Update on kids learning Spanish

In late February, I wrote the one-month language update…now here’s the 2.5 month report:

Bottom line, all the kids are speaking great--Foster and Susana very rarely say anything in English, even to me. As I said before, since Elliott arrived with a good base, it's harder to say how much he has added, but I know it’s a lot, complete with a splash of the lilting Bolivian intonations. Thanks to schoolwork he can read and write reasonably close to grade level in Spanish which is major. And he’s making 80% or above on all of his work at school so he's holding his own.

Susana can communicate plenty well, and isn’t afraid to talk, but she still seems mightily challenged with much of her grammar. I’m not trying to be overly critical, but she’s not proving the “kids learn easily and flawlessly” theory. By contrast, Foster seems to speak quite naturally and his pronunciation is good—although he will make up words when he needs to. Maybe he is just at the ripest age for this experiment.

Foster’s progress also jumps out at us because he has come so far. At one month I reported that he was beginning to spit out some halting but impressive sentences, like “I need paper for library”, "I'm going to sleep in the middle."


Now, this is what I jotted down last night while he was playing by himself with a few cars and the Fisher-Price Parking Garage (which he calls “the city”):

“Mamá, vas a ver como se salta la ciudad…Sabes, casi entró [el carro] pero no ha entrado, ha dado una vuelta. Se entró rectisimo y mira como se quedó….. ‘Este si me dolió….Quiero ir hacia abajo, No se puede ir, se ha trancado en este cosa…."

Translation:

“Mom, look at how [the car] jumps over the city. You know, it almost went in but it didn’t go in, it turned around. It went in super straight and look how it ended up. [Now giving voice to the car stuck in the elevator:] “This sure hurts….I want to go down, but it won’t go, it’s stuck on this thing….”

Amazing!

Foster also reached a milestone this week when he finally said “Tengo sueno” (I’m sleepy) for the first time instead of his literal “Yo soy sueno” (“I am sleep" or something like ”sleep is an integral part of me”…the same way you would say “I am a Tennessean” or “I am blonde”…but definitely not the way you say I’m sleepy!).

Speaking of which…yo soy sueno, too. Good night everyone!