Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Babylonian family babbles
We know all about expat life and mixed marriages. France is my 4th country and for my South African husband his 5th. We met in the Netherlands, moved to the Sultanate of Oman, moved again to the UK and finally said the expat life goodbye and decided to settle down in France. Although we try very hard to integrate into the French community we will never speak French at home as our first language. Our children are brought up tri lingual and this gives every now and then Babylonian babbles at the dinner table. Especially if we have personal guests this can be a bit overwhelming. Pauwl speaks English, as he was brought up in South Africa and English is his mother tongue, I speak Dutch and the kids learn French at school. As parents we try to be as consistent as possible. The girls can switch very easy from one language to another, even in one sentence or speaking at mom and dad at the same time. But we see that whenever they can not find a word in the language they are speaking at that moment, they will loan a word from an other language.
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