A year of language

Our eldest son is now 2 years and 2 months old and has suddenly burst into speech! Every day there are new words and phrases in both English and Portuguese. I decided to capture some of these as it really is amazing to hear your little person speak.

Just before his second birthday he said his first two word sentence and since then he´s increased his vocabulary daily and has even begun to speak in his second language (which is mostly thanks to nursery). We went to an aquarium and he was in his element running around all the displays looking at all the different sea creatures. When we came to the tunnel with the turtles (still his favorite animal) he was just so excited and shouted "bye bye turtle" probably around 300 times! Priceless!

Now is the moment to expose him to language and help him to develop his language (yes we each have our own and its a very personal journey).

I am watching him work out word order. As he has two languages he knows that sometimes the noun comes before the adjective but sometimes it´s the other way around. He ofter asks me by saying something like... "brother baby, baby brother". I then give him the example in English "baby brother" and he goes off repeating it several times.

Each week I will add a word, sentence or phrase (more for my benefit than anyone elses)! I hope you enjoy his quirky little ways :)

Week 1: "Tanta coisa" (so many things). After overhearing his teacher speaking to one of the girls in his class saying she had so many things in her hands he repeated "tanta coisa". They were very excited at nursery as it was the first thing he had said and they said it was just so natural. For the whole afternoon while he played at home he repeated the phase. Now, a few weeks later he looks at me and says "mummy, tanta coisa" with a big grin on his face!

Week 2: "Name puppy Barney". For months he has been calling our dog "puppy". Every day my husband says to him ´your puppy´s name is Barney´. Today he was in the back of the car and said "mummy, name puppy Barney". When he said it to my husband later on he was driven to emotion that his son could finally say the dog´s name!

Week 3: "ohhh, car coming". I am guilty of this phrase! I´m very intent on teaching him road safety and every time we go for a walk I make sure he stops and comes to me when a car is coming. He has to hold my hand then we wait until the car has passed and he can walk alone again. Tonight as we were driving home, he was looking out the window and with every car coming in our direction said "oooh, car coming". I admit is was hilarious as it was rush hour so you can imagine the amount of cars on the road!

Week 4: "baby read, ready baby" after finishing a book he wants to share it with his brother and gives him the book while he gets another one to read - very cute!

Week 5: "butterfly cry, cloud cry, raining" after a week of illness in our house and quite a bit of TV downtime, this phrase appeared. It was his interpretation of a clip from Pocoyo (his new favorite cartoon).

Week 6: "Help me, mummy" this week´s phrase came from tidy up time. Every day I ask the boys to help me tidy up the toys. One evening this week I was preparing dinner and asked my son to start tidying up. After a minute he came up to me pulling me towards the toys so I asked him what he needed to which he replied ´help me mummy´ (which came out a bit more like "´elp me, mummy"!

Week 7: "down up" or "get up, down" Every time he sees someone get up or down or leave the table we have some variation of up/down get up/down. I think hes working out which is up and which is down!

Week 8: "Give it to you" meaning give it to ME! Love this one so much hope it lasts a while.

Week 9: "Mummy funny" meaning mummy´s laughing

Week 10: "Put it off" meaning take it off.

Week 11: "Not, no way" Basically any form of NO comes in this beautiful sentence!

Week 12: "Dinosaur coming" any noise has become a dinosaur coming in our house!

Week 13: "play wif Barney" this is said frequently throughout the day as he love to play in the garden with our dog Barney.

Week 14: "Sing the Song mummy" If he´s tired he asks for the song which is a lullaby I hum when putting the baby to bed which has now become the general cue to sleep in our house. (another of my favorites)!

Bilingualism update

Our little man is one now and has begun to make sounds that sound like words. 

After the normal dada's and mama's we've had a series of English words such as more, door, and water. He also makes a couple of English animal sounds (horse, dog, sheep).

We spent a few weeks in England over Christmas and I noticed a new understanding of the English language from him. He began to understand a few simple commands or words in a sentence and often repeated a sound that resembled the word we were using. When we returned to Brazil I noticed he was understanding well in English but not in Portuguese. He seemed aware that there were two languages being used but he responded only to English. Now we have been back several weeks I see he is beginning to understand some Portuguese too. When we  are out people always talk to him and he seems to understand when they say bye.

As we only speak English with him at home we expected him to speak English first. So far he is meeting our expectations and his language development doesn't seem less than monolingual children of the same age.

We are prepared for his language development to be slower than his peers but maybe we will see it only in Portuguese. I'm also sure we will see a big difference when he begins nursery later this year where he will be surrounded by Portuguese and will learn quickly that he must use that language to be understood.

Being Bilingual

For me and my husband it’s been a tough journey to acquire a new language. When deciding on how to introduce our son to both our languages we had a great many conversations, read plenty and spoke to other families in similar situations.

We finally decided that we would both speak to him in English. There are several reasons for this. 

First when deciding to speak any other language with your child it is important to be consistent. There have been studies that revealed a link to dyslexia in children who had a parent who spoke more than one language with them when they were small. Second, we want him to speak both languages well and for this we believe he needs a relaxed environment where he can speak English as everywhere else he will have to speak Portuguese. We also want him to feel supported in his language learning and if we both use English with him he will be able to ask either of us for help. I also read some blogs from people where one parent speaks a different language. In many cases their child understands both languages but responds only in the dominant language. Also when they have their clingy phase with one of the parents the language is a key factor in this too, distancing or isolating the parent who speaks another language.

So these are our reasons for deciding to go forward with English at home. It was not a choice we took lightly and it has been a huge decision for my husband to make as it is not his first language. It was entirely his choice as to which language he would speak with his son as communication is a very intimate and important part of being a parent.

Our language journey began when I was pregnant. Our boy moved more when I spoke English and we both spoke, read and sang to him in English throughout the pregnancy. When he was several weeks old he would cry when I spoke Portuguese and was quiet and content when he could hear English being spoken. Now he is bigger he is very interested when people speak to him in Portuguese or when I speak it when we are out. He pays close attention to people’s mouth when they speak. When we are at home he looks to us for language. We tell him the names of his toys and the animals and he has begun to try sounds for certain things such as the dog’s name.

We now wait excitedly to see how his language development will progress and how he will dominate the two languages.

Any tips, ideas or stories from your own experiences would be great so do leave a comment below.