Baby talk.
Max sidles over to me, and tells me, “Bisous, Mamawn.“ He grabs face as I lean down, giddy that he’s asking me for a kiss, and he plants one on my lips. How fun it’s been, these last few months, to have my little guy toddle over to make requests demands, or just point out things in his little world. Things that I don’t notice, like an airplane way up in the sky, so far away that I have to ask him to point it out to me. Or a fly in the room. “Bouche!” He means, “mouche!” but has trouble with the sounds of letters m and b. Which also means, that while he’s eating meat, which he loves, he asks for “MORE BITE!” (sounds like ‘beat’), and my proper in-laws ignore it everytime. I once told the in-laws about these bites all over Max’s face. Not knowing the French word for (insect) ‘bites’ I converted the long ‘I’ into a short I sound, using experimental French. My husband told me under his breath that I had just said that Max has ‘penises all over his face.” Because my sense of humour is crass and immature, I laughed hard and couldn’t stop the giggles from resurfacing over and over, but they didn’t crack a smile.
What a relief to know when he hurts - “Aiii! Pied!” or when he simply wants my hands, “mains?” And when I don’t hear him, “MAINS!!!” Most heartbreaking of all, is at night, when I lay him down on his newly adopted bed at his grandparent’s house - a regular big boy bed - and happily climbs under the comforter. He pats the pillow next to him with his whole palm and sleepily tells me in his tiny voice, “Maman dodo?” It sounds like a question, but it’s a strong suggestion.
When I last counted the words that he uses in the right context, a little over 2 months ago, his vocabulary was over 100 words strong. Yes. I wrote them all down, thinking that there was maybe 30 or so, but found that list growing. He’s at the beginning end of speaking in very simple phrases these days, combining nouns with verbs. Maman do-do? Baby do-do? Avion a partir. Chien a partir. I learned the word ,”plafond” - ceiling - from him, but it sounds more like, “Fafond!” That’s what he tells his father when he wants to be held up high. His vocabulary has grown substantially since then, and I’m discovering that he leans much more toward speaking French than in English.
“Fafond!”
I am immigrant to France, who grew up in the US with parents who were immigrants. I, was an immigrant to the US, as well. While survival language is sometimes discussed as a difficult obstacle to hurdle when discussing immigrant hardships, communication amongst the family is not. I do not share a primary language with the elders in my family - including my mother. As a child, I preferred to speak English, understandably, because that was my environment. Cultural gaps not withstanding, years of miscommunication, lack of communication and lack of the feel of a common language and vocabulary have driven wedges between us in my developmental years. I worry that my relationship with my sons may suffer the same casualties. I worry that they will be disinterested in their immigrant mom’s primary culture and primary language, much in the same way that I was as a child. Had we not been forced to translate our conversations from English to Chinese or Burmese, when I was younger, I may not speak either of these first languages today.
Proud of his progress? Very. Disappointed? A little. I’m hoping that, with my influence, Max will speak flawless English, but I want him to want to speak it, first and foremost.
