I just read a really interesting post on the Being Multilingual blog titled Speaking lime mummy, and speaking like daddy. The blogger, Madalena, observed that her children speak mummy's language like mummy, and daddy's language like daddy.
I thought this was quite interesting because just a few days ago I was thinking that my daughter speaks Farsi 'like a boy'. What does this mean? It's not simple to describe what I mean, but some of the words that she uses are more boy words, if I can call them that. And Iranian women normally are quite lady-like in the way that they express themselves. They will say words like 'my darling', 'my dear' (not to be interpreted in the same way as their English translation), 'sweety' and generally they really do use different language than Iranian men.
I never thought of how to tackle this, or even if it is something to be tackled, but I'd love to hear if other people have encountered the same phenomenon when raising their children.
Please, leave me a message if you have, or if you have not but you have an opinion about it. And I'd love to know whether people think this is something that should be tackled, and how, or if they think that the children will eventually change the way the speak, or if it doesn't really matter either way!
You are not alone! I am Egyptian, and I have noticed that all my cousins living abroad speak Arabic exactly like their parents. One particularly drastic example is a cousin living in the US. As a kid, he spent much more time with his mother, who spoke only Arabic to him, and therefore this seven year old boy sounded like a 40-something year old pish-posh lady! He used terms of endearment and well-wishing in a very feminine manner. His intonation was also very feminine! He is now ten, and his Arabic is fading away slowly, but he often still sounds exactly like his mother.
ReplyDeleteYou have a great blog, and I admire your dedication to teaching your children all three languages!
Thank your comment and your kind words.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to hear about your experience. I guess my daughters also speak like 40-something Italian ladies; I'm just lucky that they are girls!