When I return to Montréal from spending several weeks in Spain, I find my “other languages” become confused. Par exemple (or should I say por ejemplo?), as we prepared to disembark from the airplane in Montréal today, a québécois man helpfully lifted down my overhead luggage:
Homme: “Est-ce que ce sac est le tien?”
Moi: “Ah, oui, merci! Et, il y a un manteau también. Um…aussi…”
It seems that my French and Spanish always intertwine in an embarassing way for about a week after I return. Or more correctly, my French is peppered with involuntary Spanish-isms. Sure, you can get away with sí when you mean oui — in fact in France they use that fairly often, if I’m not mistaken. But también and gracias are a bit more obviously not French, so I’m usually given a funny look…
Well, this reminds me of linguistic contexts. Apparently (says my Mom!), if you want to teach a child several languages (for example, as you should (my opinion) in the case where parents or grandparents have different mother tongues), then each person should consistently speak to the child in their native language. For example, Mother always in English, Father in French, and Grandmother in Italian (feel free to substitute your favourite languages and relations here!). Perhaps there is no limit to the number of languages a young kid could absorb in this way; apparently keeping the “linguistic context” constant is the key to this. That, I guess, and sufficient immersion. And a young, sponge-like, brain. As opposed to an aged, sponge-like-but-in-a-porous-rather-than-absorbent-way, brain.
No wonder I’m so confused, and not just because of my leaky, porous brain… But also I’m living most of my life in English, in a French city, trying to learn Spanish by visiting Catalan-speaking Barcelona! And I suppose my “mélange linguistique” emails and blog postings aren’t helping anyone either. Well, to that I say: “Pttthhbt!” (you go ahead and translate that…into your favourite language!)