"Ich bin all done mit meins"

One of the fascinating things about working at a language-immersion preschool is getting to observe my students negotiate two languages in their speaking. Whereas most students began the year speaking mostly English, we're now at the point of the year where they're starting to mix more, especially the children who have extra-curricular German connections (family, friends, etc). Here are some of my favorite quotes as of late:

"We decorated our Tannenbaum"

"I can das alleine machen"

[I can do it by myself]

"I need Hilfe"

"Schau mal! Ich bin Beauty!"

"Kann ich dir einen Hug geben?"

[Can I give you a hug?]

and, my personal favorite,

"Ich bin all done mit meins"

[I'm all done with mine]

For those kids with little background in the German language, the first words being incorporated are nouns (Tannenbaum=Christmas tree; Hilfe=help) and adjectives (alleine=alone, by myself). For those who come from bilingual homes, you can see here some more complicated grammatical structures that default to German grammar, but include English vocabulary.

I did study second language acquisition a bit in college, especially as I prepared to teach English abroad, but more informally, not in a formal course. I feel, though, that the richest knowledge I gained on the topic was from the very experience of being a second language learner, negotiating two languages in my brain, for myself. And I remember gradually moving from fitting German words into English grammar to using German grammar primarily, and substituting English words for the vocabulary I had not yet learned. Grammar is, obviously, more complicated than individual vocabulary, so it's an interesting shift to observe, both in oneself and in others.

I would venture to say that it is precisely the grammar the prevents us from picking up languages as quickly when we're older than when we're younger. By the time we are adults, so much of our thinking is rooted in the structure of our language that it is so uncomfortable to try to switch to a different structure of grammar. So, we start by putting individual elements into the structure we know, and work gradually ... oh so painfully, really ... to switch scaffolds. Some of us never do.

Kids are like sponges when they learn anything. When we think about language, they are still developing their own native language skills, so, as far as they're concerned, there's plenty of room for whatever there is to be learned. Some of our students are even learning three languages at 3 and 4 years old. What a gift! And what a fascinating process to take part in, to support, and to observe.

I will have to double-check some of my intuitions stated here with some of the literature, but my intuitions don't usually come from the far ends of some distant imaginative space in my head ...