Tag Archives: language

Here we go…

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The school year has started. At least for my son it has. Lana starts tomorrow.

It’s his second day and he has homework. School here is no joke. The Portuguese curriculum is taken very seriously, and on top of that he is expected to also keep up with his English.

I will be very honest. I love the start of the school year. I always have, both as a student as well as a teacher. But now as a mom, seeing it through my son’s eyes I can see why some kids prefer summer to school. Some kids like my son.

To begin with, I think he’s exhausted. Having to wake up early is easy for him, but getting up early and getting dressed, fed, organized and out the door is for the birds. Then, even though he enjoys his after school activities, getting them done and still having the energy to do his homework can be a challenge. This is where I come in. I can not complain. I get to be a stay at home mom. I can focus on my kids, and them alone. But I would be telling a lie if I said I loved constantly redirecting/motivating my son to complete his work. Maybe if it were in his native language it would be more ‘fun’, but alas we gave him the ‘opportunity’ to learn Portuguese. And he has done beautifully. In his second year he is doing all the same work as his native language peers. That’s a tremendous accomplishment. But it continues to be a challenge.

I just need to keep reminding myself what a great job he’s done and that hard work accompanies great success.

..and then she asked me to buy her a rubber

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On my birthday, Lana came home with a card that she had made at school. It was a very cute card with a picture of her & me inside. The thing that struck me was that on the front was written, “Happy Birthday Mum.” I could however make out that she had first written mom, but that it had been erased with MUM written over it.

Since my birthday was in February, she had only been “exposed” to Australian kids for a month. This surely was not enough time for her language to be corrupted influenced by her peers. Well, it ends up that she had made me the card and her little friend I.L. in seeing that she had misspelled ‘mom’ erased it and ‘correctly’ wrote out mum. At that moment I knew Lana & I needed to have a mother to daughter chat. I explained to her that I liked her saying ‘pardon’, rather than ‘why’ and that I could accept her calling ketchup, ‘tomatoe sauce’, but that I drew the line at mum. I told her (and her father who quickly saw this as a weak spot) that no matter where we were living, that I would always be her MOM!

A few weeks later, we were in a very cute stationery shop. As I looked around, Sophia approached me and asked me if I would buy her a rubber. My immediate response was, “Hell no! You’re six,” but as the words came to me, I saw she was holding up a cute little pig eraser.  I’ve had to capitulate and allow her to use that word as it’s difficult to explain to a six year old why that word does not sound right to this mom’s ear when spoken by a child.

Since our arrival in Sydney, all of us have had our language impacted by this experience. Just yesterday in LAX I was trying to sort out where to retrieve my pram. After being asked what a pram was I said, “You know a push chair.” It was only on my third try that I remembered that it’s called a stroller.

Our neighbor and Lana collaborated on some videos that highlight some of the differences between our languages: clothes, school words & school words 2.  (I apologize for how quickly they fly through the reading of words, but I can only load up short videos.)

I am not sure if you noticed that ‘er’ at the end of words sounds like, “ah”. For example, rubber is pronounced /rubbah/. The weekend after my friend and fellow American Jenny pointed that out to me, Lana had September as one of her spelling words. As she read them over I almost dropped the plate I was holding when she pronounced it /septembah/. When I screamed that she was turning into an Aussie she quickly responded, “Would you prefer I say SeptmebER?” It’s so interesting to see how aware she is not only of her speech, but mine as well. She is always the one who notices when I say Gar-ahge or when I offer the kids TomAtoe sauce.

Rather than fight the ‘Australianization’ of my kids English, it’s something we chuckle about. Yet once when we were discussing my hesitating to use Australian English she came backat me with something I told her in Portugal. “When you’re in another country you should respect the native language, by trying to use it.” I guess she got me there.