We all went out for dinner on Monday with a friend that was visiting from South Africa.
We had no babysitter and as the kids are on holiday it’s ok for them to sleep late so off we went.
There’s a new(ish) Frankie & Benny’s in our town and I found out the other day that the Manager is Portuguese.
When we arrived he was the one that greeted us in. I said to Miss Z “guess where this gentleman is from darling”. She drew a blank and I said “I’ll give you a clue. He’s from the same place as Mommy”, so she promptly replied “Portugal”.
As we made our way to the table the Manager asked her “do you speak Portuguese?”, to which she replied “I speak half Portuguese”. He then said “what does that mean? You either speak it or you don’t…”. Miss Z didn’t know what to say so I jumped in “you speak a little bit right?” and she was happy with that and nodded in agreement.
I get asked by almost every person that meets my kids if they are bilingual. My family members in Portugal ask me every year. It’s akin to committing a crime against the nation that they are not fluent in Portuguese.
I don’t have a logical reason for them not speaking it as I do. In truth if all I did was speak Portuguese with them one could probably assume that they would be fully bilingual by the age of 7 or so.
My best friend in Uni was bilingual from an early age. Her Mom is French and her Dad Portuguese and so she spoke both languages effortlessly.
Filled with good intentions, when Miss Z was born I only spoke Portuguese to her. As time went by and she started saying her first words she would turn to me and say “no tutuguese Mommy, enguish”. The fact that we live in England, my hubby speaks English (and his whole family), the nanny spoke English and of course everyone else did too made it harder.
Here was my first child, starting to communicate back to me with real words and she didn’t want to do it in Portuguese. It was an emotional thing. I was weak I know but I couldn’t help it.
When Mr A came along I reaffirmed my resolve to speak only Portuguese. I even said to Miss Z that Mr A didn’t understand English so she would have to talk to him in Portuguese. And it was all going fairly well until (again) he started talking back. He and Miss Z would only talk in English with each other and there wasn’t much I could do. And if you can’t beat them…
Third time around, with Miss A and I told the other two the same story – Miss A can’t understand English.
But I went further – I hired a Portuguese speaking nanny and I moved from CBeebies to the Portuguese Disney Junior channel on TV.
Now we have 2 adults speaking Portuguese in the house, the TV they watch is only Portuguese (albeit YouTube, Netflix and the like are in English) and we only speak Portuguese with Miss A (the other two kids do too).
So my kids speak half Portuguese. So what? It’s better than no Portuguese. And at least I am still at it and haven’t given up.