2 months of language immersion
I hear singing drifting in from the bedroom as I make my coffee. My attention is pulled slightly away from the pleasurable ritual to try and catch the song the girls are singing. Hmm, don’t recognize that song, or maybe it’s just the slightly tone deaf (and very cute) nature of young children singing. I go back to watching the steam rise from the coffee pot.
Soon though, the singing comes abruptly closer and the girls are singing and dancing behind me. Nope, definitely don’t know this song I realize - because it’s in Japanese. I catch a few words that I know and applaud enthusiastically at the the cute coordination of song and impromptu dance.
“Is that song about a bear?” I ask.
“I have absolutely no idea,” my daughter replies back. It’s her new favorite reply, a slightly bothersome reply that I know she picked up from me. I make a mental note to stop saying such a resigning statement.
“But you know all the words, and you have a dance that goes along with it too. And I heard the word “Kuma,” so maybe it’s about a bear?” I ask.
“Oh yeahhh”, she says excitedly! “That makes sense because when we sing it we chase each other around like bears.”
And so goes our daily practice of translating her beautifully spoken and sung Japanese. She can say many things, beautifully accented and confidently performed, but she “has no absolutely no idea” what it means.
To be honest, I’m surprised this is how she learns language. With my logical adult mind I have always learned the meaning of the words before I speak them. This, though, is clearly not how it works for her. She speaks them, sings them, rearranges them, figures out innovative ways to use her somewhat limited vocabulary. Right now, she doesn’t translate the words in her mind, like I do. Instead, she has a much broader comprehension and doesn’t get stopped in her tracks by an unrecognized word (I’ll admit that I will stop everything and look up a word if I don’t understand it rather than try and grasp the concept and it’s annoying to everyone around me).
The girls have been in their Japanese preschool for 2 months and this is the phase they’re in. It’s been harder on my eldest. The two year old cried for the fist couple of days and then adapted as quick as lightning. She speaks to her teachers in Japanese now.
My eldest has had a few different phases, which I’ve grouped into 4 phases.
Speaking “fake” Japanese. It sounds like Japanese, but it’s jibberish. She would try speaking to her peers like this and get met with blank stares. It was interesting to watch her start to wrap her head around the fact that just like english, each word has a meaning. The sounds have to match the meaning.
Hating school and teachers. She went through a period of crying and really resisting school. More than once I thought how mean of a mom I was for still making her go, but alas, it wasn’t an option for me to keep her home and go to work (I also am so happy she’s there in school surrounded by friends and caring teachers. The guilt I have is fleeting, and the feeling of support I have from knowing my kids are in a nurturing school way outweighs the guilt). So she went to school and when she got home we would talk and cry and stomp and scream about how hard her day was. And I would stroke her head and say “I know. Let it out baby.” Then it would start again the next day.
Not talking at school. She went through a phase of not saying anything to anyone who spoke Japanese to her. In this school, most of the other children speak english so she would play and talk with them, but would keep her tongue firmly held if anyone dare talk to her in Japanese. I did a little reading on this and it’s actually a normal stage of development in learning language and it’s called ‘Selective Mutism.’ Once I understood this is a normal stage, I didn’t worry too much about it, but I did start encouraging her to say some of the words she does know. After she said “ohaio gozaimasu” to sensei one morning, it seemed to break down a wall and now she speaks more. Singing has also apparently been a great way to get her voice moving the sounds out for the world to hear.
Being ok with being wrong. This has probably been the most challenging part for her. She’s got a strong perfectionist streak, which, as her mother, I recognize is a reflection of my own perfectionism. We talk about being ok with saying the incorrect thing. That no one will be “mad” at her, which is what she expressed her fear was. It’s a work in progress for both of us and the most effective way to help her move past the fear of making a mistake is making mistakes myself. This, I know will become a much more common occurrence living in Japan, but for now, I make mistakes in front of her (some real and some play/pretend), and I work it out in front of her, or let her teach me the correct way.
That’s all for now, and I’ll write again at the next big exciting leap.