Learning with Papi

I wrote earlier about our idea to have Alex do Woun Mue classes with the girls. Well, this week he began them and so far they are a big hit. We are using a couple of story books in Woun Meu, and I am adding in activity ideas and simple crafts. They learned 5 words in the first lesson, the words in Woun Meu for: sit, stand, dark, light, and agouti, a small jungle animal. If you know what a capabara is, an agouti is a smaller version.

Princess was excited to show me what she had learned, turning the lights off and on to show me dark and light: "k'isu, hararaa!" Rose even managed the word "hararaa". Alex seemed to enjoy himself and was encouraged by how quickly they picked the words up.

I already have three more lessons planned for them. Alex prefers that I do the planning and I enjoy it. It's fun to think up simple crafts that they can do together to remember the words. I found a fun idea for an alligator puppet with a brown baggie to learn the word for alligator. Can't wait to see them try it.

I should say that I don't expect these little lessons to suddenly make the girls fluet in Woun Meu. I understand that a few lessons can't do that. But I do hope they will do a couple of things:

First of all to help Alex be intentional about teaching the girls. I hope that he will think to speak to them in Woun Meu, and point things out to them through out the day, once he realizes how much they are able to learn. Most of us don't really think about children's process in language learning. It seems to happen automatically, and kids are great learners. But they can't learn a language that they don't hear, and which isn't spoken to them.

I have observed that people tend to think that Wounaan children automatically learn Woun Meu, as if it's in their blood (and Embera children learn Embera, and so on). Children who aren't fluent are seen as "rejecting their heritage" by the same parents who are addressing them in Spanish.

All this to say hopefully doing these activities will make Alex aware of the need to teach language to our daughters.

My second objective is to get the girl's foot in the door, language-wise. Since they understand and speak almost none at all, they are overwelmed when they get faced with a barrage of Woun Meu from an exuberant distant relative. Little sister doesn't seem to react too much to that, but Princess is very intimidated. She will usually react by ignoring the person and talking to me in English. It's as if her personality changes. Later she will tell me, "Talking in Wounaan is too hard." I don't want to push her, so I tell her that she doesn't have to talk if she doesn't want to, but then follow that up with, "It seems hard because Daddy hasn't taught you yet.

It seems like a complicated dance at times: exposing her to the language so that she will see the need to learn, while at the same time not pushing her so much that she rejects the language; giving her permission to learn at her own pace, yet encouraging her that she CAN learn. But we are trying.

And I hope that with a few basic words and phrases, commands, and familiar objects, they will have some "aha!" moments when listening to others speak in Woun Meu and realize, "I CAN speak that language!". I am optimistic.

As an added bonus they are getting some great interaction time with Papi. Not a bad deal all around.