Linguistics

It is something we do really naturally here in this house, and something that I do at work...which seems more obvious as a language teacher.  You see, my Dad arrived this evening, and it made me realise the amount of time that we spend discussing language and accent and pronunciation and syntax etc etc etc....

In an average evening of conversation we will, at least Youngest and I will, easily have 4+ conversations that circle around language use, and if she is reading something to me, as she was this evening, this may well include several minor pronunciation corrections as well....some typical for her age group, for instance the pronunciation of 'Ella Fitzgerald', and some less typical for her age group but relevant to her life experience.

We'll typically range through 2 − 3 languages, both in discussion and use: English, Catalan and sometimes Spanish, but as Youngest is very keen to learn French and will be starting lessons in the new year, to her glee, we did get to that this evening, and even touched on Latin which Eldest is studying and which my dad has also learned something about.  So tonight?  We got to 5 different languages.  English is, however, dominant. Hands down.

It is neat and fascinating that we can have these conversations at all, and even neater that we are all so fascinated by them.