Hi Bryan,
> I think that OPOL stands of One Parent, One
> Language. Am I right?
I've always thought of it as One PERSON One Language,
but I don't suppose that matters.
> I am wondering what you're RTDTL (Round the Dinner
> Table Language - made that one up!) will be? In
> other words, which language do you use or will
> you use when you're talking to each other in front
> of the children or with the children?
In straight OPOL, there is no "RTDTL". The OPOL
pattern is continued at all times even if this means
saying everything two or three times so that everybody
present will understand.
In our situation, everybody understands both languages
so it's fairly easy. If we have company or are at
someone else's house, I'll often cheat slightly and
talk *about* my kids and not *to* them - e.g. "Jonah
needs to be sitting good in in his chair" rather than
"Vi devas bone sidi en via segô." The kids get the
message and nobody's left saying anything foolish like
"what, what are you saying in my house?"
I know that there are people on the list who don't
understand their spouse's languages. I don't know
how they do it. I mean, I've heard them describe what
they do, but I don't know how they can live with that
day after day. They do, however, and that's what
matters, I guess.
Have you told us how well you speak Spanish? Is that
a native language for you? If it isn't, you're almost
certainly going to have to study very hard to get to
the point where you'll be able to talk comfortably on
all sorts of "kid topics" even if you're fairly
fluent now. If it were my decision to make, I'd
deeply consider whethere my limited study time would
not be better spent learning to understand Kiswahili
than learning the specialized kid vocabulary in
Spanish. It depends on your current level of Spanish
and how important it is to you -- and how much it
would bother you not to be part of those conversations
in Kiswahili.
> This is something I'm thinking about as well for my
> child that will be born later this year. If I speak
> Spanish with the child and my wife uses Kiswahili
> and/or Kimeru, what about when we're talking to each
> other? The only language we can do that in is
> English.
My wife and I mostly speak English with each other
(although we switched to Esperanto during the multi-
lingual family olympics.) I always speak Esperanto to
the kids. I could imagine that you could do something
similar - with Mom speaking Kiswahili to the kids, Dad
speaking Spanish to the kids, and then you'd speak
English with each other. If you don't learn how to
understand Kiswahili, you're wife would have to say
everything twice... or you'd have to learn to live
with not understanding everything.
It's funny when I'm at my parents' house because my
family is very comfortable with Esperanto even though
they don't speak it. They know that I'll bring them
in if the conversation is more interesting than "go
use the toilet", and they pay enough attention that
sometimes they do catch a bit here or there.
Sometimes I get so comfortable with the situation, I
forget which language I'm speaking and I have to stop
and ask my brother if I've been keeping him involved
or whether he's been able to follow.
On the topic of introducing a third language,
Sharon Dreyfuss wrote:
> Then my son's teacher added, with a glance my way,
> about how she has students who speak English or
> Arabic at home and how that's fine and they're
> among her best students.
My son's school has a Spanish program starting in
Kindergarten, which is still slightly unusual in the
US. When we went in for parent conferences a few
months into the school year, we mentioned that we
speak Esperanto at home. The teacher didn't know
that (even though we had said so in the paperwork we
provided to the school.) Once we finished the obvious
next question ("What the heck is Esperanto?"), she
commented that this explains why he's doing so well
with Spanish. I hadn't heard that he's doing well
in Spanish, but I do like to think that the Esperanto
(and the attitude we project about other languages)
does indeed "explain" it.
Kari Fisher wrote:
> I am a lurker.
No you're not. I recognize your name. If you were
a lurker, I wouldn't know your name. I recall that
we've exchanged a few notes as well. You may be an
infrequent poster, but you're not a lurker.
Amike salutas,
Thomas/Tomaso ALEXANDER.
www.NightinGael.Net
---Anything below this line is not from Thomas ---
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