Yesterday, instead of his usual bossing around of me, my son was bossing around our dog, Brie (named because she is the color of the cheese — not because she smells like it). Mr. Big Eyes had dropped a piece of bread on the floor, and, rather than picking it up himself, he summoned our canine hoover to do the job.
“Bread on floor, Brie. Eat it,” he commanded while pointing out the evidence.
Then, he proceeded to repeat exactly the same thing to her — but, in Italian.
“What language does Brie speak?” I asked him.
He thought for a few seconds.
“Labrador,” he said.
One of Mr. Big Eyes’ favorite books is titled “Martha Speaks.” It tells the story of a family dog who, after eating a bowl of alphabet soup, suddenly discovers that she can speak English. She drives the entire family mad with her newfound gift, to the point where they tell her to shut up and she is shamed to going back to being a silent dog yet again. One day, a burglar enters the house when Doggie Martha is home but her owners are not, and she saves the day by eating some alphabet soup, and calling the police to settle the domestic disturbance. Mr. Big Eyes loves the story, and growls like Martha every time he sees the drawing of Martha trying to scare away the burglar.
I’ve always loved languages and they have come relatively easily to me. But I didn’t start studying them until I was twelve (Latin, in sixth grade). In high school, I moved on to French. In college, I moved on to Italian. But I never actually spoke more than textbook French or Italian until I lived in both countries for extended periods of time.
In the circles that my husband and I travel in now, we are expected to slip in and out of French, Italian and English without blinking an eye. We live in a city where the average person speaks three languages, and where Belgians often speak four languages sans problemes (Flemish, French, English and German).
I speak only English with my son, and my husband speaks only Italian. If my son and I are alone, and I might say a phrase in Italian, he will “translate” it for me in English. At the supermarket the other day, I finished my own sentence with a simple, “Va bene?”
To which he replied, “No, Mamma, NOT ‘va bene’ but ‘OK!’”
At his day care, he is spoken to in French, and, apparently, responds accordingly.
We all know that children’s brains are sponges — yet it’s thrilling to see their minds in action. I’ve always thought that one of the hardest things to master in learning a foreign language is humor. The only way I can tell if I’ve reached the slightest level of fluency in a foreign language is if I can 1) captivate an audience in telling a story and 2) make them laugh.
I was tickled to see Luca already toying with the notion of different people (and animals) communicating in different tongues. And, to see that he sees humor in it really made me laugh. He’s much more sophisticated than I’ve ever been.
