My home is multilingual.
Oh, it's not what you are thinking... My family of four do not converse with each other in a lyrical foreign tongue, we speak a language of our own making.
I am certain an evening in our abode would make a linguistics aficionado's head spin like that poor girl in “The Omen.” For our little language lacks structure and there are no grammatical rules to dictate how we speak to each other.
I blame it on the children.
My husband, Bill, and I started this odd talk after the arrival of our first born. We never did speak the stereotypical baby talk – think goo goo, ga ga, ba ba – to Barcelona. But almost as soon as we brought her home, we started to call her everything but her given name. First, we called her Boo Boo, but this became confused with my own identical nickname. So we switched to Little Boo and eventually settled on the shortened version: Boo.
Before Barcelona found her own voice, Bill and I communicated with her using baby sign language. After she started to talk to us, we incorporated her little Boo-isms into our own language. One overnight trip to the San Francisco Bay Area, we booked a hotel room. For some reason Barcelona translated “hotel” to “hotower” and the word stuck. When discussing up a recent trip to Disneyland, both my husband and I could be heard talking up the hotower where we would be staying. I am sure anyone eavesdropping on these conversations would wonder whether our accommodations were real or imaginary.
When Berkeley came along three years ago, we started off calling him Baby Brother. Somehow that moniker evolved and now we often refer to our family's youngest member as Turkey. You would have to ask my husband to explain this one, but I suspect it has something to do with my son's mischievous nature as in “He's such a little turkey!”
Berkeley's translations of words are typical of most children's language development. There is “bapple” for apple, “biper” for diaper, and “pider” for spider. Funny thing, though, the grownups at our house can be heard using these same interpretations in our everyday conversations with each other. I am just as likely to ask if anyone wants bapples with their peanut butter and jelly sandwich as the kids are to request them. The other day I was a little shocked when I asked Berkeley if he wanted a bapple and it was my preschooler who corrected me.
“No bapple, mommy.”
“No?”
“No, I want apple.”
I was equally surprised the time I overheard a dispute between my two youngsters. When Berkeley started to talk, we taught him to say “sissy” instead of Barcelona. He still uses sissy when he speaks to her, when he is looking for her, and when he is tattling on her. But one day while they squabbled, I was shocked to hear my son say “Barcelona.” For some reason I mistakingly assumed he did not know his own sister's name. They grow up so fast – sigh.
Then there is the way I talk to my children. There are times I question my college degree in communication. Instead I sound like a military sargeant barking out orders or someone just a little on the side of crazy when I say things like “Take the dinosaur out of your mouth!”
Children have selective hearing when it comes to their parents and for this reasons I can often be heard repeating the same command over and over again. I can be heard saying “go go go” when the children are dawdling, “no.... No... NO!” when they are being naughty, and several other variations all equally aggressive. Sometimes I cringe when I hear my voice say the same word over and over again like a broken record.
Yes, there is something about having children that changed the way my husband and I talk. We refer to our children by their pet names, we incorporate their made-up words into our own language, and we say things we never could have imagined -- “Don't lick daddy's feet!”
My solace is the knowledge other families are also multilingual. They say things that sound a little weird to outsiders and often have to repeat themselves. For this is the language of parenthood.
Parent Tales Column ~ June 2007
No comments:
Post a Comment