Thursday, May 24, 2012

The Hills Are Alive...


...with the sound of my family. Or they will be in a few days anyway.

My kids are addicted to The Sound of Music. I encourage this addiction – at least they're watching TV in English.

Living in Germany, my children's first language is German. I speak English to them, but they know I can understand their German perfectly well.  Our conversations go something like this.

Me: How was school today?
Daughter: Langweilig. Wir hatten zu viele Arbeitsblaetter.
Me: How do you say that in English?
Daughter walks away muttering that if she has to speak English, she won't talk to me at all.

So this is my current plan for cementing English in their lives:
I keep speaking to them in English.
If I want to know something from them, they can answer in German.
If they want something from me, they have to ask in English.

"Could I please have dessert?" and "Can I turn on the TV?" are currently my daughter's two most popular English sentences.

So why all this talk about The Sound of Music? Although we try to limit the amount of TV they watch, if the program is in English, there is a certain amount of education involved. I prefer DVDs, because this evil mother has convinced her children that most DVDs only have an English soundtrack.

Next week, we have a few days off. Since the kids have seen The Sound of Music four times in the last month, we've decided on Salzburg, where the movie was filmed. It's only a few hours away, and we can sing My Favorite Things and Do-Re-Mi the entire time we're there.  In English.

1 comment:

  1. I might have run thru the meadows in the Salzburg area when we were on a class trip in highschool circa 1986...now i'm dating MYself :)

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