Preserving The Mother Tongue
Written by Helena Shimeles
I used to have grandiose notions about how we’d raise our future kids. I’ll spare you the details but when Eskender and I eventually did become parents, 98.3% of those ideas went “poof!” - out the window. Fortunately, one of the things that did stick, was teaching our kids our native language, Amharic. Perhaps what influenced this deep desire was my own insecurity with speaking it. Having left Ethiopia as a baby, my command of Amharic is shaky and everything I’ve learned has been self-taught, over time.
The thought of not passing Amharic onto the next generation used to make me sad. Then years ago, my parents’ interracial neighbours (a Philippino husband and French-Canadian wife) made me believers. I remember watching skeptically as the wife would jabber away exclusively in French to their infant son. Over time, their children became fully fluent in French...it was fascinating.
That experience made a lasting impression on me and when we were expecting our first baby in 2015, Eskender, who is Amharic proficient, was fully on board to become the dominant Amharic speaker in our home. We weren’t sure if we could carry through on this commitment as we rarely spoke to each other in Amharic, let alone expect to consistently practice it with our future kids.
When Gelila was born, Eskender started speaking to her in Amharic from day 1, kicking things off in the hospital with Melkam Lidet! In those early sleep-deprived days when your head doesn’t feel screwed on right and you can’t remember when you last showered, it’s a wonder that we stayed consistent with encouraging Amharic in the household!
Gelila, now 3.5 years old, certainly understands Amharic better than she can speak it. But every now and then she’ll surprise us with a perfectly executed phrase. Whenever she does this, we try to act cool, while we shoot each other “OMG” looks excitedly. Amharic words are finally naturally starting to roll out!
The adventure continues with our 2nd baby Elijah, born in 2019. We have already seen early evidence of Amharic comprehension with him.
He’ll wave or blow kisses when we say Selam bel and he’ll receive whatever you hand him when he’s told Enka. My personal favourite, he’ll clap his hands when asked to Cheb Cheb. But man, he’ll never ‘perform’ for us on command or when I’m primed with my iPhone. I guess babies will be babies.
There are numerous social and cognitive benefits of multilingualism. It’s true, multilingual brains are higher performing in the areas of memory, creative problem solving, enhanced learning agility, decision-making and the list goes on.
But, I think most people will be curious to know the “how.” The truth is, there is no silver bullet. We are making up a lot of this as we go, and we are still unsure about the extent to which we will succeed. Our kids are still very young; The next few years will be critical in terms of retention and helping both kids go from comprehension to conversational Amharic. I think the intention is what matters. Everyone is going to have their own tips for teaching a second (or third!) language to their children. Tell us in the comments below what is working for your family. Here is what is working for us (so far):
Keep Singing
This is an easy one. We started early with singing well-known children’s songs, in Amharic. Feel free to enjoy a rough-cut sample of Amharic songs that Eskender and I are compiling. Tell us what you think in the comments below! Should we keep making more content like this?
Keep it Fun!
Unsurprisingly, your child will likely resist practicing the non-dominant language at home in a high-pressure environment. We keep things light by playing games and quizzes. For example, “Eye Spy” helped Gelila learn the colours in Amharic and other basic words.
Embed into your lifestyle
We believe that vocab is best built around your daily routine, not necessarily in a classroom environment. If your family’s thing is sports, find ways to align language learning with your family’s interests. That way, you and your family are finding ways to sustain engagement. We’ve found that these many small actions ultimately add up.
It would be remiss of me if I gave the impression that everything is hunky dory when it comes to passing on Amharic to our kids. Nope. Here are a few of the setbacks we’ve had along the way:
Language mix-up
At first, Gelila could not differentiate and categorize the different languages. Also, it took her time to figure out who speaks which language. When she started daycare, we provided her caregivers with a list of her Amharic words such as Te-to (bottle), Da-bo (bread), Weh-ha (Water), Cha-ma (shoes).
Extra patience required
As Amharic proficiency lags behind Gelila’s English comprehension, we often need to slow down when it comes to more complex conversations with her in Amharic. This is especially the case for “teachable moments”. When her eyes glaze over, that’s her dad’s cue to pause and to ensure she understands not just what he’s saying but also the meaning of what he’s saying. Language is such a funny thing. It also takes great focus to resist the urge to default to English just to get your point across quicker. This leads me to the next challenge...
This Mama stays out of the way
In the early days, it was hard for me not to jump in and translate Amharic into English. Sometimes I wasn’t even aware that I was doing it. Eskender would say, “Gelila, qes belesh wetetshin tetchi” and then I’d call out, “be careful with that cup of milk baby!” Oopsies! Eskender would groan every time. The non-dominant speaker (in this case me) needs to stay out of the way sometimes. Give your child time to process the words and ask questions if she doesn’t understand a certain expression. This means getting comfortable with long pauses and potential confusion.
Raising an Amharic speaking child in the Western world can sometimes feel like a lonely battle. There are so few outlets, tools, and cultural institutions to turn to. Fortunately, there has been better content developing online. Our message is: don’t feel discouraged. We view language learning as a marathon, as a treasure hunt, helping our children to discover new ways of self-expression; offering them a gateway to learn more about their roots, whenever it is that they feel ready to do so.
Follow Helena on Instagram @shimelesmekonnen & stay tuned for updates on when our new show Selam Selam goes live.
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