Você fala português?

As I prepared dinner one evening, I asked Oliver if he wanted milk to drink?  "Actually, that's leite," he said in Portuguese.  For the past six weeks his Brazilian nanny has been slowly introducing her native language to Oliver and Soren.  We did not hire Liula because she speaks a second language, and in fact, she was the only bilingual candidate, but when she offered to teach our kids Portuguese, we said, "Great!" 

It's been fun to hear Oliver say the new words he's learning and catch glimpses of this new language in our lives, like Oliver's drawings labeled with Portuguese words or the computer open to a Brazilian kids video on You Tube.  However, we're letting the language acquisition take hold at whatever level it will happen and are not pushing it or pinning high hopes on rearing Portuguese-speaking children. 

Language immersion is a hot topic and fostering it is something monolingual parents struggle with.  In St. Paul alone we're lucky to have three well-respected bilingual K-8 schools - French, Spanish and German.  But if none of these schools is a good fit for your child and your child isn't learning a second language from a parent - or a nanny - can you realistically expect your child to learn another language fluently?  There are tutors, language camps, private bilingual preschools, books, videos and other supplemental resources, but at what cost in time and money are you willing to invest?  And invest over the long-term?   

I would love for my kids to speak a second language fluently.  I just don't know how realistic it is at this age because I know I don't have the time, energy or resources to make sure they sustain fluency in another language.  We got lucky that we have a nanny whose native language isn't English and who has offered to teach it to our kids. But even though our kids are three and one and are at a perfect age to learn another language, they're also at the age where they can easily lose a language if we don't help them retain it. Liula is our only connection to the Portuguese language and we don't know how long she'll continue to care for our kids.  She's as realistic as I am for expectations of foreign language acquisition.  The two children she cared for during her two years as an au pair no longer speak or even understand Portuguese, and it breaks her heart. 

Of course there are still benefits even if kids don't retain the second language.  Oliver and Soren are learning that other languages and cultures do exist and they're learning Liula's culture in addition to the language.  She cooks them Brazilian foods, made traditional chocolate birthday treats for Oliver's birthday and sings them the songs she learned as a kid.   And Portuguese provides a good foundation for learning another romance language, particularly Spanish, should Oliver and/or Soren choose that subject in school. 

Despite the unquantifiable impacts of teaching our kids another language, we told Liula to still proceed with Portuguese. I said we never know where life will take us. A Brazilian family could move in next store or the future best friend of one of our kids could be a native Portuguese speaker. Who knows, we could even end up living in Brazil someday.