dual language school

the other day, i was talking to another father who lives in our building. his wife is israeli, and he recognized that i was speaking hebrew with aviyah. i asked him if they or she were also trying to speak hebrew with their daughter. he said that they were not going to try to introduce hebrew until they knew that everything was okay with her first language, english.

that made sense. i'd also heard before that sometimes second language acquisition can move smoothly when learners have mastered their primary language. in some ways this makes sense, and i definitely feel that because i understand how english works, and i can understand the similarities and differences between the two languages.

at the same time, i can totally see that it just makes sense to teach a second language this early. the whole world is kind of a question, right? i mean, to young children, the whole day is exploring and testing and trying to figure out what things are, how they work, what might happen next. in some ways, language is a natural extension of that. we learn to infer and predict and analyze before we even have words, and we definitely try to express what we're thinking before we even have words. at root, our words are abstract translations of the things we actually think or feel, right? at root, our thoughts and feelings are just chemical reactions in our body?

sometimes, i get worried to see if aviyah is developing her english well. i want to teach her hebrew, but i always want to check in with samantha or the teachers at her school to make sure that they think her language is going okay and moving forward because i definitely don't want this to ever get in the way. i really do want to continue learning and speaking hebrew with aviyah for a bunch of reasons, but i definitely don't want it to slow her down from developing or anything.

when i was in israel, i definitely saw that the israeli children have so many more supports and their hebrew is so clearly better than my hebrew, too. i mean, it makes sense, right? in the same way that we are surrounded by english here, on television, in stores, in our building, on the street. and i definitely know that her hebrew is behind their hebrew. i mean, i was talking with some 5 year olds and i was kinda embarrassed because i couldn't follow all of them.

(at one point, i was like, "oh, i don't know, maybe ask your mommy." i don't know what the little boy was asking me, but i figured he'd either ask him mom and it would make sense, or he'd figure out ok, this dude can't hang.)

i also know that her hebrew is behind her english. she doesn't struggle nearly as much as she did before, and she's actually got a bunch of words that she uses. but she does forget some words she knows, and she doesn't flow anywhere near as much as she does in english. i'd say her hebrew is about at 70% of her english. that might be high, i don't know. i do know she speaks always in hebrew to me, nad sometimes she sputters or pauses but she clearly knows to speak to me in hebrew even if she is in the middle of a conversation with somebody else in english.

in an older video, she lapsed into some english when she just wanted to say something and didn't want to wait. she doesn't do that so much anymore. she's pretty much able to say what she wants to say, kind of like i was when i was further back, because the truth is you only need a certain amount of words to say most things. then, you get stuck on specific objects or specific actions and you an learn the word in context.

dora b'ivrit

דורה Sticky Tape
Uploaded by xxvirtualxx

dora is actually really popular for young kids in israel. it airs on hop!, the major children's channel. they actually redub dora so that she is teaching english to hebrew speakers. dora and boots speak hebrew, but the many of the friends and characters speak english. dora translates the words from english to hebrew for boots, just like she does for spanish in the american dora.

דורה Koki
Uploaded by xxvirtualxx

דורה Wishes
Uploaded by xxvirtualxx

דורה Ice Cream
Uploaded by xxvirtualxx

g'dolim

so, aviyah is super super way way into dora. it's kinda crazy. i mean, i think it's something that maybe i would generally feel like "ahhh!", but i actually think it's really cute and i totally think that dora's a really good role model for a young girl. i mean, here are a whole bunch of parents who i think are really really annoyed with dora, and i guess i can understand. it's like any kid fad, right? a toy or a hula hoop or a boy. i think it can get tired after a while.

but the thing is is that she watches dora on the computer in hebrew, so dora was always really interesting to me too because i would learn hebrew along with aviyah. i mean, i even downloaded a few episodes on to my ipod for me to watch, and there were a few times i was on the subway and somebody would look over and be like, really? really? you're watching dora?

anyways, she's like so into it that each of us all have our own dora names. so aviyah is dora, and i'm boots, and mommy is benny (or now maybe mrs. marquez), and yalei is tico. (the extended family has names too: mommom is isa, papa is chocolate tree, and so on.) and she's pretty serious about it. i mean, first of all, when people meet her now, she's all disgruntled when i say her name is aviyah. she does settle for me saying, "her name is aviyah, but she really really likes dora, and if it's okay, if you can call her dora." and she smiles and she's very happy.

so, anyway, when we were in israel, i lost our umbrella stroller, but one of my friends was really nice and she borrowed a stroller we could use from one of her friends. when we went to pick up the stroller, there were two little girls from the family. the older girl was about 4 1/2 or 5 years old. when i introduced aviyah as kind of dora, she was very clear that she did not like dora at all. she didn't mean aviyah, she was just saying that dora was not cool at all. i asked her why and she said, "g'dolim sonim et dora. raq k'tanim ohavim et dora." big kids hate dora, she said. only little kids like dora.

then her mom explained that it was so crazy because even a month before, she was still so into dora, but now, all of a sudden, she totally did not like dora even at all. it was so sad. aviyah was like, why doesn't she like dora? how could she not like dora? and i tried to explain to her that sometimes little kids can be a little rough and she's just a little bit confused because dora is way cool. and she was okay with it, but it was so sad because it made me think about how even though she's so into dora now, not even that she won't always be into dora, which is natural, but that one day she'll specifically decided not to like dora anymore because of peer pressure, you know. it's like she could totally still like dora, but then other kids will make fun of her (and it's true, my students make fun of me when i say something about dora because of aviyah) and that's so sad, i think.