, el esposo and I speak English together and I don't have any close friends who are Spanish dominant. Ay de mi!

I've always considered myself a lover of languages and imagined I'd be trilingual by now, living abroad, traveling at a moment's notice, but hey, real life got in the way. But still, there's no reason I can't live out my language fantasies. But just like wanting washboard abs, maintaining one's dominance over a foreign language requires constant practice and I've been a little floja these last two years. And what's worse, my boys have been too (every since we took them out of the Spanish immersion school).

So, those of you who know me, know I'm not going to watch the Spanish wash out of me without a fight. My fluency is dormant, not gone, so I'm going on a quest to get it back and I'm bringing my boys with me. Here's what we're doing in the Kinky Gazpacho family these days:

1. All meal times, even when el esposo is not here, are Spanish only. We started this new rule on the first day of school. It's hard to make the change, but I figure it's the only way to have a guaranteed Spanish conversation every day. It forces us to charlar en espanol using everyday language and grammar constructions that are kicking my butt. But it's helpful. And the best part, as babygirl is always in the room with us, she's getting to hear a lot of Spanish. (FYI, el esposo only speaks to the kids in Spanish and they respond in Spanish.)

2. Since I'm now spending a lot of time in the house with a baby in my lap, I end up watching way more television than I have in the past. So, I'm making myself switch over to Univision or Telemundo whenever I can and just listen. One, I get to hear several different accents and two, I'm improving my oral comprehension.

3.And finally, crazy as it sounds. I'm going to read a novel in Spanish. Yes, I'm going to reach back into my stash of Spanish novels from college and see just how bad, er I mean how challenged I really am. I'm a little wary because I know I'll be frustrated reading with a dictionary at my side, but I'm going to do it and el esposo is going to ask me about what I've read. Oh, wait, I just remembered, I have a new collection of the Best Short Stories by Spanish authors. I think I'll read that instead.

So, there you have it people, my new Spanish regimen. We're planning on being in Spain this summer, so there's that motivation to succeed. Do you have any other suggestions for me and my boys? What do you do with your families to maintain the 'other' language? Estoy escuchando.

Peace!

Meltingpot Musings -- The Language of Belize

Hi Meltingpot Readers,

Recently I had a passing conversation with a beautiful man from Belize named Armando. I'll probably never see him again, but something he said captured my imagination. He told me, speaking with a slight accent, that the languages of Belize were, English, Spanish, Creole and Mayan. I always thought Belize was only an English speaking country, the only English speaking country in Central America, in fact. Honestly, I don't know that much about Belize, but when I lived in New York City I met quite a few expats from the country and they all spoke English exclusively. They often joked that people expected them to speak Spanish and they always had to disappoint.

Armando changed that perception for me. When chatting in Spanish, his accent sounded native even though his fluency was a little dicey. But still.

Tell me Meltingpot readers, what do you know about the language of Belize? I'd like to know more. Especially about the creole. I've always wondered if a Spanish/African/English creole language existed and if so, where.

I'm listening.

Peace!

What! Papi Speaks English?

Meltingpot readers,

The gig is up in our Kinky Gazpacho household. Not so long ago, our nine-year old looked me straight in the eye and asked, "How come Papi can understand you when you speak English but not us?" And I knew right then, that it was all over. Not long after that I heard my son tell his grandfather, "Papi speaks English but we're not allowed to speak to him in English. We have to speak to him in Spanish. That's the rule."

The way he said it, made El esposo and I sound like language Nazis. Like we'd punish them with a hard smack with a ruler if they dared to utter a word of English to their dad.

Now we slip into that territory where the children know Papi speaks English so speaking Spanish is no longer a necessity, it's something that (ugh) we're making them do. And kids don't often embrace those activities billed as "for their own good." At least my kids don't. (Nose picking? Running down the stairs? Hitting big brother? It's all fair game for my boys.) They still pretty much only appreciate, fast, easy and fun. They're kids so I get that, but still I want them to learn their father's language. Add to this awful development that we've pulled them out of the Spanish Immersion school they'd been attending. Now they are students at a delightful, yet monolingual, private school closer to home. Spanish is taught, but only once a week and let's face it, my kids could be teaching that class. In fact, the Spanish teacher at the school -- a wonderful woman from Costa Rica -- has designated both of my boys to be her special helper in the classroom. My older son is in charge of quizzing his classmates!

Have I doomed my babies to a single-language life? I swear I can already hear them slacking off in their sentence construction and the vocabulary is going very Spanglish. Yikes. Short of moving to Spain for a year, what do you all suggest to keep their Spanish alive and kicking? To keep them motivated to learn and love the language. I'd love to hear your ideas, especially as the kids get older and they want to communicate more complex thoughts and they might not have the vocabulary to express themselves.

Estoy escuchando. I'm listening.

Peace!

It's Not What You Say, It's How You Say It...(In English or Spanish)

When I met el esposo, I was living in Spain, trying to perfect my Spanish. I was taking classes at the famed Universidad de Salamanca, situated in a region of Spain known for its absolutely perfect Castillian Spanish. When my Spanish classmates found out I had befriended this guy from the South of Spain they warned me that he would be a bad influence. "Why?" I wondered. And they all responded that they don't speak properly in the south of Spain. They made it sound like southern Spaniards weren't very educated and had a horrible grasp of proper Spanish.

Obviously I didn't pay attention to the warnings because I married my Southern Spanish friend and have allowed him to help me with my Spanish for the last 15 years, but it is an interesting situation. El esposo always bristles when people from the north of Spain (and elsewhere outside of Spain as well) imply that southern Spaniards don't know how to speak proper Spanish. He claims that grammatically, they speak correctly but their accents, and the way they pronounce certain words and the speed at which they talk (really fast) makes them targets for the rest of Spain to mock. Kind of like southerners in the United States.

I mean who doesn't hear a Southern accent and almost automatically some stereotype jumps to mind. Either of Scarlett O' Hara, or the KKK, or at the very least, someone who sits on a porch and sips sweet tea from time to time. Of course these are stereotypes, but I would feel safe to say that many people with strong southern accents in the United States, if they go North for a job or schooling, may feel the need to tone it down in order to be taken seriously. My husband says it is the same here in Spain.

When el esposo went North to go to college, he claims that for the first month the other guys in his dorm, as well as his teachers, just kind of stared at him with confused looks on their faces whenever he opened his mouth. They couldn't understand a word he said. So very quickly he learned to drop his accent and spoke more slowly and got rid of some of the southern slang he'd used all of his life. And he was fine. And of course whenever he comes home he slides right back into his comfortable southern speech. I have asked that when he speaks with our children that he speaks a kind of neutral Spanish as well so they don't have to learn to code switch as they pass in and out of different Spanish speaking situations. And he's okay with that. He loves his language, his southern Spanish language, but he understands the reality our children are living in as well.

So, I'm wondering...The rest of you, do you code switch with your language? Do you speak one way at home and another in public? Is it based on region, culture, comfort? Let's hear it. I'm listening.

Peace!

Just a Link...In Spanglish

Hola,

Whenever I discover a website or blog that speaks to me as mother of color, raising bilingual, bi-cultural, biracial kids in the United States, I get pretty excited.

So, today all I'm doing is posting the link for a website I just stumbled upon called Spanglish Baby:Raising Bilingual Kids .

Based on the title you can probably figure out that it's a website all about raising bilingual Spanish/English kids, but it's so much more. They have a great list of resources of teaching tools, music, books and other websites. In addition, they post excellent stories and articles from a wide variety of parents, experts and mama bloggers and the site is really user-friendly, attractive and fun. It feels like a community and a destination for all of us trying to preserve and/or create a dual-heritage for our kids. Even if you aren't trying to raise Spanish speakers, I think you'll enjoy the information being shared.

Check it out. And while you're at it, what do you think is the hardest part about raising bilingual kids in this country? I'd say, finding places outside your home where your children can practice speaking and/or hearing their "second" language.


Peace/Paz!

When Black People Sing Brown Music

A few days ago, over at Racialicious, there was a conversation going on about White people singing Black music. This phenomenon of Blue-eyed soul -- you know, folks like Justin Timberlake, Joss Stone, and Robin Thicke making R&B hits and dominating the charts of so-called Black music. Is this fair? People wondered. Is this a case of cultural thievery? Does the music industry favor White artists who sing Black music over Black artists singing Black music? There were no clear answers. And here's one more.

If White people must justify and defend their right to sing "Black music" how do you explain Beyonce singing in Spanish? She may be from Texas, but she's no Latina. And yet Beyonce has just released an album with six or seven songs en Espanol. Of course Beyonce is not the only Black singer to cross the language border. Wyclef Jean raps a bit in Spanish with Shakira in "Hips Don't Lie" and Will Smith welcomed us to Miami in Spanish back in 1997.

Are Hispanic people feeling threatened or angry about these "Black Gringos" stealing their language? Or are they feeling respected now that mainstream musicians are trying to woo them in their own language? And White people are singing in Spanish too. It's not just Black artists. And then of course there's the perplexing case of Jennifer Lopez who claims English as her first language, but she just released her first Spanish language album. Where does she fit in this linguistic claims race?

The AP ran a story on this Spanish singing trend, insisting that American artists, regardless of race, are recording in Spanish to increase their fan base. With record/CD sales down, performers need to look to new markets to increase their sales. I'm all for polyglot singers but don't we come back to the question of cultural appropriation when a singer with no real connection to the language uses it for personal gain?

And then there's the point I made previously that for some reason, when singing in Spanish, people just sound better. You can sing the most inane lyrics in Spanish and for some reason they just sound more believable, more romantic and poetic than in English. Am I wrong? Personally I don't think Jennifer Lopez has a voice, but in Spanish she sounds like she really has something to say.

China is a really big market. Will rock stars and rappers start performing in Chinese next? Think about it and let me know.

Hasta La Vista.

BORDERS Patrol

Just a question. Besides the shelves of BORDERS Bookstore, where else in the United States is it legal to segregate based on race and/or color? Better yet, what other institution is bold and/or stupid enough to do so openly?

BORDERS policy of ghettoizing any book written by a Black author -- ranging from street-lit to the works of the great Toni Morrison -- in the African-American Literature corner, harkens back to a time when you could find all the Blacks squashed in the back of the bus. It would be one thing if AA titles were cross-referenced in other sections, but they're not. They are judged not by the content of their contents but by the color of their author's skin.

But this weekend I think I discovered that at the root of it all is just plain old laziness. When asked why two popular memoirs were shelved under "hot fiction," one BORDERS employee sheepishly explained that because BORDERS doesn't have a biography section they just placed them in fiction because these books "are really good stories." Which just leads me to believe that the corporate brass of BORDERS bookstore is really, really lazy (Too lazy to shelve Black authors alphabetically in the section in which they truly belong perhaps), or really, really dumb. And maybe just a tad bit racist? Maybe it is a combination of all three.

Hmmm.

And in Meltingpot Celebrity News...Does anybody else think J.Lo’s new Spanish Language album is a desperate act on Jenny's part to sever her ties with the materialistic mainstream world she has spent the better part of the past decade trying to woo? It worked for Ricky Martin. After he spent all that time Livin' la Vida Loca he had to repent, bow out of the public eye and re-emerge singing solo en Espanol. Does that mean Spanish is a purifying language? Does that mean English is the language of the devil? If Li'l Kim started rapping in Spanish would all her sins be forgiven?

Peace Out!