Language

Yesterday, my four year old was at a swimming pool with her Brazilian grandmother. At one point, her grandmother noticed another child swimming nearby with his family. This child was American and clearly spoke no Portuguese, only English. "Luca," said Iara, "That little boy is American. You should go speak English with him." "I can't," replied Luca, also in Portuguese, "I only speak a little English. I speak Portuguese."

Luca's english is degrading. It's not horrible, it's just younger than her Portuguese now. Funny how the tables can switch completely in six months. When we first arrived, she sounded like a baby in Portuguese and her English was stronger, faster, better. She preferred to speak English. Now she prefers to speak Portuguese.

I look at her - just four years old and already with a lifetime of experiences - and I think of all of those adults I have met who lived outside of the United States before they were five, speaking other languages fluently, and how many of them no longer remember anything other than words and feelings in that other language. Those early years, that early verbal self, no longer exists in their adult minds. And I think, if we had moved here - really moved here - and were planning on staying, then we would now have to begin only speaking English at home or Luca would lose her English.

It's such a funny thing. I am used to thinking of English as the primary and Portuguese as the language I have a responsibility to help make happen. The language that I still don't speak that well. But now I am the minority in our family. When I discipline Luca in English, she can get a little blank-eyed. It's so easy to dismiss me now. So easy to just turn off. If I'm not speaking loudly, she asks me to repeat myself a number of times. The same way I do when someone is speaking Portuguese, there is background noise, and my brain can't just intuit sentences from glimpses of sounds. Yesterday, when she and I were alone in the car, I said something about the roads we were on. "What is "rodz" she asked, tripping over the pronunciation. "Roads," I replied, "you know, like streets, avenidas, ruas." "Oh," she said, "ruas." And then she spent about five minutes repeating over and over again, "rodz, roze, rode, rodz" trying to get it right but getting confused about the difference between rose and roads. "I can't say it very well, mama," she told me.

We head back to Minneapolis in a month and I keep wondering what it will be like for her. Easier, so much easier than coming, and she is so excited to be with her friends, these children she has grown up with from womb to toddlerhood. But I wonder if some of the beginning connections will be complicated by language. Her friends will expect her to be older but right now, in English, she is younger. She will get home and have to grow up all over again.