Languages

In the last couple of days I have started slowly switching to English while speaking with Sava, in an effort to give him some footing for what promises to be the difficult encounter with preschool and later school. It's a huge change for him, since I have never spoken to him anything other than Bulgarian, and he is being a trooper about it, but I can tell that at times he gets frustrated; I can easily spot his frustration growing when in the middle of a conversation he starts begging to go to the "Googlers," which is a veiled way of telling me that he misses and wants his daddy, who at this point will continue to speak to him only in Bulgarian. Speaking in English makes me realize that our emotional bond is closely connected to Bulgarian, and I am sweetly sad, since I know that the new bond around English will be completely different, though I don't doubt that it will be at least as intense, if not more so. I love English, and at some level feel more comfortable being emotional in it, which probably betrays some deep psychological flaw which I don't have the energy or interest to analyze. Moreover, I love reading in English and have for a long time regretted that I can't share with Sava the beauty of the Runaway Bunny or Mother Goose rhymes in their original. We've developed our own very intimate language in Bulgarian, complete with unique references to body parts and daily rituals, which I will surely miss if I continue to speak to him only English. For the moment, based on some research I have been reading, the idea is to speak to him in English until he starts preschool for real, and then to switch back to Bulgarian as soon as he begins spending at least half a day in an English environment; the research indicates that kids need to spend at least thirty percent of their time in a particular language environment before the age of five or six if they are to acquire native-like fluency in that language; also, before age three their capacity for language is vastly bigger than after three, and after seven it is almost equal to that (sadly) of an adult. So, this is a golden period, as exemplified by Sava's delight in repeating everything I say--Bulgarian or English--and I am grateful to have him as an eager student.