Erika and languages
Erika understands quite a bit of Lithuanian, though she speaks very little; since I'm the only one who speaks to her in this language, I have no illusion that she'll ever be motivated to learn to speak it fluently. She's swimming in the sea of English, and has no practical need for other languages.
Though she has long ago noticed that I was speaking a different language than anyone else around her, she did not always know a name for it. When she was younger, she thought it was Spanish. At her day care the children are taught some very basic Spanish, such as number words, so she must have concluded that Spanish is just any language that sounds different than the "default" (i.e. English). (One of my acquaintances had a similar experience: his son thought his Korean-speaking grandparents spoke Spanish.)
Lately Erika's understanding of languages has become more sophisticated, as she has figured out it's not a binary native/foreign thing, but that there are multiple languages. Still, she was surprised to hear that there is a place in the world where almost everyone speaks Lithuanian. She is just beginning to grasp how languages fit in the general context of the world: how they are connected to geography, national identity, why different people speak different languages, how they learn them.
This leads her to say unintentionally funny things, such as "You speak two Englishes: American words and Lithuanian words." I replied, "I think you mean, I speak two languages." The fact that those two words sound similar doesn't help her still-continuing confusion between language as a concept, and the individual instances of it.
She has a definition of a country as a place where everybody speaks the same language. But that's an oversimplification, especially in the U.S., and so I wasn't sure whether to praise her for getting this concept right, or to complicate her worldview by trying to explain that it's not necessarily true. Probably this can wait until she's older. I don't believe she'll grow up to be one of those "this is America, you better speak English" people. :-)
Though she has long ago noticed that I was speaking a different language than anyone else around her, she did not always know a name for it. When she was younger, she thought it was Spanish. At her day care the children are taught some very basic Spanish, such as number words, so she must have concluded that Spanish is just any language that sounds different than the "default" (i.e. English). (One of my acquaintances had a similar experience: his son thought his Korean-speaking grandparents spoke Spanish.)
Lately Erika's understanding of languages has become more sophisticated, as she has figured out it's not a binary native/foreign thing, but that there are multiple languages. Still, she was surprised to hear that there is a place in the world where almost everyone speaks Lithuanian. She is just beginning to grasp how languages fit in the general context of the world: how they are connected to geography, national identity, why different people speak different languages, how they learn them.
This leads her to say unintentionally funny things, such as "You speak two Englishes: American words and Lithuanian words." I replied, "I think you mean, I speak two languages." The fact that those two words sound similar doesn't help her still-continuing confusion between language as a concept, and the individual instances of it.
She has a definition of a country as a place where everybody speaks the same language. But that's an oversimplification, especially in the U.S., and so I wasn't sure whether to praise her for getting this concept right, or to complicate her worldview by trying to explain that it's not necessarily true. Probably this can wait until she's older. I don't believe she'll grow up to be one of those "this is America, you better speak English" people. :-)