Switcheroo

Punk 1 has decided English is her language. This has always been this way for no obvious reason other than she is stubborn, though maybe one day she will surprise us and articulate her reasons a little better than saying , “Because!!!” or “I want to!!” In the meantime, we keep chugging along and she demonstrates that she is okay speaking with real Germans fresh from Germany when Oma’s friends E and P pay us a short visit. Not that I doubted that, but it sure was nice to see, or rather hear.

And then she does surprise me (again) by switching to German (!) with Punk 2 for a few minutes as they were talking in their bunk beds one night. They always do this in English, although Punk 2 is open to German and just follows what she does. But this night she switched into German for one topic, with him following suit, and then back to English as they moved on to something else, again with him following her lead.

This does not normally happen. English is their language, even during play dates with other German kids or in the middle of a German conversation they are having with me (here is an example). This was totally out of character for Punk 1, and I’m not entirely sure what happened, or why.

It was not a conversation for which they didn’t have the vocabulary to keep going with English – they were, however, sharing with each other what is part of my bedtime routine with each of them (about the best and worst parts of their day). I do this every night with each of them separately, but this is the first time I overheard them talking about it together, after we turned off the lights. It was quite cute – one moment they were chatting away in English, they moved on to what they liked/disliked about their day in English at first but quickly switched to German, and when they were done talking about it they moved on to something else and switched back to English.

The odd thing is that this was initiated by Punk 1 – the same Punk 1 who is fond of translating what I say to Punk 2 into English (completely unnecessary and it bugs me like you wouldn’t believe), can be quite vocal about English being her favourite language and who was never really interested in speaking German with her little brother (except last summer when Punk 2 started speaking German in complete sentences, first with Oma then with everyone, and she was so taken in by it that she indulged him for a bit). So whenever I hear them speak German to each other, it feels somehow special as I know German is not their sibling language. And so it was this time - lovely really to hear the two of them speak German to each other, even if it was for only a few minutes.

But I also wonder about what made them, her really, switch. Their person-language bond is in English, after all, and it's not like they don't have the vocabulary to talk about their day in English. But these kinds of things are always intriguing, similar to when they just break into German song completely out of the blue and in the middle of one of their strange little games. I appears that this is just something that they do, and it doesn't seem to faze them. At all.