Small (or Not So Small) Successes

Today when I dropped M off at school, I got a nice surprise from her teacher.  M walked into the classroom proudly telling her teacher what she brought in her launche (snack)--it happened to be something I could be proud of too, a whole carrot and a whole apple--and when she walked to her cubby to put away her things, the teacher turned to me and said something to the effect of: Holy cow, her Portuguese is so good! 

I was in awe.  It is hard for me to know, really know, how well the kids understand and speak.  When I ask Brazilians what they think, I usually get a vague answer or one that seems more appeasing than sincere.  As a foreigner who has not master the language either, I can't tell.  I know they get along fine in school.  I know they have friends and play, they know when they are supposed to bring back their library book or when they need to take a new supply to school, so they must be getting at least most of it.  But how do they speak?  Are they like their mom and communicate fine, but grammatically incorrectly?  Do they sound native?  Can they pronounce Portuguese better than DaddyHealy and I could ever dream because they learned it young?  I never know.

Certainly we've known for a while that D has a really good handle on the language.  But he has a few benefits.  He's older, he's quite intelligent, and he can read (which I think goes a long way in learning a language).  He's also at the age where they are teaching the basics of Portuguese grammar in school.  So he's learning Portuguese at his intellectual level.  Brazilian kids in the class have bigger vocabularies, to be sure, but he's learning the equivalent to phonics, spelling, and reading in Portuguese right along with his classmates.  When I help him with his homework, I notice he structures his sentences well, though at times uses verbs in the wrong tense (so do I!)  He constantly corrects the rest of us, mainly in pronunciation.  Many times he can help us with vocabulary if it's something that relates to his life (games, school supplies, food, etc).  But again, I wonder, how is his pronunciation?  Would a Brazilian know he was a foreigner?  I've asked 2 different teachers if they thought he needed any more Portuguese language classes and they practically laughed at the absurdity of the idea.  I guess that says a lot.

But M has been a bit of a different story.  She's been our hold out, to an extent.  Over the past 18 months I've heard her use a lot of Portuguese words but not so many sentences. Is she just that way because I'm around?  When she does speak Portuguese around me the grammar seems mixed up, maybe out of order.  But she's 4!  Many 4-year-olds don't speak correctly in their native language.   In fact, there are several things we're still working with her on in English, so it wouldn't be surprising for her to make some errors in Portuguese, even if it were a native language to her.  So how is her Portuguese when you compare it to her peers?  Just recently she told me one of her classmates mom had no idea she was American.  She thought M was Brazilian.  I wasn't sure if that was a kind parent playing the game and acting surprised or not.  But when M's teacher told me today she was pretty much floored by how good M's Portuguese is...well, that took the cake.  We've accomplished something here!  That's exciting! 

We came with so many goals; personal, professional, spiritual.  Some have been met, some have evolved, some we're still working on.  But foreign language fluency....to me that is a fabulous gift that I feel so blessed to have been able to share with our children. What does it mean in the long run?  Will they remember Portuguese in 2 years?  In 10 years? When they enter the working world?  Should we try to keep it up?  Make efforts to preserve and enhance it?  Will Portuguese be useful to them in their future?  Should we take this knowledge of a Latin-based language and use it as a spring board for Spanish (and in the process quite possibly losing most of the Portuguese)?  Will their English suffer from the addition of this language in formative years (for example, the ABC chart that hangs in M's classroom has a picture of a cow under V for vaca and an apple under M for maçã) Will they suffer phonetically in English?  Will the knowledge of how other languages work actually help them even in English?  And then I ask, does any of that really matter? 

We've planted a seed.  The seed will grow.  It may grow in ways we never expected (learning Chinese?)  It may grow in ways that would make us proud (using the Latin background while studying in seminary?)   It may grow in ways we regret--at least a little (moving back to Brazil with their own families later in life?)  But I am certain they know what it's like to be different.  They know what it's like to be educationally challenged, to not be the top of the class, or to struggle.  They know how hard it is to not be understood.  Hopefully they have developed sympathy for people they will encounter later in life...whether that's a peer than is confined to a wheelchair or the person in front of them at Subway slowly trying to cobble together enough English to order a sandwich.  I hope they have compassion for others.  I am most interested in this lesson.  God did not create us all equal.  He created us all special.