HOW FLEXIBLE THE MIND OF A 4 YEAR OLD (BILINGUAL CHILD)

One of my most vivid memories of all time, was the re-introduction of our daughter, to her birthplace of Arequipa, Peru. She had left Peru when she was very, very, young and had returned with her mother two times between 1980 and 1983, for short visits. During her short time in Canada, she was raised with a mixture of English (me) and Spanish (her mother and aunt). On her visits to Peru, 99% of everything she was exposed to was in Spanish. She had just come from 9 months in Japan where she was exposed to yet again another language and culture. So at the age 4-1/2 years old it must have been very confusing for her to try and determine what the hell was going on, for most of the time.

Now here we are out of Japan, a short stopover in Edmonton and off to Arequipa, Peru. It must have been mind boggling.Even at my age I couldn’t always keep it straight. For example, one time I had to call an agency based in Montreal for some information I required. This in order to complete some inane form I was working on. I got on the phone, after a couple of rings a lady answered and starts speaking French to me. Somewhere my brain registered a foreign language and I promptly fell into a reply in Spanish! Very quickly she switched to English and the only thing I could think to say was “that’s better now eh?”

Now here we are in Peru. all of the family, or at least how ever many could fit into one greyhound size bus, were waiting for us at the airport. We got off, they all rushed past my outstretched arms, and circled in on our daughter. Oh well, I might as well go see about the bags. Once I got that organized I came back to join the crowd and could hear them talking. It was like “oh where’s Jim?” Deysi “he’s around here somewhere”, others “well we’ll see him at home”, “I get to hold the baby”. So, utterly gutted, I grabbed our 6 bags and trudged my way to the parking lot. Now is the good part!

For two weeks our girl never spoke one word of English, nor one word of Spanish! She nodded, pointed and made sounds in response to anything she was asked or anything that she wanted. Two weeks of silence! One day out of the blue, her mouth opens and she starts speaking Spanish like a native! No more English, nada! I was “gob smacked “! It was completely amazing that her young mind was so adaptable and flexible to learning. Somehow she had dredged up repressed memories of Spanish.

One final thing, on our return to Edmonton the same thing happened. It took her nearly two weeks to switch back to English and after she did, it was all she spoke from that time on!