15 november 2023
The last Kletsheads [Season 3, Episode 8]
In this final – and therefore extra-long – episode, three parents who have previously been guests on the podcast talk about how their family’s bilingual journey has progressed since then. I look back over the past four years, reflect on the future and, to conclude, we hear a poem written about and dedicated to bilingual children, and inspired by the podcast. Our first guest is Liz. I first spoke to her in the first season of Kletsheads (in episode 4, about language mixing). Liz is originally from Limburg in the Netherlands but has lived in Canada for 10 years. Together with her Egyptian husband, she has a 4-year-old son, Otis. Next, we hear from Marjolein. Marjolein grew up monolingually in the Netherlands, studied English and then became an English teacher. When she became a mother in 2018, she decided to also speak English to her infant son Owen. She now has a second son, James. Marjolein was first featured in this episode 2 of the first season on how much input does a child need to hear to become bilingual. Finally, I speak to Christi. Christi was first on the podcast back in 2020 (in the same episode as Liz) as our Kletshead of the week. She spoke about her own upbringing as a trilingual child in Vienna, and about the choices she faced now that she had become her mother herself. In this episode she tells us how speaking German can sometimes be a challenge (especially when ‘life’ gets in the way) and how her eldest daughter has picked up Spanish from her mum. If you want to know how these three parents and their bilingual families are doing now, listen to the podcast! To conclude this episode and thus the entire podcast series, we hear a poem, Three words for squirrel. This poem was written and is performed by spoken word poet, Wieke Vink. You might recognise Wieke from the first episode of this final season, when she interviewed our Kletshead of the week. If you listen carefully to the poem, you will hear many references to conversations, topics and words that have passed by in the past four in the podcast. Three words for squirrel This poem is for the little ones Whose mother tongue Is more than one With words in different flavours On the tip of your tongue Or flowing out of your fingertips This is for the children For whom the crossroads of thoughts in your head Could be spread out Into at least two different languages With womb-held babies Bathing in sound Following the rhythmic patterns That are with them – all around Emerging Out into the world A holder of knowledge Growing up You already know How to be gentle with yourself and with others How to wobble on the table of conventions How to take it slow When a word doesn’t immediately come to mind When in search for the right ‘mmm’ The nuance that you might know From the flow of past conversations Not yet fully interpretated But held onto brightly In the library of your mind Your shelves full of boxes With vocab and grammar Tu sais que somewhere Between the Malayalam, French and Finnish there will be a great find This is for you As you’ve felt How language is part of connection For all our neurodiverse minds Language as a connector For all things funny and wise, silly and kind Dear multilingual child You might not be able to speak it all You might not be able to read it all Yet you are able to hold it all In a map of the world That’s unique to you And the communities that you belong to Your cultures sometimes resonating In the tones of your skin The rhythms of your sentences The sounds of your name You know, language is part of identity Yet our schools may be So monolingual or full of variety With the need for heritage language education And intercultural communication Within and across our different nations With all these languages holding the world in their embrace And a dialect in every corner And when seasons seem out of order You are asked to braze both our physical and our cultural landscapes As three seasons of a podcast dropped From the northern hemisphere Covering all things bilingual – its difficulties, its grace and its flair Listened to long after the last episode went on air With stories from children and researchers Parents, educators and practitioners So much to share For as all small and adult translators know Switching between contexts Is more than just finding the right words to connect It’s being receptive to the realms of resonance As the edges of each soundscape Warrant different worlds of understanding For we summon worlds with our words Words for the moments that make life worth sharing Words to express our concerns and our caring And sometimes, when words are not what’s needed There is gestures and the willingness to sit together And listen to the whispers of the evening sun With multilingualism looking different for everyone Some being asked to sit down And study some grammar Others being showered with word clouds In a more day-to-day manner And seeking it out In comics and fairy-tales and everyday sounds With all of us When we are young Holding an innate understanding of universality And you were born open to the idea that one thing has multiple meanings As you know there are at least three words for squirrel Perspective-taking a skill Tangled up in your linguistical landscapes In the sounds of your childhood The letters of your alphabets In what is shared when you are happy or sad And language control? Let’s rock and roll In Twi, Arabic and Español For it’s hard work, being bilingual With word recognition, false friends and learning to read Brains building lyrical nodes with lightning speed As heritage languages need attention and input And words with less clues might leave us clue-less Yet diversity of resources is positively correlated to language richness Plucking the fruits of hard labour Some of the peaches That taste so sweet To be able to communicate with grandparents and peers And the fun of having a secret language to speak For you know there is magic in words Beyond the words on the page When the name of your language Is itself a palindrome Bringing up worlds of jokes with friends and parental aspirations And if poetry is about making connections Then multilingualism is creating the spark That brings new things together Creativity being part and parcel of the bilingual mind The paint brush that creates beauty In multiple styles and a triangulation of techniques When words stick together in new compositions When Elsa from Frozen gets crowned in Italian And joy might be written differently In different scripts But it’s unstoppable When it bubbles up High towards our cheeks Bubbling out, so to speak In that deep physicality of belly laughter So dear multilingual children, hold onto the songs of your linguistical mosaic Each piece fitting together As you are navigating its currents and graduations No thing ever as one-dimensional as its written representation Never as plain on the page as it might seem For you, dear child Have multiple languages in which to dream