
me: pabbi? (dad?)
mum: pabbi er ad fara i vinnuna (dad is going to work)
me: pabbi ekki vinnu, pabbi leikskola (dad not work, dad kindergarten)
mum: nei pabbi fer i vinnuna og oscar fer i leikskolann (no dad is going to work and oscar to kindergarten)
me: otta nei leikskola, otta heima mamma (Oscar no kindergarten, Oscar home with mum)
This is the part where mum gave me a big hug...and then of course I did go to the kindergarten. But from this short example you can see that not only can I construct sentences, but there is also logic in what I say. But sometimes I get tired of thinking about the way I should speak -it's not always simple to be struggling to become a bilingual kid, and then I use a much more fluid way of speaking. Basically it means just putting together an endless flow of sounds and syllables and make it sound as if you are saying something really important (at kindergarten I let this pass for an Icelandic monologue!). The trick is to include at least 1-2 comprehensible words and gesticulate a lot with the hands, so that what is missing from the linguistic part of my expression is gained with the visual part. An example of this way of expressing me is saying
balabiditibidasirimamaniIRENEsararedetegaiisemuneretabanare- MAMMAnididarebenosiOTTA while pointing at the baby-gym in the first half of the sentence, and then at my playing corner in the second half. Then mum has no problem understanding that I'm really saying: please put Irene to play in the baby-gym and you come and play with me in the playing corner!
Mum says she feels a lot of responsability in teaching me icelandic, for as we don't have other icelanders in our everyday life, the icelandic I speak is a mirror of the icelandic she speaks. This basically means that if my icelandic sucks I can blame it on mum, and if e.g. I swear in icelandic (a part from no one understanding it but my mum) mum cannot say that I picked it up from TV or from the kids in kindergarten -I must have learnt it from her! There are several remidies:
mum reads a lot of books for me in icelandic, I listen to a lot of icelandic music, we invite icelanders to stay with us (soon e.g. cousin Hakon is coming with his mum to see me) and mum tries to swear only in italian -that way, -porca miseria -at least she can blame it on TV or the kindergarten if I pick up some of her bad words!
1 comment:
Thetta hljomar allt kunnuglega, Emma talar heilmikid og thaer a leikskolanum halda ad hun se ad tala Islensku. Urdu voda hissa thegar vid sogdum theim ad vid skildum varla ord sem hun segdi heldur...
Gott plan med blotid!!
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