"Daddy," Sophie said in her best I'm-complaining-but-really-deserve-your-sympathy voice, "Ben is laughing me out."
Ben started giggling.
"Laughing you out?" I replied. "What do you mean?"
Somewhat involuntarily, Sophie joined in the giggling.
"Making fun of," interjected Josy with a smile. Hysterical giggling ensued. Over the next five minutes, Ben and Sophie each traded a flurry of tongue-in-cheek accusations that the other was "laughing me out."
Such is the world of Dutchlish. Or Engutch. That linguistic netherregion where predominantly English speaking children living in Holland become so familiar and comfortable speaking Dutch that their spoken English starts to exhibit hybrid vocabulary and Dutch sentence structure.
After 2 1/2 years of living over here, Dutch has now become Ben and Sophie's default language. But it makes sense. They speak Dutch every day in class at school and after school with friends. More and more, they've taken to playing in Dutch together at home. What a concept.
For Christmas, Sophie's big present was not what we would call a "scooter." Sure, it looks like a scooter. It rides like a scooter. It even says "scooter" on it. But it's a "step." And she can't get enough of layering up in full body armor and helmet (see photo) to go around the block on her "step." "I wanna go ride my step," she says.
Their less frequent use of English comes with a downside, too, of course. Words that were once second-nature are fading from memory and sometimes hard to recall at all. The other evening at dinner, Sophie politely asked - mostly in English - for a "mess" (knife).
A couple nights ago, when looking at the outdoor thermometer, I asked Sophie where the needle was pointing. "Between dertig and veertig," (30 and 40) she answered.
Just this morning, when setting up their Ikea kids' table for breakfast in a pretend kids' house quadrant of the living room, Ben declared that in this zone we'd have to converse with them "in onse taal" (in our language).
Their language? Egads.
Once we move back to the States, the one Dutchism most likely to earn them a double-take from other American kids will be their tendency to say "I also," when meaning "me too." Ready for ice cream, guys? "Yeah, me!" one will say. "I also!" the other chimes in.
The upside of all this, though, is their incredible fluency in Dutch. Living here, in many ways, has been like free language training for them. Many Dutch adults they meet comment on how truly Dutch the two of them sound. With real Amsterdam accents.
Hopefully, all this bi-lingual living will help open doors for them down the road. Or perhaps activate language learning synapses that will enable them to pick up other, more commonly spoken languages.
And if one starts to learn Spanish or Chinese, the other may just try to keep pace. I can already hear the choruses of "I also!"
Today is the first day the movers are here, helping us prepare for our move back to the US next week. Cleaning out my desk, I came across a note from my mom to my nephew Josh. He had let me borrow it before we moved to The Netherlands. Mom wrote it back in August 2005, just 3 months before she died of thyroid cancer.
This past weekend was a reunion and a memorable one at that. Our good friends from Prague, Tomas and Helena and their boys Matej and Adam, joined our old friend Mike and his girlfriend Michelle in visiting our Dutch abode.
Sophie apparently can't get enough of the local hospital. Today, she was admitted for her 2nd time in a month. Seems to be a recurrence of the lung infection she had about 4 weeks ago.
