Amharic school!

I was inspired by several of my friends to try to get together some sort of Amharic playschool for Maya so she can see that Tibby is not the only person in the universe who speaks Amharic. My friend G set up a Saturday playgroup for Lithuanian kids in Cairo. And she really inspired me and gave me lots of ideas.

So now I have set up an "Amharic play" group in Cairo. So far we are three families with five kids total. It is Maya with her nanny Tibby, two other adopted kids with their Ethiopian nanny B, and two kids from an Ethiopian expat family in Cairo with their mom. We had our first "play" yesterday at our house. I think it went relatively well, considering it is the first time and there is a wide age range (2-6) and that all the kids have differing levels of Amharic.

We did a butterfly (birabiro) theme. They talked about birabiros, listened to a birabiro song, did a birabiro craft that I prepared for them, drew birabiros, and danced around to Ethiopian music. They focused on learning the words for the colors birabiros could be and obviously learning the word for butterfly in Amharic.

Since I can't do the Amharic stuff, I decided to become responsible for organising the themes of the day and preparing the crafts. And the native Amharic speakers will do the actual language stuff. So the division of labour is working well.

The only thing I was upset about is that we are doing it during weekdays (since that is when Tibby can be there), so I am working during that time. I arranged to leave work early yesterday so I could be there for the first session, but had an urgent thing come up at work so I ended up missing all but the last few minutes of the play session. Drat! But it seemed that everyone had a pretty good time and all the kids participated to some degree.

It was really good for Maya. When I got home of course she immediately switched to English. But then she got mad because one of the other kids had her book and she asked for it back (in English). I told her to ask him in Amharic and she said: Feleku. Ehia Yeneno (I want that. It's mine) Wow!!! (OK please forgive my bad transliteration). But it is pretty major for me to see Maya speaking to another kid in Amharic.

Anyway, we are going to do next week's session in Zamalek at W's house. She suggested we review colors next week and try to do a session on shapes. So this non-Amharic speaker needs to get some ideas for a craft and project on how to do shapes in a fun way.

Linguistic feet!

Maya has been having some very interesting conversations recently. Today we were barefoot in the living room playing soccer before I left for work, and here is how the conversation went.

Maya: Mommy, I have Amarinya (Amharic) feet and you have English feet.
Me: Oh, really? You mean your feet are brown and mine are tan?
Maya: No. My feet Amarinya and you feet English.
Me: I see. Your feet speak Amarinya and my feet speak English?
Maya: (Smiles, stares into space)
Me: Well you speak Amarinya and English, so maybe you have one Amarinya foot and one English foot. And I speak English and Arabic. So maybe I have one English foot and one Arabic foot.
Maya: That's silly mommy.

Good news, sad news (for mommy)

So, a week or so ago I was talking with Tibby about Maya's Amharic. We were both lamenting that while Maya understood a LOT in Amharic, she was choosing to respond to Tibby in English most of the time. We weren't sure what her speaking skills really were, or whether her understanding was sort of passive. We decided that it was time to put little pressure on her to actually speak in Amharic.

So we had a little talk with Maya that she needed to actually speak in Amharic to Tibby, and not use English. And that it was OK if she makes mistakes, but that starting the next week, Tibby would no longer respond to her if she spoke in English.

Tibby also agreed to start working with Maya on how to ask how to say words in Amharic that she already knows in English but might not know in Amharic. (As in: How do you say 'XX' in amarinya?)

Maya was a little whiney and not too happy about this talk. But the very next day she actually started speaking with Tibby (almost) exclusively in Amharic. And she has continued all this week. And she is actually speaking much better than we had thought. I am so proud of her.

The sad news is that today when I was listening to Maya and Tibby speak, I realised I can't actually follow the conversation anymore. Previously, I could basically follow it with my own rudimentary knowledge and by listening to Maya's side of the conversation. But now, I can't follow what my daughter is saying anymore. Aaah! I better start working on improving MY Amharic!!

Arabic, again

Did I mention that Maya is getting seriously scary good at Arabic? She is like a language sponge right now. Today we ordered pizza for dinner. When the pizza delivery man came with the pizza, Miss Maya shouted "Izzayak" (How are You?) at him.

Then he asked her: "Ismik Eh?"

She said: "Maya".

For those of you who haven't figured it out already, "Ismik Eh" means "What is your name?"

She answered his question without anyone translating for her. How does she know what it means? I don't get it.

OK, in all fairness, Maya's Amharic and English are both way stronger than her Arabic. She has words and phrases in Arabic, but I don't think she has anywhere near the level of comprehension. But still. We never made any effort to teach her a single word of Arabic. I know she hears it at the park every day, and she hears me speak it on the phone. But no one that I know of actually speaks Arabic directly to her. I am really surprised by how much she is picking up.

Oh yeah, did I mention that when she wants a kiss, she asks for a "Bousa" (the Arabic word). She knows both the Amharic word (Samie) and the English word, but she is a little rebel and she prefers to ask in Arabic.

Lovin' the glottal stop

Miss Maya has surprised us in the past week by picking up a handful of Arabic words, phrases and sounds, much to our amusement and despite the fact that she has no caregivers who speak to her in Arabic!

Her exposure to Arabic is limited to hearing other parents and nannies talking to their kids at the park or at her music and art classes, even though the classes themselves are in English. She also hears me talking on the phone in Arabic constantly due to my job. I probably get phone calls roughly twice an evening in Arabic and a couple times a day on weekends. As a result, Maya thinks that Arabic is the language of the telephone. And in fact I rarely speak on the phone in any other language, unless relatives call.

So the other day Maya picked up her toy phone and had a conversation on it entirely in Arabic. It was a cross between ordering groceries on the telephone and barking instructions.

It was like this: "Allo, Allo! Fih eh? La'a. La'a. Ummmm. Malesh. Kull Kwayyis!"

That translates to: "Hello Hello. What do you have? No. No. Ummmm. Never mind. It's all good."

I knew she had some Arabic words. But this was practically a full conversation. It was really totally unexpected. Anyway, her most recent Arabic word is La'a, which means "no" and has a glottal stop in it (the apostrophe marks the glottal stop). In Egypt, people emphasize the glottal stop to make the word "no" sound more vehement. And Maya is loving it. In fact she has adopted it in English as well. So now instead of saying just "No" in English, Maya says: "No'o" with a great big glottal stop in the middle. It is hilarious!

Anyway, for those of you who have no idea what a glottal stop sounds like in Arabic, I will try to catch it on video so you can hear. But I can't do it now because she's going to sleep. So it'll have to wait!