‘Mummy, what language do I speak?’ asked DS1.

‘English’ was my reply, knowing where this was going.

Last week we had a letter from the school about the children’s assembly.  The class assembly will focus on the concept of ‘reduce, reuse and recycle’.  Given there are over 40 nationalities at the school, many children are bi-lingual.  The school thought it would be nice to convey the environmental message in a variety of languages.

Given DS1 doesn’t speak any language other than English, I threw the form in the bin.

‘But Mummy, don’t we speak ‘Irelish’?’ he asked concerned.

‘Irish?  Unfortunately not honey.  I used to speak it but have forgotten it over the years.  BTW, I won’t go into why the Irish don’t speak their native tongue as a first language….ask your English Daddy!’

DS1 looked confused and despondent.

Not quite sure if I should offer this up….’I do speak German.  It is a bit rusty now as I haven’t had much contact with the language for about 15 years, but I used to live there and learned the language.’

‘How do you say, ‘Hello’?’ he asked excitedly.

‘Guten Tag’ or, more precisely ‘Hallo’, I responded, eager to show I was once bi-lingual.

He tried out ‘Guten Tag’ a number of times, and decided he was fluent and could participate in assembly as a native German speaker!

I am sure Miss S will be scratching her head tomorrow……..