I am not sure where to start, so I will introduce us by telling you a story that took place some 2 years ago.
Our first trip after Covid-19 pandemics, took us to Tivat, Montenegro. We landed and got into the cab. The friendly driver asked our then 12-year-old son where we are coming from.
The answer that followed took the next 20 minutes. It went something like this: ”I am half German, half Serbian if you are looking at my passports. But my sisters were born in China, where we live, so we are part Chinese. Montenegro is a home for my mom, even though she is not Montenegrin. Our family home is actually in Belgrade. My dad says he is Serbian, but that is not true. My grandma is from Croatia, and my grandpa from Bosnia. They moved to Germany and had my dad. While I was very small, we used to spend a lot of time in Africa, so I consider myself a little bit African. From this year we will be Indian too, we are moving to Mumbai.”
The frozen smile and slightly too eager nodding of his head told us that the driver is a bit bemused by the story and is probably regretting asking anything at all.
That did not stop my son from continuing the story.
At the end of the trip the driver kindly helped us with the bags and did not share his contact card.
In short: we are family of five where no one speaks the same language. At least not fluently. We all understand Serbian, because I am Serbian, and I use Serbian whenever I am upset. So, we practice Serbian daily.
Our son speaks German with dad. They say that is to be able to keep secrets from us girls and I do not think they are joking. He is also fluent in Serbian (thanks to me, see above) and English. I recently learned that he is studying Marathi in school, but haven't had a chance to confirm these rumors. He is very versed at avoiding all my questions.
Our youngest daughter speaks Indian English. In her case, that is a very formal English with a very soft, sweet accent and a couple of Hindi words when she needs to emphasize something. It sounds like this: “I was rather keen on having mangoes for breakfast, but you didn't buy any. Chelo mama, buy some!”. I could have imagined that speaking a bit of Hindi would make her popular in our Mumbai neighborhood, but I could never guess that her bossy attitude will serve her so well. People simply seem to do whatever she tells (gestures) them to do. So far, we had cars stopping in the middle of the street, random people carrying her stroller, crowds moving away to let her take a turn on a swing or go down the slide. All of this at a simple lift of her hand. And she has a special face expression too, it is something in between being slightly annoyed by the fact that she actually has to lift her hand and the hint of a gracious smile reserved for those ready to obey.
Our middle daughter speaks Chinese. Her main topics are 嫦娥, 白娘子and 小舞. You are now waiting for a further elaboration, but that's it. I do not know more that you do. I actually had her Mandarin teacher help me look up these characters online just to see what are they: humans, fairies, ponies, ninjas...?
She is using Chinese characters in addition to Arabic numbers to do math homework. This has been raising some eyebrows lately, so I received a kind request from the school to remind my daughter that she “should not be drawing on her homework”. Unlike my son, she does not have identity crisis. She believes she is Chinese - end of story. This is something she happily shares with others. Her kindergarten friends accepted this as a fact. They even half-convinced the teacher, who consequently believed that I was Chinese for a full semester, even though she met me every day at drop off and pick up.
If this seems confusing, you may want to skip the rest. It is not going to get much simpler.
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