A family moved from Toronto to Umeå, Sweden, where a two-year-old understood Swedish but spoke only English. After starting preschool in Sweden, the child began speaking Swedish much earlier than the parent could follow. The father continued speaking Swedish, and the child had previously replied in English, but the pattern reversed after preschool and transition routines for new children. The child then used Swedish around the clock and became frustrated when the parent did not understand. The parent was studying Swedish full-time through SFI, but language learning was slower than the child’s rapid acquisition. The child did not fully grasp the idea of different languages and why the parent could not follow what she said.
"After a month of preschool in Sweden, that flipped long before I could follow along. My daughter was four months shy of three years old when we moved from Toronto, and quite verbal for her age; we have videos of her interrupting story time to provide long commentary on Dr. Seuss books and then wandering around the house quoting them. All this was in English, like most of the rest of her world."
"Her father almost always spoke to her in Swedish, so we knew she understood the language, but she'd reply in English. I don't know why it didn't occur to me that the tables would be turned once we'd settled in Sweden. I guess I thought she'd start speaking more Swedish but would continue speaking English at home, at least to me. No such luck."
"It wasn't long after in-schooling (the transition period for kids starting daycare or preschool in Sweden, where the parents join to ease the child in to their new environment) that she switched to round-the-clock Swedish and got very frustrated when I didn't understand. I was already in full-time SFI (Svenska for invandrare, the state-funded Swedish course for immigrants) when this happened, but a 40-year-old brain is a whole lot slower than a three-year-old one when it comes to language acquisition."
"Despite her verbal fluency, though, she was still just three years old. I don't think she understood the concept of different languages, really, or why Mamma all of a sudden couldn't follow what she was saying. After all, when she had spoken English to Pappa, he, with his many years of working and studying in English-speaking countries, understood perfectly."
Read at www.thelocal.se
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