english as a second language?

Jake is starting to dream in Swedish. I woke him up the other night and he just kept saying, 'Nej!' 'Nej!' 'Nej!' 'Inte!' (No! No! No! Not!) He told me in the morning we has having a dream but he forgot what the dream was about.

The dreaming in Swedish is a sign his dominant language might actually be Swedish now. That's something I never would have imagined of him, even if someone had told me ahead of time. His English is still great, don't get me wrong, but we need to make sure we are feeding it. And if we ever move back the reverse is true of his Swedish. We will need to feed it.

I have actually taken to correcting the English a little bit, for Jake and Sam. I try not to be obnoxious but I want to keep them up to speed. There are similarities between Swedish and English. Sometimes you can just change the ending of a present tense verb to make a past tense verb, i.e., I wash. I washed. But then sometimes in both languages the past tense verb is different than the present tense verb all together, i.e., I run. I ran. Dad's been hearing a lot of I 'runded' and I 'swamded.' I know the guys are young and they might just be making rookie mistakes even if they weren't in a bilingual situation anyway, but still. If somebody in their native tongue doesn't say something I think they might be shell shocked upon flipping cultures.

Another small thing is word order. In Swedish, verb is always second. Sammy now applies the rule to his English without thinking about it. 'Here is it.' As opposed to 'Here it is.'

Hopefully it's more than the English major in me getting a twitch. Or an immigrant struggling to maintain something slipping from his grasp. Then again, truth be told, Dad might be a little envious that the guys can fluidly jump back and forth between languages now, when willing (Sammy). And sometimes Swenglish somewhere in the middle.