matching tracksuits

In a little over a month, Babcia will arrive for a several-week visit. It will be the first time in a year and a half that we’ve seen her; L has gone from being virtually an infant to being something more than a toddler.

L is excited about the arrival. She mentions it every now and then, and every time an airplane flies over our house, L points and asks, “Is that Babcia?”

It will be a time of linguistic development for L. She understands Polish perfectly, and she even mixes a few Polish words into her English vocabulary. She doesn’t speak more than these occasionally mixed up words. When Babcia arrives, though, it will be time to start speaking Polish.

Only recently it occurred to me that this might be almost as difficult as learning to speak English. Her initial instinct will be to speak English, and knowing L’s stubbornness, she is likely initially to refuse even to try. Babcia has a secret weapon, though: fluent Russian. She might turn the tables on L.

We’re getting ready to go to the zoo — just L and I, a newly forming bi-Sunday tradition. L is excited: she’s chattering on and on in her own way: 10% Polish, 20% English, 70% L-ese. (One of the problems with raising a bilingual baby is that you never know whether she’s trying a new Polish word, a new English word, or just making up something in her own language.)

In the midst of the babbling, L suddenly says, “Mamma, afant.”

“Afant? I don’t know what that is,” K responds, as always, in Polish.

“Afant!” declares L.

“Honey, I don’t know…” K begins, then L switches languages.

“Slonik!” translates L.

“Oh! ‘Elephant!’”

It’s 5:20 on a Saturday morning. K wakes me up: “Can you go get some milk for L and make sure she’s covered up?” If K goes, L starts fussing and crying when she leaves the room; it works out better for everyone if I go.

I stumble downstairs, warm some milk, and head to the Girl’s room. She’s asleep in the corner of the crib, blankets strewn about her but not a single one on her. I pry her sippy cup from her hand, causing her to wake up.  WIth the refilled cup in her hand, L is about ready to go back to sleep, but she has one more request. She raises her head and says sleepily, “Banket.”

As I start to spread a blanket over her, she begins fussing. “Tata, no! Banket! Banket.” “Banket,” you see, is not just any blanket, but her favorite blanket, a soft yellow blanket she’s had since birth. It’s a bit too think for a chilly evening like this, so I spread the blanket over her, wait for her to drift to sleep, then cover her with a second blanket.

L’s vocabulary increases daily, and she’s begun making sentences and even her own shortened versions of words. Often, I’m not “tata” but “tat.”

“Chodz, tat!” she’ll say to me when dinner’s on the table and K’s sent her up looking for me.

Our cat, Bida, is sometimes “Bid.” “Trzymac” (“hold”) is “trzym,” pronounced “cim” (“chym” in English transliteration). “Jacket” is simply “Jack.”

And yet she’ll also unnecessarily extend some things. “Bida” can also be  — indeed, usually is — “Bida kicia,” which would roughly be translated “Bida kitty.” And all cats, in books and in real life, become “Bida kicia.” We recently met a new cat named Kissy and tried to explain to L that this was “Kissy kicia,” but to no avail: “Bida kicia!”

“Kupa” and “siusiu” (“poo-poo” and “pee-pee”) are always said together. In fact, L likes to call Bida to the door, open it, and encourage her to go relieve herself in the yard. It sounds like this: “Bida kicia, chodz! Idz! Kupa siusiu!”

When Bida is outside and we ask L, “Where is Bida?”, the reply is always the same: “Kupa siusiu!”

The Girl has been talking more and more, though the developments are slow. She is, after all, learning two languages. She mainly favors English, but she does use a few Polish words, and as any child her age, she has some of her own inventions:

Polish Words

• dać
• uwaga
• tam

English Words

• hug
• socks
• shoe
• milk
• baby
• juice
• hot
• wet
• help
• more
• dog
• pizza
• down

L-isms

• “Ba-ba” is banana.
• “Moo-Moo” is her favorite cheese, aptly named as there’s a drawing of a cow on the package.
• “Meow!” is cat.
• “Shhhh” is sleep.
• “Sha-sha” is outside.

The budding bilingualism can lead to amusement.

When K went to pick L up from daycare, L’s now-good friend, J, helped L gather her things. It’s a daily occurrence, usually looking for “Baby.” L, however, has become particularly fond of a little teddy bear (“miś” in Polish) and that’s her daily companion.

K entered the room and immediately J, helpful as always, began running around the room, looking for the teddy bear, saying, “Misio! Misio!” And so our daughter is only 19 months old and already a language teacher.

On the way out, K told L she should say goodbye to the frog on the door mat.

“Powiedz ‘bye’ żabie,” K suggested.

“Bye, frog!” L responded.

The Girl of late has been doing a lot to shake up my notions of what it means to communicate and all the different ways it’s possible to share a thought with another person.

The biggest preconception she’s radically challenged is the age at which an individual can create novel ways of communicating. We’ve been using baby signing with L, and she’s picked up on several signs that she uses regularly now: eat, more, and bath are among them. She understands a lot more — sleep, drink, potty/diaper change — but that’s not terribly impressive in that she already understands a great deal of spoken language. What shocked me recently about the signing was that L created her own sign for a word that she understands: swing. She waves her right arm back and forth at about shoulder level when she wants to go swing — which is pretty much constantly.

Another preconception: the ability to speak develops much later in children raised in a multilingual environment than it does in a monolingual home. L has a few words that she uses to great effect.

• dac (“give”, pronounced “dach”)
• tam (“there”, pronounced more or less as it appears)
• down

She’s got a few more that she almost says, and at least one L-ism: “baaa” is bannana.

But her understanding of both Polish and English is amazing. We ask her many things in both Polish and English and she understands them both unhesitatingly.

All this culminates in the last unexpected change: an increase in crying. She knows what is possible with communication now — in a word, everything — but she lacks the skills to tell us everything she wants or needs. And the resulting frustration manifests itself in crying/screaming fits more often than we’d like.

The developments of the last few weeks, though, promise a quick end to these fits. In other words, the problem is the solution.