more about language

Language is something that's always fascinated me, and I've often wished I had the chance to learn a second language at an early age. So I watch with interest as Portuguese adds new shadings and tones to E. and R.'s linguistic landscape.

For example, R. sometimes makes equivalent mistakes in English and Portuguese, misplacing the noun and adjective--"I'm a boy big," he'll say; or, "Eu quero gelada agua" (instead of agua gelada).

Or E.: "There are a million of rocks on the beach."

I wouldn't go so far as to say that learning Portuguese has set back their English skills, but just as it continues to amaze me to hear them chatting away with their friends in Portuguese, I've noted these moments with surprise as well.

I don't know why. It's a small thing.

One thing that strikes me about it is that they are unaware that they're doing it, and don't notice or correct themselves.

Evidence, perhaps, of how their second language is infiltrating their psyches.

Here's more: watching them sing and dance "Rebolation," gyrating their hips, E. calling out, in all his six-year old guilelessness, "as mulhers pa frente e os homens pa tras!" (Ladies in the front, and men behind!).