Sunday, September 14, 2008

Bilingualism

"Put it in your boca not on the floor!"
This is one of the common Spanglishisms in our house. As we are planning on leaving Peru at the end of this school year, we are torn. If we stay here or move to another Spanish-speaking country for a few more years, Maximo would be truly bilingual. John and I wish we were bilingual and realize what an asset it would be to our kids.
As it is now, Maximo spends more time surrounded by Spanish than English. He could easily be fluent in both languages with perfect accents in both. But, we're going to move, to who knows where. We're not totally closing the door on other Spanish speaking countries, but I'm looking for a big change next year (culturally/academically/geographically/gastronomically) - Asia, Europe, we'd even consider Africa if we were guaranteed good in-country health care (since we'd like to have another baby).
So, it may not be Spanish, but maybe if we stay at our next post for a while, Maximo will become fluent in another language, hopefully it'll be a global language, like French, German, Japanese, and not a "Click" language of a remote area of Africa, or Basque, or Icelandic. But, who knows???

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