Speaking English to your kids
If you are a native English speaker, you probably already know this: I am not. I am fluent in English, yes, down to some of the most exciting and spicy US, Hip Hop-driven vernacular (thank you, Youtube), but French is still my first language. Nothing you can do about that, except if you have the ability to rewrite history. In which case you might wanna start by handling something else than my sorry little self. But this post is not about me — it’s about my daughter…
As it happens, my wife and I are French and we live in Paris: not exactly ideal for baby girl to become bilingual. In a different life, she might have been a Russian native, but I chose to stop drinking instead. I had contemplated the idea of speaking to her in English, and we have friends who do that pretty well, but I was on the fence considering that I am not a native. And I have a thing about authenticity, just like I say in my raps. But then…
You see, the two prerequisites I had for baby girl are already handled:
1) live in the city (in this case, Paris, but any larger place will do) rather than in the suburbs like I did. I hated it growing up, and my daughter will probably enjoy it later on just to piss me off, but I wouldn’t want her to have to wait for a bus for half an hour in the freezing cold just to get to the train station… to catch the subway.
2) have a cat. This one is less so on me than on my wife’s, but I’ll take it. After all, I do manage the little guy’s social media presence, and that has to count for something.
The joker was languages. Pre-Brexit, London could have been an option for us to relocate to. We considered Berlin, but it felt more of a lateral move than a straight forward one: the place is amazing, no question about that, but I always feared I would end up drowning myself in (vodka)-mates in some trendy bar while typing away on my laptop and writing such perishable prose as I am doing right now. But that’s different: I’m not in Berlin.
The point is, so far, we’re in Paris. Time will tell what happens and I wouldn’t mind dropping by NYC in the not too distant future, but that kind of depends on how long it takes for my company(nies) to launch an IPO. Let’s assume that’s more than 6 months. Still, in (pre-)preparations for NYC, I have started talking to my kid in English. I don’t think she minds. Correction: I don’t think she cares.