Mother Tongue

Today, my last day at work before going on maternity leave (yay!), I went out to lunch with 3 girls from work -- two that I work with now, and my former boss who is currently still on maternity leave with her second child. Since all three of them have small children in the daycare age, children and daycare and school and such things were a natural topic of conversation.

Part of the conversation ended up being about language, as we discussed my former boss's interest in sending her children to the International English School in Linköping, and our intention to have our kids start in daycare and Swedish school as early as possible since we speak English at home. I was inspired to write by the fact that another of my co-lunching co-workers had a hard time understanding why we intend to speak English at home with our child -- not just me, but even Fredrik.

The concept of a native language, or a mother tongue, is typically defined in a far too narrow way, in my opinion. What would you say the definition of "native language" is? Or "mother tongue"? Are they even the same thing? Is it whatever language you learned first? Is it the language you speak most often? Is it the one that you're "best at" -- and what does that mean? The most important question is: does one communicate best in one's native language? I contend that the definition ought to be the other way around -- the language in which one communicates best should be the definition of "mother tongue," and contrary to the typical definition of these concepts, a person can have more than one. That which determines what a person's mother tongue is is highly dependent upon the situation. A person's mother tongue can change throughout their lifetime, or even throughout the day.

Fredrik was born in Sweden of Swedish parents, and the first language he learned was Swedish. He started learning English at a young age, a phenomenon that is simply unavoidable in this country, even if you try to cover your eyes and ears. But he played video games in English and was most likely exposed to a bit more of the world at an earlier age than other people might be, and this, coupled with a natural gift for languages, made him the type of person who could correct his English teachers in school. He knew the words, he knew the grammar, and he could read and write fluently. But of course, no one would call English his native language or mother tongue just because of that -- so ABILITY and correctness in a language is clearly not the deciding factor.

I was born in America of American parents, and spoke no other language but English for the first 24 years of my life. I studied a bit of French in high school and took my language requirement in ancient Greek at St. Olaf, but I was never able to have more than the very simplest of 5-minute conversations in French, and given that I never met a 2500-year old Greek, those skills were nothing to brag about, either. There is no controversy in claiming that English was definitely the only contender for Lori's native language.

But then something happened in the year 2000. Fredrik started calling me on the phone. Within a few minutes, his somewhat clumsy accent gave way to a less nervous, more fluent and phonetically correct English. Within a couple of phone calls, he spoke well enough that one could accurately say that he spoke American English and not British English (most Swedes cannot claim to speak either, since the distinction requires a level of consistency with relatively subtle differences that is simply too difficult to achieve for a speaker with little practice). But this also shows that formal correctness with a language is not what makes you native or even fluent -- the words and the grammar were clearly in his head, dormant enough to require -- and simultaneously good enough to make sufficient -- a short warm-up period.

In 2001 we became a couple and started spending gobs of money and time and plane tickets. In 2002 I moved here. In 2003 I started studying an intense course in Swedish, and by the time 2004 began I spoke fluently. Despite my need to learn Swedish in order to become a productive member of society, we have always spoken exclusively English to each other at home. We tried a few times to speak Swedish in order to help me learn, but it just didn't work. We became angry with each other, we misunderstood each other, we felt strange and foreign and not like ourselves. This is despite the fact that I spoke the language fluently, and Fredrik had spoken it since he took his first steps. We made a discovery: a relationship can have a mother tongue. The mother tongue of our relationship was clearly English, and we were suddenly transported into some other strange, unfamiliar, uncomfortable relationship when we tried to speak Swedish.

We discovered something else: people have opinions about these things, and they're not afraid to butt their noses into other people's business. (Just as a side note and a clarification: I do NOT mean that my co-worker was irritating or nosy today; just want to make that clear.) Despite the fact that I was the best student in my Swedish class, became fluent in everyday situations after a few months and was more than ready for the Swedish world by the time the course was over, people still wondered why we didn't speak Swedish at home. They insisted on grounds such as "Lori would learn faster" or "It just doesn't make sense since you live in Sweden" and god knows what else. There are people who STILL don't understand that we can speak English at home and protest that this can affect my ability to "learn the language" -- and yet these people seem to agree that I speak Swedish so well and without an accent that they didn't even know I wasn't Swedish until someone said so. Most people understand when we explain that we were together for three years before I was able to have a simple conversation in Swedish and that our relationship is very dependent upon the ability to express ourselves on a very high and academic level, and that by the time I was able to express myself on that level in Swedish, there was little point in shaking things up at home. Those that don't understand that explanation usually get it after the following example: if a Swedish couple moves to America, do we really expect them to start speaking English at home just because of geography? No, of course not.

So now that we've established the concept of our relationship having English as its mother tongue, what about Fredrik? He went from being a normal Swede -- a person who speaks Swedish almost exclusively, even if Swedes are exposed to a good deal of English on a daily basis -- to being a person who spoke only English at home (and sometimes Swedish, sometimes English at work, as he started working quite a bit with Asian customers). Is it really possible that this drastic change does not affect a person's "mother tongue"? Again, I think most people see mother tongue or native language as something that gets cemented during your childhood, but I contend that that is simply not the case.

Ask yourself how many times Fredrik has said "I love you." Now ask yourself how many times he has said "Jag älskar dig." Unless his relationship with his co-workers is a lot more sensitive than I've imagined, his quotient of "I love you" to "Jag älskar dig" is astronomical after 8 years of having English as his household language. This goes for almost any expression of feelings, emotions, or vulnerability. It certainly extends into other areas as well -- topics such as household chores, cats, politics, pregnancy, etc. are to varying degrees more often discussed in our household than they probably are at Fredrik's workplace. There are several possible consequences of this. One is that he might be just as good at talking about such a topic in English as he is in Swedish. Another possibility is that he's just as BAD at speaking about the topic in both languages -- there can be quite a bit of interference when there's a 50/50 shot of coming up with the right word in your head at the right time. And the other possibility is, of course, that he is better able to discuss such a topic in English, since it is more often discussed at home than it is at work.

The same phenomenon applies to me. I speak Swedish at my place of work, so my fluency in work-related conversations is much better if the conversation is conducted in Swedish. A few weeks ago I had to help a guy from our Stockholm office solve a problem with a test run. He's originally from Scotland, and has been in Sweden for 4 years or so. But it simply wasn't an option for us to speak English to each other while trying to solve the problem. We're both fluent enough in Swedish and so used to using it when talking about telephone hardware and builds and fixtures and test software and everything else that goes into our job that speaking English simply slowed us down; we lost too much time having to translate in our heads. And then there are certain topics that I never encountered before moving to Sweden, so my ability to talk about them in English is next to zero. I still have a hard time translating the word "besiktning" in a way that satisfies me. But that's because I never bought a brand new house in the U.S., nor do we have to get our cars inspected every year in the rigorous manner that is required in Sweden. I got my teaching degree in Sweden, so certain pedagogical concepts -- especially the ones that are related to Swedish school laws and procedures -- just do not have translations in the readily available part of my brain's storage. Hell, they might not even have translations in the dusty, locked-away parts, either -- what is "läroplan" in English? That's practically an unanswerable question; it is one thing in England and another in Ireland and a most likely non-existent or state-by-state thing in the U.S., none of which I know the word for because I was not trained to be a teacher in any of those places.

So what is my native language? What is Fredrik's mother tongue? Does it really make sense to say that Lori's mother tongue is English, period, end of discussion, if there are situations in which I struggle to speak English and throw in a bunch of Swedish words because, when it comes right down to it, my thoughts are in Swedish when I'm in those situations? Is Fredrik's native language Swedish simply because that's the one he learned first, even if there are certain areas in which he has participated in countless discussions in English and perhaps never discussed the topic in Swedish, and would therefore surely find himself having a good deal of difficulty doing so if the occasion ever arose?

This brings us, then, to the new bit that people are having difficulty understanding. We've decided that our kid needs to start in daycare as soon as they are allowed -- 12 months -- so that they can start learning Swedish as soon as possible. By this we mean that we intend to continue speaking only English at home, even with our kid. And people don't quite get this -- and, in fact, some people get downright upset about it.

Yes, it is true that many international couples like us follow the pattern where the Swedish parent speaks Swedish with the kids, the non-Swedish parent speaks the non-Swedish language with the kids, and the parents continue speaking to each other in whatever language they always have (alternatively they speak their own "native languages" even when having a conversation with each other, so that the kids consistently hear the same language come out of the parents' mouths). People seem to think that it would make more sense for us to do this -- I speak English and Fredrik speaks Swedish. But I'm telling you, I simply don't believe it would work. These people insist that we can continue speaking English to each other, but seriously -- it's a situation that I simply cannot imagine, even if I understand that it can work really well for other people.

The first reason is that communication on a very high level is simply too important in our little Paulsson-Ceangailte family. I find it hard to see myself being comfortable with my husband speaking one language to me and a different language to my child. In my mind, that situation would throw up invisible barriers between us and even give me a sense of some kind of bizarre tear in the space-time continuum whenever the three of us were in the room together. It would, for me, create a sitaution in which the relationships husband-wife, mom-kid and dad-kid exist, but where the full harmony of mom-dad-kid could never be complete. The lunch companion who is my former boss -- who, by the way, is German, so this issue is very real for her as well -- was very insightful when she compared these feelings to the fact that some families think it's very important to have the same last name or any other kind of "solidarity" that perhaps another family doesn't think is so important. For me, everyone speaking the same language -- no matter how TECHNICALLY excellent we all are at both English and Swedish -- is a necessary kind of solidarity.

The second reason -- or arguably, a deeper explanation of the first -- is that I believe English is Fredrik's "family situation" mother tongue. Yes, I can fully understand why it seems odd to my other lunch companion that Fredrik would speak English to our child even when I wasn't around. And I can't swear on my life that he will, I can't know how it will be until the kid is here. But my feeling is that it is far less natural for Fredrik to speak Swedish to our child than my co-worker imagines. In her mind, Swedish is Fredrik's mother tongue, and the assumption is that it is always more natural for him to communicate in that language. I contend that life just isn't that simple.

However, since my co-worker is a nice and reasonable person, I must point out again that I didn't feel she was butting in at all, and she very much so understood my point of view after I explained it this way: if it's more natural for Fredrik to say "I love you" than it is for him to say "Jag älskar dig," then that right there is exactly why I hope he chooses English when speaking to our child. Language exists so that we can communicate with each other, and real communication is not about technical and grammatical correctness but rather about expression of thoughts and feelings that feels natural both to the speaker/projector and to the receiver. (This is why there isn't one universal sign language in the world and why useful, practical, expressive forms of sign language are ones that have not been forced into a correlation with the surrounding written and spoken language.) Yes, I definitely want my kid to be as much of a word smith as Mom and Dad are, but the fairly natural assumption of "the kid will learn Swedish better if Fredrik speaks Swedish with it" becomes more suspect if we assert that even Fredrik expresses himself better in English than in Swedish in certain situations. And when we really consider the language development aspect, we realize that we're talking about a child who probably won't have babbled more than a word or two before being immersed in a Swedish-speaking environment, and that the few months of delay before our children start talking (which tends to be true even for the bilingual-from-birth children) will quickly be vastly eclipsed by the excellent language skills our children will undoubtedly have because of being raised by parents who value reading, education, curiosity, language skills, communication -- and having a Mom that's a certified teacher to boot. Seriously, our family is the type that the Swedish socialist bloc is bitching about when they complain about how unfair life and school are for kids who DON'T have parents like us.

Whatever Fredrik decides, or whatever comes to him most naturally, at the end of the day I put much more value in our kid feeling and hearing genuinely and naturally expressed emotion and humor from Dad than in having a few months' head start on the Swedish language.