Bilingual Being by Kathleen Saint-Onge Read Free Book Online Page A

that we’d spend our entire lives henceforth with me speaking in English to my father and brother (unless my mother was present) but French to my mother – and my brother speaking English to me (unless my mother was present), but French to both of our parents. It was complicated, hanging on my brother having stayed back far longer than me in the 1970s and learning to live in French, to love in French, and to make Quebec his home – while I took to school, then more school, then further schools, anglo partners and husbands they hated, cities too far for a weekend trip, making my life in English and rarely looking back.
    But in that summer of 1961, our linguistic trials appeared to be nothing more than the most superficial confusions. We learned, bit by bit, that you had your “head in the clouds” in English instead of «dans’ lune» [on the moon]; that you had a “frog in your throat” instead of «un chat dans’gorge» [a cat in your throat]; that “goosebumps” were identical to «d’la chaire de poule» [chicken skin]; that if an idea was any good, it had to be “able to fly” instead of «s’t’nir d’bout» [stand still]; that you should treat some people “with kid gloves” in English instead of «des gants d’soie» [silk ones]; or that in English, you needed to completely “clear your head” to relax, whereas in French, you could just «t’changer ’es idées», change the ideas that were in it.
    One day we were loading the car for a trip and a francophone neighbour, a girl my age, was helping out. My brother, two years younger than us, found himself with a free hand while our friend carried more than she could manage. This prompted my father to tell him to “give her a hand.” My brother heard the English and translated it into French, his own internal language. The idiom in French, though, is quite literally, «Vas donc y donner un coup d’main.» [Go and give her a hit of the hand.] And so my brother walked right up to our young neighbour and, dutiful son that he was, struck her across the face.
    Needless to say, the next hand flying was my father’s. And that’s how my brother and I both acquired the precious knowledge that a «boubou» [error] can easily turn into a «bobo» [a small hurt in French, yet still just an error in English]. Rather than a good laugh at the expense of our bilingualism, the memory is etched in my mind as a dire warning of the trouble that would lie ahead, as our brains tried hard to do what our hearts could only achieve with difficulty – to be divided within and among ourselves.
    MOTHERESE
    That «boubou-bobo» confusion was an early symbol – one might even say a symptom – of a major complication in our lives. We just didn’t know it yet. Of course, every language has its own special way of addressing children. There’s even a name for the language we use to talk to the very youngest: “motherese,” or baby talk. Each tongue has its own ways of cooing, and its usual “first word,” normally the one for “mother,” or baby’s approximation of it. That’s how the mother tongue starts, with a word for “mother.” And it seems the point where a baby knows his own language, through rhythm and intonation, is as early as a handful of days. So a baby who’s barely two weeks old can tell the sound not just of his mother but of his mother tongue.
    We can’t imagine the questions on a bilingual baby’s mind, about the kind of weird world he’s been born into. I don’t mean anything at all about potential trauma or hardship: I mean an odd universe of sound patterns where wavelengths and amplitudes are a difficult business. A curious sensory space where vocalizations that are so similar to one another – “words” – represent entirely different