Me Talk Pretty One Day

Disclaimer: This post has nothing to do with David Sedaris. I just stole his clever book title.

We get a lot of questions regarding Juan Pablo and language. Apparently Spanish-speaking Ethiopian toddlers are pretty rare. I've heard people telling other people that Juan Pablo is from Ecuador (yes, he's from a country that starts with an "E"...), and I've also been asked if they speak Spanish in Ethiopia (ummm....). I admit, we have created a bit of an unusual situation here...multiracial, multicultural family with a foreign language thrown in. It makes me very thankful that we live in Ann Arbor, where just about half of the moms that I meet at story time at the downtown library speak a language to their children other than English. We're much less of an oddity here than we would be in much of the rest of the United States. But we still stand out enough to get lots of questions, so to answer some of them...

Other than the typical toddler jibberish, Juan Pablo speaks almost all Spanish. It was clear from early on that he was very verbal...one of the first words that he learned, within a month of coming home from Ethiopia, was "Abuela" (grandmother). Since then, he's been adding new words to his vocabulary every day, constantly surprising me by saying words that I had no idea that he knew.

Juan Pablo does know a few English words as well. His first English word, which he learned pretty early on, was "Down!", which comes in very handy for communicating with my parents' dog, Buster. And because Buster speaks English, as a rule Juan Pablo now speaks to animals exclusively in English. He will sneak up to the bunnies in our backyard saying, "Shhh, shhh, shh," and then when he gets within about ten feet he'll stop and say very politely, "Hi, how are you conejito (bunny)?" He also pretends to speak English sometimes, which is very funny. We can tell because he changes his intonations and inflections, and sort of pulls his chin in a little while he's jabbering.

So, if you know some Spanish, whether it's from high school Spanish class or from watching Dora with your kids, feel free to practice with Juan Pablo. He's a good person to do that with, because he won't laugh at your pronunciation or notice if you don't remember how to conjugate certain verbs correctly. And if you don't know any Spanish, just speak to him in English. He probably understands a lot more than we think he does, and he's going to pick it up anyway, so it might as well be from you!

Juan Pablo wearing a traditional Beninese outfit, and using his his language skills to express himself at the top of his lungs.