We talk about bringing up our babies bilingual, but what about improving and polishing our own bilingual skills? I have heard many of us say that we don’t live in an area where Spanish is spoken or we have significant others who are not native speakers, so English is the dominant language.

I lived in the UK for six years, where I went months without speaking Spanish. I even found myself struggling to come up with words when I would talk to my mother on the phone. However, when I went on maternity leave (an entire year) my Spanish instantly improved — why? I was with mostly Chilean mamá friends on a daily basis and it was like magic. The words came back, accent got stronger and vocabulary was richer. Not that I really “lost” my Spanish, but you know what they say, if you don’t use it, you lose it.

So here are 5 tips to help keep your bilingual brain fit and healthy:

1. Speak to at least one person each day in Spanish — call your mamá, talk to your kids, talk to the dog, talk to yourself (I do!) — just do it!

2. Write your “to-do” list in Spanish. Sounds simple, but I got into this habit when I was younger and to this day I cannot write my list in English, it must be in Spanish. You use words you may not otherwise and it’s always in front of you.

3. Sing in Spanish! I didn’t listen to much Latin music when I was in the UK. But once I did, it sparked my Spanish skills and just made me happy all over. Music is a great way to practice your tenses “te amaré por siempre” or “te amé”, etc. My non-native Spanish-speaking friends say it has helped them improve.

4. Buy a magazine in Spanish and read it OUT LOUD. It’s not enough to just read because we all sound fluent and amazing in our heads, but actually saying the words, pronouncing each one, repeating the more difficult words and getting used to hearing yourself speak Spanish will increase your fluency and comfort level.

5. Take the reading out loud a step further and record your voice on your smart phone or record a video of you reading a story for your kids. That way you can hear and see yourself speaking Spanish. This will help increase your language speaking confidence!

Remember — practice, practice, practice!

How do you exercise your bilingual brain?

{Photo by Mitchell Bartlett}

This week, my daily news surfing brought me to this article from NPR about the unclear future of the Spanish language in the U.S. The author, Luis Clemens, challenges the idea that the growing number of Latinos in America automatically means there will be more Spanish speakers going forward. Those of us in the middle of child rearing in more than one language are familiar with how much work and conscious planning it takes to achieve the end of producing not just bilingual, but also biliterate, members of the next generation. Thus, it makes perfect sense to me, and probably to many of you, that there is not necessarily a direct connection between ethnicity and language.

More importantly than pointing to this disconnect, Clemens questions what it means when a U.S.-born Latino American isn’t truly fluent in Spanish. What does it mean for the young Latino culture when public figures (he mentions Sonia Sotomayor and Vin Diesel) can’t conduct a proper Spanish conversation in public?

This reminds me of the critique of reggaeton music and the constant battle in my state (Florida) between the Puerto Ricans, with their slang-laden Spanish, and all other Spanish speakers. Is it true that butchering a language will ultimately cause other cultural elements to go by the wayside? I’m not sure that any of us can definitively answer this question because we all cling to culture to an individual degree.

I am somewhat on the outside of this dilemma, since I’m a non-Latina white American. However, because of the way that I learned Spanish and the beautiful array of dialects to which I’ve been exposed, I must admit that I have a bit of a preference for “real” Spanish. Although my son hears slang all around him, I find it essential to read to him in Spanish and try to preserve some semblance of grammatical accuracy in his mind. I tend to agree with Clemens that the level of Spanish fluency presented by supposed native speakers in this country is sometimes deplorable, but I also agree with his encouraging point that this may change for the better with our children.

In the article, Clemens does note the current efforts of some U.S.-born Latinos to raise bilingual children, even citing SpanglishBaby as part of the solution to the potential for language disappearance. While it seems that Spanish is all around us, we forget that the older immigrants for whom our businesses and government now translate everything into Spanish may not have prepared their children well enough to carry on the language for good. It is rather fascinating to think that Spanish could have been virtually erased by the third or fourth generation of Latino Americans if it weren’t for active and passionate parents, many of whom weren’t gifted with the greatest Spanish skills.

Though the news may sound a bit grim and critical, this kind of reality check makes me all the more committed to keeping Spanish alive in my household. Ironically, sometimes we need a national snapshot to understand how significant our personal efforts can be.

Check out the comments on the NPR article for a pretty fascinating discussion.

{photo by exoticabooks}

Photo credit: dsb nola

My varied experiences with the Spanish language have taught me that there is one thing bilinguals will always have a surplus of: questions. Fluency is a relative concept; everyone has a different definition of what it means to be fluent in a language, and my most pressing question seems to be Am I really fluent?

At my son’s age (3), the questions are more basic, like Why do we say “his” and “her” en inglés, but only “su” en español? Isaías doesn’t literally formulate such questions yet, but he essentially asks them every time he gets his pronouns mixed up or encounters a false cognate. Although I know the answers and most of the rules, I relish this kind of confusion because I experience it as often as my son does.

My own questions are a little more complex, and because there aren’t always straightforward answers, I run in circles trying to settle on a conclusion that will satisfy me in my everyday Spanish use. Here are some recent preguntas that still have me stumped:

• Is there ever a clear distinction between the use of Ud. and tú? The extent of what they teach in school is the formal/informal difference, but I find that this line is often blurred. In the course of one conversation, a native speaker (often a South American) may use both with me, although the context of our relationship hasn’t changed. Is this sometimes just a mistake, or does it sound normal to native speakers to interchange these subjects when speaking to one individual?
• Am I a fluent speaker if there are quite a few vocabulary words that I only know in Spanglish, but not in Spanish? By this, I mean Anglicized words that many Spanglish-speakers with whom I interact only ever use in that form: “el toilet,” “la van,” “la yarda,” “parquear.” While I agree with those who claim that the heavy use of Spanglish in America is an important linguistic phenomenon, I always have an interest in keeping a full word bank of “real” Spanish.
• Is a literally translated idiom always lost in translation? Things like “against the grain” in English – “a contrapelo” in Spanish – have the same feel but different literal meanings. I hate the moments when I have the perfect phrase for a situation, but it is an English-specific idiom that would mean nothing in Spanish (because Spanish makes much more sense, oftentimes).
• What do I sound like to Spanish speakers? Though most tell me that I barely have an accent when I speak Spanish, I can hear that my comfort with pronunciation is not as perfect as my son’s. As an auditory learner, this annoys me and makes me walk around all day repeating words and singing fast songs like “Estaba la rana cantando debajo del agua…” so that I can fake out more people.

Ultimately, preguntas keep us on our toes. I may have more than a native speaker does, and I’m certain that I’m overanalyzing all of them, but I’m okay with that. Having questions means I will always have something to work towards: a higher level of comprehension, a greater mastery of intricacies, and an ease with the most subtle parts of the language.

A couple of days ago, I overheard my daughter speaking in English while she was playing by herself with her My Little Pony collection. I made it a point to observe her a bit more intently – without her knowledge, of course – just to make sure she wasn’t just saying a few words in English, as she’s done in the past.

I don’t know why it surprised me, but the whole time the ponies were speaking English to each other, saying things like: “I need help! Somebody please help me!” (I’ve no idea what game she was playing). I made sure to listen for a while to see if Spanish would sip into the equation, but after about 10 minutes, it hadn’t.

I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised because, even though I’ve tried to keep up with our bilingual playgroup, ever since I went back to work full time, it’s been really difficult.  This means that she spends the majority of her playing time at preschool with her little monolingual (English) friends. And this got me thinking about a really interesting topic that one of my favorite bilingualism experts, Prof. Francois Grosjean, has written about extensively. Language usage for bilinguals highly depends on the domains of their lives (the life areas) they are involved in at any given time.

In other words, in my own life, in certain specific situations I use only Spanish (with the nanny, my children, and the part of  my family who is monolingual back home in Peru), in others I use only English (at work, at my daughter’s preschool, when I go shopping, when I read instructions), and in some domains I use both languages (with my husband, my mom, my siblings and some of my bilingual friends, and when I write.)

Grosjean calls this the complimentary principle. This is from his latest book, Bilingual: Life and Reality, which I highly recommend because, if you’re bilingual, you’ll immediately see yourself in it.

“Bilinguals usually acquire and use their languages for different purposes, in different domains of life, with different people. Different aspects of life often require different languages.”

So why does this even matter? Well, because the complimentary principle affects, among other things, fluency in each of our languages.

For example, I’ve always, always prayed in Spanish and, even though I consider myself bilingual, I have a hard time following a religious service in English because I learned my religion’s prayers in Spanish! It’s not so much that I can’t do it, it has more to do with feeling weird and out of place.

Here’s another personal example, back in the days when I worked in television production – and even though I worked at Univision – all the technical terminology I learned and used was in English. So, whenever I’m talking to my husband (who still in the business) about this topic, we use English. I just simply don’t have the vocabulary for this area of my life in Spanish.

Does this mean I’m not really bilingual or less of a bilingual? Not at all! According to the complimentary principle, this is exactly the way it’s supposed to be for bilinguals. It’s very rare for all domains of our lives to be covered by all our languages.

More from Grosjean’s book:

“It is precisely because the need for and uses of their languages are usually quite different that bilinguals do not develop equal and total fluency in all their languages.”

Something to definitely keep in mind when it comes to raising bilingual children, ¿no creen?

Now you see why it really should’ve come as no surprise that my daughter plays in English. This is the language she uses the most in that domain of her life. I guess it’s time to go figure out a way to go back to our bilingual playgroup!

How about your kids? In which areas of their lives do they use each of their languages? And, you?

{Image by  Guilherme Jófili }