Sunday, March 29, 2020

Life in a Bilingual Household

Where I am sheltering in place, I live with my daughter, son-in-law and three children. My son-in-law was born in France and raised both there and also here in the Bay Area. In recent years, the whole family has obtained French citizenship so they are all dual citizens now. They also are all bilingual.

They recently returned from five months in Bordeaux, where the children attended French school and perfected their language skills. This morning, six-year-old Daisy and I were the first two up. Over a breakfast of granola, she told me about her first day of school in France last August:

"I was scared. I was shy. But the very first day I made two friends. They could only speak a tiny bit of English. So I spoke French."

***

Me, I understand very little French. But I love the sound of it. So living in a home where everyone flows effortlessly back and forth between English and French is wonderful for me. It is like living in a home of beautiful music. You don't need to know the words.

No comments: