Raising a bilingual child has presented some interesting challenges for me. One of the main ones is talking about food: not because I grew up talking about food and its preparation solely in English, but actually because there are so many different names for foods. Like many different names for the same food. Like turkey. Or the same word, for many different foods, like cranberries and blueberries.
It's hard enough to help students deal with this in the classroom, but what's a mom supposed to do to keep from confusing the little one at home? Just pick one and go with it.
My first year teaching, I was so excited when my Spanish 1 class started learning about foods just before Thanksgiving... perfect timing, I thought! I made a fun lesson about Thanksgiving foods, and students would tell me which ones they liked, and we would all have a great time speaking in Spanish! Until, I was blindsided by Thanksgiving vocabulary, like turkey, cranberries, and potatoes... it can be kind of confusing.
Let's start with turkey, as that is the most obvious:
There are like 4 different ways to say it, as far as I've heard:
pavo- pretty standard
guajolote - México
chompipe - Costa Rica and other parts of Central America
chumpe - El Salvador (this one is altogether new to me... I just found it doing some research today on SpanglishBaby.com)
Cranberries surprised me. When I looked it up, it came up "arándano", which is really fun to say, but, I was sure that was the word for blueberry. I looked that one up again, and yes, blueberry is also "arándano". Though I use both words at home with Hannah, this has always confused me, until today, when I found on Spanglish baby that they may also be called "arándanos agrios" (sour), or more obviously, "arándanos rojos" (red). Oh. Ok! Still arándanos though. "Finding the correct term in Spanish for any type of berry in English can be difficult, mainly because some of these varieties don't really exist in Spanish-speaking countries" (SpanglishBaby) That makes sense.
Mashed potatoes. My favorite Thanksgiving food. That was a logical one: puré de papas. Pureed potatoes. That makes sense. And sweet potatoes? I had always used "batatas", having learned that word from a teacher of Spanish origin... but then I learned that they are also called "boniatos" (actually a Cuban word) which was a new favorite way to say it, because it's easy to remember like Bonnie! Turns out I can also call them "camotes" (in most parts of Latin America) . We've been talking about sweet potatoes a LOT around here. They were always one of Hannah's favorite purees. And we call them boniatos. :)
Pick your words and use them today!
¡Feliz Día de Acción de Gracias!
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