Spanish Speakers

One of our goals is to teach our kids Spanish.
Both my husband and I speak Spanish fluently. We were fortunate and blessed to have spoken it consistently in our homes when we were growing up.

I actually went into Kindergarten speaking broken english with a slight accent. Of course, I caught on rather quickly and actually lost some of my speaking skills. I could always understand it very well and I speak it well, though not often. Now I speak spanish with a slight english accent.

My husband, on the other hand speaks spanish more regularly than I. He has used it throughout his career and since both of his parents and grandparents mainly speak spanish, he always converses with them in it.

Our second language became quite handy in school. I breezed through my courses in High School and got 6 college hours from my AP scores, plus another 4 hours from a CLEP test. My husband did the same and earned 12 hours from the CLEP tests.

We always promised ourselves that our kids would learn Spanish. It is very important to us. Of course, not until recently did we discover that this was going to be a challenge.

The thing is...we don't really speak Spanish at home.

Sometimes when we are talking about people in a nearby vicinity we will speak in Spanish, hoping they don't understand. And then, when he is being mean or taking something too far and we are in other company I will snap at him in Spanish and tell him to quit soon. And then, of course, when we are trying to make a decision without others knowing what we are talking about we pull out our Spanish.

Our friends don't particularly like this and probably get annoyed when we do these things but...what can I say, we are blessed to have this secret language!

So, as I stated before, we are trying to speak more Spanish at home so our kid can pick it up and learn our native language.

So far, this is what he knows...

1. Gracias - Thank You (though he feels he must translate this everytime I say it. I say, "Gracias" and he responds "Thank you." I try to prompt him to say, "De nada," or "your welcome," but for some reason he isn't getting that one.

2. Hola and Adios (though he says the latter with a very gringo accent...I guess we will tackle one thing at a time!)

3. Te quiero - I love you.

4. Mucho - Very much.

5. He can count to 5, though he skips the three, but he skipped three in english for a very long time so...subconciously he does not like the number 3.

6. Mas - more.

Then...we have the other list. The not so appropriate list...and here goes...

1. Conio - This a mostly Cuban term and it means...darn it, sorta.

2. Vaya te Lucy - Go away Lucy (our dog. She is loved, just annoying.)

3. Puchica - um...meaning, for crying out loud, but not so nice. It's like saying Shut instead of S#$&. Kinda, at least that's the idea.

4. Huevitos - Little balls...don't think too hard about this one.

So...I think we are on the right track!