Plooping in my underwear

I read recently that if you start learning two languages from birth, then you use the same part of the brain to process the languages. If you start learning a second language later in life, then you actually use a different part of the brain to learn the new language. I didn't read what age the different part of the brain kicks in, which I would be curious to know.

It makes sense to me. Last summer, I found myself trying to speak to a couple of Japanese tourists who were lost. My Japanese is stronger than my Norwegian, and certainly was at that time, but I found that only Norwegian words would come out. Try as I might, I could NOT find the Japanese words. In essence, the first few words out of my mouth were Norwaneseish. Yeah, gibberish. Basically, I had accosted these lost Japanese tourists and started speaking gibberish at them, scaring the shit out of them in the process, I'm sure. They probably couldn't figure out what the heck was going on at first. "Who IS this woman? What does she want? Why is she talking to us like that? No! No! Leave us alone!"

It's like my brain processes English, then all others. If it's not English, then it pulls up the first foreign word that it can. Norwegian words are at the top of the pile, failing that, Japanese comes next. It doesn't matter which language I'm trying to speak. Of course, if it is Norwegian, then it works. If it is Japanese, then something really bizarre comes out. It doesn't matter that my Norwegian is still pretty poor. It's the language at the top of my 'other' pile.

For the kids, it is so different. They switch back and forth with ease, since they are growing up bi-lingual.* They can distinguish between the languages and rarely mix them. English is for mommy (or mommy's family) and Norwegian is for everyone else, including each other. In fact, Nicky gets really irritated if he is speaking English and someone else, i.e.-pappa, answers. He is also known to give Norwegians who dare to use English with him a funny look. Laney just tells them off. Someone spoke to her in English the other day and she said firmly, "You're not mommy!!"

Still, learning to languages from the get-go can't be easy and sometimes the kids say really cute things.

My current favorite is "ploop."

The Norwegian word for fart is propp. Laney translated it herself into English as ploop. Anyone with kids knows that kids ploop all of the time, so she'll often announce, "I plooped in my underwear!" She is pretty much potty-trained and one morning I put her on the toilet and then went to get her clothes. She had gotten off herself, and I was a little worried about that and asked her if she had gone poo poo. She gave me her most withering "Don't you know anything?" look and said in a very sassy voice, "No, I just plooped in the toilet," and walked off. Very hard to be sassy, missy, when you're throwing a word like ploop around!

The bilingual kids in the front yard a few weeks ago.

It's also interesting (to me anyway) to see how the kids will directly translate things from one language to another -- most often from Norwegian into English as Norwegian is the dominant language -- when they don't immediately know the equivalent. For example,

With one time! It means right now! It's a direct translation from the Norwegian med en gang.

Pee pee me out. Also a direct translation which means to have a potty accident. This totally cracked me up the first time I heard it.

Summer flowoo (flower). Laney said this to mean butterfly. The Norwegian word for butterfly, sommerfugl, translates into summer bird. I guess she mixed the words and sounds.

I is really fascinating to watch how they process it all. You can see it in grammar mistakes they make, like switching word order, but mostly you see it in how extensive their vocabulary is in both languages. I am at the point now that if I don't know what a word is in Norwegian, I can ask Nicky and he can tell me. He acts as my tutor and is very excited to teach me words. It's a little sad for me that my four-year-old is better than me, but it makes me very proud too.

I don't have so many recent indoor photos of the kids, so I'll post this one because I love it. Nicky was two years old and Laney was five months old.

*I grew up sort of bilingual. I could understand Japanese and some things come easy to me that are hard in a second language, like thinking in numbers or simple math (it's so much more natural to do these things in your first language), but I was never bilingual the way my kids are.