Alpha: Does real good with English. At times hard to shut up, in fact. Like, when we were at my sister’s house, and one of my favorite cousins was visiting with her family, and we’re all sitting around the table talking, and Alpha for some reason (I missed that part, as I was spacing out for a few seconds apparently) starts explaining how she’s the masculine one in our relationship, and Mig is the feminine one, and even cooks, and even paints his toenails. And I’m all, Hang on, the girls paint my toenails when I drink too much whiskey on Christmas and pass out.
Beta: Beta is thirteen and didn’t talk much this trip but she was able to speak English just fine when required to and I’m all proud of her.
Gamma: She is five and I speak English to her at home but she always answers in German so I wasn’t sure. But after two days in the States she was speaking English with her cousins. All the other kids were her age, from 2-7, so she had a better time than Beta did, I think. Gamma started out using, first of all, imperatives, like, “no kicking!” and “get out of my room!” and “come here!”
When we came home, she even continued speaking English, but only to me and the cats.
bilingual power! heh
I’m curious how accents work into this whole thing, too. I mean, if the kids grow up hearing you speak english in… well, typical, non-austrian accent, how do they end up speaking it? I wonder, being that from what you’ve said they don’t really speak it very often with you even. Hmm.
I’m a curious little monkey. ;)
Beta’s pronunciation is roughly equivalent to mine, with few slight exceptions if she learned a word in school (where they are taught with a British accent). My accent is pretty neutral given that I’ve lived away so long etc. Gamma’s pronunciation, well, she’ll have an Austrian accent sometimes, but often I think any “accent” or mispronunciation comes more from her still learning the language than having an Austrian accent.
It’s strange, but I can’t tell anymore with probably half the people I know here in Sweden whether they even have an accent when they speak English. Unless there’s a really strong accent accompanied with grammatical mistakes, anything can sound as if that’s the way English is supposed to be pronounced.
It’s getting harder for me too. Maybe Europeans are getting better at their English. Maybe we’re just going deaf.
With you and the cats, huh? I’m guessing it’s still mostly imperatives? ;D