Sometimes we need to keep things from our kids. And I'm not just talking about the sweets that we eat when they're safely asleep.. But things like whether we're having dessert or not, whether someone should be told to go to his / her room or not, or normal secrets like christmas presents.. And since we usually talk Norwegian, we've been having these conversations in English. Or Norwenglish, rather, without trying to impress anyone with vocab and intonation..
But those days are gone. It seems.
More and more often, our oldest - Jakob (8) - understands too much of what we say. "Which boy should go to what room?" "Who's not having dessert?" And all the kids understand "ice cream" "chocolate" and the like..
Recently my cousin came visiting with her English hubby and their daughter. So when I told the grown ups (I thought..) an amusing story about one of the kids, the one who laughed was their 2-year old daughter.. Then several of the kids' friends are half American or other speakers of English, so they understand too much too..
So today, my hubby and I had a dessert-or-not-discussion in German. Erh, no German would have understood, I fear, but still... I guess I could do the thing in Greek, but although my darling has many excellent qualities, knowledge of Greek is not among them, so I fear I'd be speaking to myself.
Anyway, how do single-language families speak secretly amongst themselves?
6 comments:
Wow, you certainly seem to know a lot of languages! I think single-language families don't do that sort of thing, or they talk secretly in the kitchen...or maybe the development a complex signs language...
We say, "I wasn't talking to YOU, I was talking to Dad... so you don't need to know who is eating which Ice cream now do you?" and other witty sarcastic things like that...oh well.
We are at the spelling stage but not necessarily because our son is only 3-1/2 but because we have SMART DOGS who understand what we say. Problem has become that they know b-a-l-l, p-a-r-k, r-i-d-e, i-c-e c-r-e-a-m, d-o-g, v-e-t, m-a-i-l m-a-n and many others.
Well, over here (the States) Norwegian works pretty well for that sort of thing. It worked well for me in Spain, too. With my Tarzan-like pronunciation it would probably even work for me in *Norway*!
I don't know what to suggest for you, unless you know how to do Pig Latin ("oes-day omeone-say eed-nay oo-tay oh-gay oo-tay ed-bay?")...
by the way, how and why did you learn Greek?
:)
An opportunity has arisen at my workplace for a transfer to an office in Sweden, its not for a couple of months so I have decided to learn Swedish. My reasoning is that if I can speak Swedish it will give me a massive advantage over my competition. The thing is I don’t know how to go about learning a new language is it best learning from someone who already speaks the language or should I attempt learning language online? Is it difficult with no one to speak to? Any help I can get will be greatly appreciated.
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