My son is shy. It’s a struggle for his teachers to engage him in class discussions at school. His shyness is partly his nature and partly because Danish is his second language. Although he sounds fluent, there are still words he doesn’t know – like any nine year old, even using their native language – and words or expressions he needs to consciously think about before speaking. One of the things that he, like I, have to consciously think about when speaking Danish is numbers. This is because, unlike most languages, the numbers are around the wrong way. For example, in Danish you don’t say twenty-one. You say one and twenty. The single digit comes before the ten. Once you get to hundreds, it’s the hundred, then the one, and then the ten. So I am always doing a little brain twister when I tell people a phone number, for example.
In class one day, the teacher had encouraged a discussion amongst the kids about family – their parents, siblings, extended family. Where they are from, how old they are, where they live, and so on. After school, my son sat in our living room, thinking more about this.
“Mum, are
you fifty-four?” he asked.
“No, I’m forty-five,” I laughed in reply.
“Oh,” he said.
After a few moments, I turned back to him, curious. “Did you tell someone I was fifty-four?” I asked.
“Yes, I told my class,” he replied.
I sighed bodily. It was great he was involving himself in class discussion. But probably quite a few kids, perhaps also a few parents too, now that the kids were home from school and relating their day’s activities, were more than a little surprised at the information he provided. Or at least I hoped they were surprised.
