Regular readers of the blog, i.e my dad, will know that my little boy is growing up bilingual, as his mummy is from Russia. This means he will speak English a little later than other kids, but in the end it will have been worth it. At the moment, he has a limited but comprehensible vocabulary. For example, cats are called ‘ki ki’ dogs are ‘arf’, babies are called ‘la la’ and daddy is called ‘ca ca’. (Daddy’s not best pleased about this, but c’est la vie)
All this is charming and funny, but of late something has occurred in his linguistic development which is causing me no end of embarrassment. Johnny loves his juice and when his bottle is empty he’s not shy at all about demanding a refill, often in the most strident of tones. The Russian word for juice, if transcribed into English would be ‘Sook,’ The sibilant s sound in this word is not one that Johnny has quite mastered yet and he compensates by making the dental fricative f sound. Try it yourselves: the sounds are quite similar. As a consequence, the word for juice that leaves his mouth sounds like another word, a very bad word, a word which rhymes with duck and begins with an f, you know the word I’m talking about…
So there we were on our long Saturday morning father and son walk, when we stopped into the little cafe in the centre of Acton Park. As I blew the froth off my latte Johnny, not unreasonably, figured that if I was going to have a drink, then he was surely entitled to one. The only other customers in the cafe were a very genteel-looking couple whose smiles for Johnny I’d gratefully acknowledged. Those smiles soon mutated into indignant pouts of disgust and horror as Johnny roared in a tone that would brook no argument,’F**K! f**k!f**k! f**k!………..F**K! F**K!F**K!’
I could feel their eyes of judgement boring through my skull. They must have thought that the poor little child lives in a house where profanity is the lingua franca. The irony of all this of course is that though I do like bad language, I make a point of never swearing in front of Johnny. I thought about going over and explaining this to them, but then I thought sook it and just downed my beverage and wheeled the buggy out, red-faced.
I tried to explain to Johnny what had happened as we approached the railway crossing, but he didn’t seem too interested-he had his juice and that’s all he cared about. A wonderful thing then happened..Instead of the usual Silverlink train going by, we got the sepia and burgundy opulence of the Orient Express. I was really excited and was gabbling to Johnny about the train and its history and its romance and adventure. Johnny briefly removed the bottle from his mouth, pointed at the passing carriages and, uncertainly at first, said something.
’Train,’ he said. The sun peeped through the clouds and I went home smiling.
Mike
