Flying high in multiple languages (English, Korean and "Hannese")...
Our little daughter Hannah is at that interesting stage (notice I didn't say 'age') where her baby babble is starting to shift and result in threads of more targeted and coherent communication. And being bilingual, these threads often come out in English, Korean or (more commonly) her own creative interpretation of both - weaving in and out and through each other. It's a beautiful thing to watch and listen to.
And just this morning, our 5-year-old son Jamie woke up and decided he'd like to start the day speaking Korean, commenting about the bruise on his knee from a bit of a football mishap at kindergarten yesterday, along with an enquiry (sometimes they sound more like an inquiry) about the status of his little sister's breakfast consumption.
Thus it was with more than a passing interest that I read an article that Barbara Sakamoto tweeted earlier today, titled Sacking an Ideal: The Evil Ambilingual.
As a father to bilingual children, everything explored in that article rings very true. The interpretation of "bilingual" there also reminded me poignantly of an interesting conversation I had with Jamie at bed time the other day. He was explaining to me that he could speak "Australian" and "Hanguk-mal" (Korean), his mother could speak "Hanguk-mal" and "Australian", his dad could speak "Australian" and "Hanguk-mal", and his little sister could only really speak "Hanna-talk" (but it had some "Hanguk-mal" and "Australian" in it).
His observations are even more interesting when you look at the specific order or sequence he listed the languages for each person in his family. He does indeed speak more English than Korean, while his mother is generally stronger in Korean than English; his father prefers English over Korean, while Hanna's language is evolving but generally exhibits more communication resembling Korean than English. He is actually spot on in his analysis.
But rather than calling ourselves parents of two bilingual children, I think it is more accurate (and useful) to think of us as a bilingual family. Both English and Korean are spoken in the home by all members of the family, though the amount and proportion can vary either by family member or any given day.
The article mentioned above (absolutely great reading for anyone experiencing a bilingual setting) is right on the money when it urges us to do away with the notion of the "perfectly balanced bilingual".
No such thing, really.
Just shifting tides and currents.
:-D
