English Grammar

"Little Bobcho is driving my chair in the house."

That's a nine word sentence in English, with perfectly proper grammar! There's so much that goes into using language correctly, but look at this:

She's got the word order correct.

She's got the vocabulary correct.

She's using the right form of the verb "to be." (She uses is, and not am, or are.)

She knows to use the -ing form of the verb. (It's not is drive, or drive, but is driving.) And Gloria really was driving the chair - she just today figured out how to get it to move by handling the wheels.)

She has a properly formed prepositional phrase.

She's using the correct article. (The and not a, and she knows to use an article in the first place! It's not in house.)

Learning the language has been our biggest goal for her "academically" this school year. All of the other academic things that we hope to achieve in our time with her are going to be so much simpler to do without a language barrier.

But mostly, what we value is the ability to so much more easily connect with her, and her with us. Up until about two weeks ago, pretty much *everything* we wanted to say to her had to go through the phone, and it's amazing how much time that takes! With the other kids, I can talk with them while I'm cooking, changing diapers, folding laundry - doing any other task with my hands. With Bogomila, it's been an all-encompassing thing just to have a conversation. It requires my ears, my eyes (to look at the screen), AND my hands (both to hold the phone we use for translating and to touch back and forth between English and Bulgarian input.) Add to that the fact that the translator is less than perfect, so each statement, particularly one of any depth, has to be repeated a number of times, or corrected by hand-spelling the words, and a simple conversation now takes at least three times as long as it would with someone who shares the language, in addition to taking my ears, eyes and hands, and not just my ears.

We still use the phone for many things, but it's becoming more and more supplementary, and also does a great job translating single words. There's still a long way to go before she really knows the language well enough that it's not a barrier, but just as Mira is changing physically before our eyes almost daily, Bogomila is making noticeable gains in her language skills almost daily

These first months have been quite all-encompassing on all fronts, and to begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel even in just a few sectors is very exciting.