Notes from the Road

We are coming to the end of our stay with my side of the family. As always it has been good for our children's English and, more importantly, their relationships with the extended family.

K's new phrase for the trip is "pulling someone's leg". She keeps throwing it into conversation since she learned it from Grandmama last week.

I have heard the following conversation twice, once with a cousin and once with a child met in a store:

"What's your brother's name?"
"I can't tell you, because it's a Czech name and you won't understand it."
"What's Czech?"
"His name is MAREK. Do you understand?"

'Katka' is apparently not a Czech name in K's mind. I'm not clear on how the distinction works.

Marek has started saying his first two words on this trip: first "tam" (over there) and then "bye bye". He is a little warmer to other people this time but he is definitely a more reserved child than his sister. He likes to engage with other people from the safety of mommy's arms.

He did allow himself to be babysat last week for long enough for the Slovak and I to go see Les Miserables, which was fantastic. We hardly ever see movies in the theater and this one was the first in many years that didn't have subtitles (or dubbing).

In addition to buying clothes for the next year (the exchange rate is favorable for us shopping here) we also stocked up on some chapter books to read with K. We got the first five Little House books, the first two Magic Treehouse books, How to Train Your Dragon, Matilda, and maybe something else I've forgotten. We have plans to buy one or two more to read to her from our Kindle.

After hearing the soundtrack to Les Miserables in the car, K demanded to be told the story (the parts about Cosette and an abbreviated explanation of Valjean and why Javert is after him) and extracted from us a promise that she can watch the movie when we get the DVD. This morning she drew me a picture of a castle located on a cloud with Cosette, Valjean and Thenardier (a.k.a. the girl, her new Apo and the cheating man).

Five is such a great age. :)

Consequences of Multilingual Parenting that Nobody Tells You About

In our family, we have a Mama and an Apo. In fact, in our family we refer to all mothers as Mamas and all fathers as Apos, no matter how other families refer to themselves. Our Apo occasionally refers to me as "Mamka" or "Mami", and I occasionally refer to him as "your father" (usually in the sense of "WHEN IS YOUR FATHER GOING TO __?"). K goes back and forth between "Mama" and "Mommy" (sounds very like Mami) for me, and sticks to Apo for the Slovak.

Incidentally, "Apo" is a Slovakified version of the Hungarian word for daddy, which is what the Slovak calls HIS father (his parents are Apo and Aňu). It is pretty much only used in eastern Slovakia where he is from, so people in Prague and western Slovakia are as baffled upon hearing it as anyone else. The only time it gets instant recognition is from someone from eastern Slovakia who also uses/used it at home... Czechs call their fathers "táta", "tatínek" and variations thereof, and Slovaks typically call their fathers "ocko" and variations thereof.

"Mama", on the other hand, is pretty adaptable. It's "máma" (slight pronunciation difference) in Czech, or more often "maminka", or "mamka" or "mamička" in Slovak. "Mami" fits in either language. Thus K never raises any eyebrows calling me Mama or Mommy wherever we are.

So it took our daughter a while to pick up on the existence of other words to refer to parents. For example, for a long time she didn't know what people meant when they talked about her "daddy", because we never use the word. Eventually, she figured out that "daddy" and "tatínek" are different words for Apo that other people sometimes use, but she never said them herself, or at least not to refer to her father.

Recently that has started to change...

For one thing, K is referring to us sometimes as "moje maminka" and "můj tatínek" or "můj táta" (instead of "můj Apo"), especially when talking to her Slovak grandparents this week. I can't remember if she has called Apo táta to his face or not, but he definitely tries to discourage it, because he is called Apo.

Our last day in the US this year was Father's Day, and I'm pretty sure people were asking K about her "dad" and talking about dads and moms, because later that day or very soon after she said something about "mom and dad". This caught our attention, because of all the possible parental names, K has NEVER said "mom" or "dad". She clearly got it from Outside Influences!

Soon after that, once we were home, she mentioned her "mom and dad" to me again, and I asked,

"Do you mean Mama and Apo?"
"No, MOM and DAD."
"But we're your Mom and Dad."
"No, you're Mommy and Apo!"
"Um, well, who are your Mom and Dad then? Where are they now?"
"Mom is at work and Dad is at home." (points back to her bedroom)
"Can you ask him to come out here?"

K then went back to her bedroom, Dad first refused to come out, then came after all and K pointed to the floor, explaining that Dad is very small. And apparently invisible.

Are you getting this?

MY CHILD HAS IMAGINARY PARENTS.

And it doesn't end there, oh no. An imaginary "tatínek" has also recently made an appearance, clearly differentiated from the real Apo.

That makes five of us so far.

I keep waiting for K to claim her OTHER parents are much nicer, less demanding, or in some other way entirely better than her REGULAR parents. I could handle that. Especially if the other parents would go to work and clean the house for us so we could spend more time goofing off with our kids.


EDIT TO ADD: I totally forgot about "MApo"! When K was learning to talk, for a long time she referred to me as "Mama" and Apo as "MApo". Which made him kind of mad. Like he's just a substandard version of me. Eventually she learned to say Apo and use it for the correct person, but she continued - and continues - to say MApo sometimes for either or both of us. At least occasionally it seems like she's just forgetting or changing her mind mid-word as to what she wants to say.

But recently - on the plane back from US, so the same day that "Mom and Dad" were first mentioned, she showed us a picture she drew. We are her favorite drawing subjects, especially Apo as he is artistically interesting with his short hair, glasses and beard. This one, however, had glasses, a beard and long hair. (Long hair is my only distinguishing characteristic.)

We asked about it, and she confirmed that we were seeing long hair, glasses and a beard. We looked at each other and said "...that must be MApo!"

So I guess that's six parents at last count...

Not a Duck

My daughter has always enjoyed playing around with names. I still remember when she realized that Apo and I have other names as well. She seemed to consider it the same as how she also has two names: the English and Slovak versions of her name. "I Katie and Katka! You Melissa and Mama!"

We use the same full version of her name everywhere - Katarína - but encourage English speakers who have trouble with the nickname - Katka - to call her Katie instead. I used to call her Katie myself, but once she started talking she showed a clear preference for Katka, so I decided to respect that...

So far fairly simple, but once you get further into nicknames it gets kind of hectic. Katarína (Katherine in English, Kateřina in Czech) comes with a ton of short versions. Katka becomes Katuška, Katuš, Kaťula, Kaťulka, Káťa, Káča, Kačka, Kačena, Kačenka...and those are just the common ones!

We use a range of nicknames (often entirely unrelated to her actual name) but usually Katka or Katuška. The most common nickname for little girls named Kateřina in Czech, though, is Kačenka. And by most common I mean people start calling you that automatically whether you like it or not. It's very Czech instead of Slovak, though, and the Slovak doesn't like it, so we never called K Kačenka at home...and therefore she never heard it until we moved six months ago.

I didn't really think about it as an issue until her teachers at the new school asked me what they should call K (they wanted something more little-girly than plain Katka) - "She doesn't even look up when we call her Kačenka!!" I explained that she probably didn't realize that was supposed to be her name, and explained that we usually use Katka or Katuška. They call her Katuška and related names now, which works out great for everyone.

Since then I've been paying attention and have noticed that K will actually answer to anything - EXCEPT Kačenka! Sometimes she ignores it completely, and other times she insists, "I NOT Kačenka!"

Yesterday I asked her if her name was Kačenka and she said, "I NOT Kačenka! Kačenka is kačenka. Duck. I not a duck."

This was the point where I fell on the floor laughing, because kačenka DOES mean duck, and that's the reason the Slovak doesn't like it: why would you call your little girl Duck? He's never mentioned that to K, but she apparently came to the same conclusion herself!

Our awesome little Katuška is not a duck...