Ana Discovers One of the World's First Cat Poems!

Ana is an enthusiastic student of ancient history, which makes sense, given the ancient people she comes from. Unfortunately, they left no record of themselves, being nomads and illiterate, but since her people's language has been tied to both the Germanic and Slavic branches of the Indo-European language family, she has taken special interest in the most ancient histories of both groups.


She was fascinated by a documentary about the Book of Kells, the gorgeous eighth century illuminated book of hours that is the treasure of Trinity College in Dublin. The book is one of the world's greatest works of art, but Ana was especially interested in the part of the documentary that described how the monks had gone about creating it. It mentioned in passing an early Irish penman who, in some idle moments, wrote a poem comparing his own work to those of his cat, Pangur Ban. ("Pangur" was a not uncommon cat name. "Ban" is thought to be ancient Gaelic for "white.")

Later, after a little research, Matt was able to present her with a translation of the entire poem. Ana carefully added it to the poetry notebook she keeps with her volumes of favorite poetry.

(Anyone wishing to know more could do worse than to start with the Wikipedia article on the Book of Kells.)


Pangur Ban



I and Pangur Ban, my cat,
'Tis a like task we are at;
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.

Better far than praise of men
'Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill will;
He, too, plies his simple skill.

'Tis a merry thing to see
At our task how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.

Oftentimes a mouse will stray
Into the hero Pangur's way;
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.

'Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
'Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.

When a mouse darts from its den.
O how glad is Pangur then!
O what gladness do I prove
When I solve the doubts I love!

So in peace our tasks we ply,
Pangur Ban, my cat and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine, and he has his.

Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade ;
I get wisdom day and night,
Turning darkness into light.'

(See more of the poems that Ana loves in the column on the right, under the picture of the LOVE sculpture.)

Meet Ana Darcy!

Early Reading and Bilingualism (4)

Young children who are learning to speak can also learn to read. That's a given (see 1, 2, & 3), but we cannot provide a detailed explanation of how to do it here. Instead, we will offer some preliminary considerations, an overview of the process, and some ways to find more help for those so inclined.

The first and most important consideration is to stress how important it is for the parents or other persons involved NOT to feel that they are actually "teaching," or that a schedule should be followed, or that the child WILL learn to read whether he or she wants to or not. Those notions will make the process unpleasant for the child and likely lead to failure. The learning experience should be fun for the child (and the parent), not a series of pass/fail tests. It should be conducted like a game, with laughter, smiles, and joking around. The parents should be thinking of empowering the child, NOT enabling him or her to get into a better school eventually or amaze the neighbors. Small children love to be empowered--any parent knows the delight in a child's voice when he or she reads "Stop" on a stop sign, or "Kentucy Fried Chicken" while driving by a fast food establishment. That's the kind of delight children should have when reading word cards.

So, assuming that the parents are the sort who enjoy the company of their young children at least periodically, then we can move to word cards. There has always been a controversy about the virtues of the "whole word" method of reading instruction versus "phonics." This controversy thrives in elementary schools, with six and seven year olds and older, and will not be reviewed here. Instead, we'll describe a demonstration we used with college students.

The students were instructed to look at a screen where a word would appear for perhaps one quarter of a second. The first word was "terrific." Every student, as soon as the word disappeared, instantly said it out loud: "terrific!" Then they were told to wait for another word. This word was "syzygy." After it disappeared, the classroom buzzed with the sound of students saying "sssss," "zzzz," "sizzy," and so forth, all laughing. When the word was put back on the screen, some actually figured out how to pronounce it. Here's the point: when they read the word "terrific," they were actually reading--getting the meaning from the symbols instantly, without thinking about it. That's what we do when we read. But when they came to an unfamiliar word, they had to proceed a letter or syllable at a time, maybe getting the meaning in the process or maybe not. That's NOT reading--that's decoding. That's phonics. We all use phonics when we're stuck, but that's not an efficient way to extract meaning from printed language. The whole word method is how we read, whole words or whole phrases at a glance, or even, in proficient readers, whole sentences. And that's how little children best start to read.

We've known parents who use card stock, or cardboard, to make word cards, word cards with single words in large, easy to see letters, words that hold special meaning for their toddlers, like their own names, their words for their parents and siblings, pets, and so forth. (See the photo above.) Children of two or three who are beginning to talk two and three words at a time are ready to try this. It's important not to go too fast. Start with one card the first couple of days, and read it for the child. If the child eventually reads it before it is read for him or her, there should be a general celebration followed by the second card, which is also read for the child. When he or she can differentiate between them, bring out the third card. If the child is distracted or not interested, then postpone any further sessions for several months. You will know when the child is ready to continue when you see their delight.

The children we are familiar with soon get the hang of this process, and even request (or demand) other words be written for them: favorite foods, people, animals, all sorts of unpredictable things. Always stop before the child wants to; don't overload him or her with new words. One or two a day is the limit. The size of the word doesn't matter. "Great grandmother" is easily read. At first, children will recognize words by their first letter, or the presence of double letters, or maybe their overall length, or even by a splash of grape juice on one corner of the card. That doesn't matter.

Eventually, they will be able to read 40 or 50 words, and confusion will set in. This is good! One child had a devil of a time differentiating hand, head, and hair. She first learned hair, because "it has a dot." That left hand and head, which required some extra study. Eventually, she figured out which was which on her own, with the help of her mother's hints. This is exactly how children learn to speak as well--by practicing, studying, and trying again. It's crucial that they not be criticized for their miscues. It's a game. It should be fun.

At some point, perhaps between 50 and 100 word cards, their eyes will be getting accustomed to the letters, and the size of the letters can be reduced to one inch. Parents can create fun activities: flash card games, words laid out on the floor (to accustom the child to left-to-right reading), nonsense sentences, or even sentences of the child's creation. Children can even dictate entire stories which can be written out on card stock for reading later, on their own. One child loved a game where she was given a card that said "There is a pretzel under your pillow," or "Find the cookie on your bed." She learned to take the card along on her search, to consult in case she forgot a crucial detail. Thus she learned, by age four, that writing could lead to food!

As it happened, Ana and Matt Méndez used word cards with their children, for both English and Spanish, only being careful to conduct a single session in one language. They were delighted when three year old Julio, for example, saw the word "pato" and said "duck," or saw "table" and said "mesa!" He understood the meaning of the word instantly, but spoke it in whatever language came to him first. That is real reading: getting the meaning from print instantly. It was not a mistake! (When they got to the sentence stage, this no longer happened.) Both children were soon able to read themselves to sleep in two languages. Unfortunately, however, the Méndez family was unfamiliar with the different alphabets of the other languages their nannies used, so they weren't able to use word cards for them

Several of the parents mentioned in the examples above used a simple, inexpensive book as a guide: How To Teach Your Baby to Read, by Glen Doman. It's still in print (with a co-author), along with myriad other titles promising to give children superior brains. We can't recommend any but the basic book. Parents can easily create their own word cards without paying for commercially prepared materials. We are intrigued, however, by Teach Your Baby Math, also by Glen Doman. If it seems that learning mathematics is too difficult for a young child, we disagree. Basic math is simpler than language: it's completely logical and there are no exceptions! If we had a two or three year old handy, we would try this ourselves. (We wonder if some of the unfavorable reviews for those books might be from demanding parents who set goals and had expectations for their children. We don't know...but we wonder.)

In any case, teaching small children to read in two languages is a good way to help them become bilingual. Each case will depend on many variables. Clearly, it's best if at least one parent is bilingual, the more fluent the better. A child who is even partially bilingual at an early age will have an advantage later on should the opportunity present. As long as the parent-child sessions are no pressure, fun occasions, they will be time well spent, for both parents and their children.

Ana's Children and Bilingualism (1)

Earthly Children and Bilingualism (2)

Bilingual and Biliterate Toddlers: Preliminaries (3)

And now, let's consider early math education!



Bilingual and Biliterate Toddlers: Some Preliminaries (3)

First, a bit of background on child language acquisition. Children learn to speak mostly on their own. They are not "taught" in any conventional sense. They practice incessantly, make and correct mistakes, and in only a few short years become native speakers, figuring out how their language works all by themselves.


If you have ever heard a child say something like "The dog bited me," that's a bit of evidence of this. Children don't copy adults saying that because adults don't say that. Such a mistake shows the child has figured out how past tense works in English (for regular verbs, at least) and applies it to an irregular verb. If it's a mistake, it's a very good one. We have similarly heard a young child say in Spanish "Yo sabo la respuesta" ("I know the answer"), which is a regularization of an irregular Spanish verb. (The correct, irregular, form is "Yo sé la respuesta.") Both "mistakes" are clues that each child has figured out how verbs work...normally. They are actually excellent mistakes.

Any parent knows that young children are ferocious, instatiable learners. The best thing a parent can do is encourage them and let them learn, all the while keeping them out of the knife drawer and high traffic areas. Ana Darcy Méndez, and the people of Thomo, her planet, knew this well. That's why Ana hired bilingual nannies (in DC2), and later, private tutors for her children in a variety of fields (in DC3). (If only more of us could do that!)

Young children are especially gifted at learning languages, though this ability fades into adulthood. If you attempted a foreign language in high school or college, you probably felt remarkably ungifted. You were too old! You'd have done better at age three!

Now we must make a biological point. Where in the body is language actually learned? In the brain, obviously. How does language get to the brain? Via nervous impulses, of course. The brain receives these nervous impulses from all over the body: from the eyes, from the ears, the nose, the skin, the tongue--all in the same "format," via the nervous system.

The point is that, as far as the brain is concerned, language can be aural (via the ears), or visual, via the eyes. (It can even be tactile, through the fingers: braille.) Printed language IS language, just as spoken language is. To the brain, it's all nerve signals. So if small children are such gifted learners of spoken language, why aren't they also gifted learners of printed language?

It turns out that the reason more children don't learn to read at very young ages is that the letters are too small. Compare cat and eat. What is the difference between those two sets of letters? It's the difference between the letters c and e, one tiny line: -. That's all. It's hard to see if you don't know what to look for. Normal children have excellent eyesight. They can spot a tiny spider across a room--but give them a confusing jumble of letters and it's hard to tell cat from eat. Solution: make the letters BIG, especially at first. Train their eyes! They'll figure out the c/e problem, like they figure out the rest of the language, on their own.

The bottom line is that tiny children who are learning spoken language can indeed learn to read that language too, at the same time and in the same way, without being conventionally taught. And, just as those children fortunate enough to be around two spoken languages can learn to speak them both, they can also learn to read them both--at the same time and in the same way.

The next post will provide a brief explanation of the process and some hints for those interested in pursuing early bilingual reading.

Bilingualism 1: Ana & Matt's Children

Bilingualism 2: Extraterrestrials and the Rest of Us

Bilingualism and Early Bilingual Reading 4

Meet Ana Darcy!

Raising Bilingual Children: Extraterrestrials and the Rest of Us: 2

It isn't difficult for bilingual parents to raise bilingual children. All they have to do is speak to their children in both languages, and the kids will do the rest. It can be a challenge, however, for parents who are not bilingual to raise bilingual children.

The matter is eased if there are other people present, including other children, who speak the second language. The more they are present, the easier it will be. But if their presence cannot be counted upon, or is sporadic, then the results may be disappointing.

Ana and Matt Méndez wanted their children to be at least bilingual, and Ana's determination, plus their fortunate circumstances, made this possible. They hired nannies, and Ana made sure all the nannies, in addition to their other qualifications, were native speakers of other languages...and that they spoke to the children in those languages.

Ana didn't realize that this was not enough contact to ensure complete acquisition, and with no further contact the children lost most of the languages they were exposed to as they grew older. They retained some familiarity with several, notably Hindi, which is probably enough to give them a head start should they decide to try again later in life. Their experience with Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean, all from other than the Indo-European family of languages, did not take.

Most of us do not have the option of hiring bilingual nannies, of course, yet there are other ways non-native speakers can help their infant children gain another language. We are familiar with one Texas family which succeeded. Both parents were native English speakers, but both learned Spanish later in life. One parent was fairly fluent, the other less so, but neither had experience in the household, intimate family Spanish that would be spoken around children. They realized they couldn't expect their children to learn to speak like a student in a graduate Spanish literature class!

Their solution was to teach the children to read in two languages. It makes sense! There are countless children's books in Spanish. Libraries have hundreds of them. They can be purchased in grocery stores and other stores all over town--and they contain native-quality Spanish, useful vocabulary, attractive illustrations, and are designed for young readers. For this family, the books, plus the spoken efforts of the parents, occasional contact with Spanish speaking children, and Spanish kid shows on public television, produced young people fluent enough to place out of Spanish in high school and college and go on to learn other languages easily.

The next question, to be sure, is How do you teach toddlers to read?

It turns out not to be difficult at all. That will be the subject of the next post.

(The photo above shows a youngster from another English dominant family, who has also learned Spanish, putting himself to sleep by reading a children's book in Spanish, a skill his mother helped him acquire and that he enjoys to this day. He is also, at the age of seven, interested in learning French.)

Bilingualism, part 1

Bilingual & Biliterate Toddlers: Some Preliminaries (3)

Early Reading and Bilingualism (4)

Meet Ana Darcy!

Bilingualism And Ana and Matt's Children: 1

Every year or two, it seems, society rediscovers the benefits of teaching young children to speak two or more languages. Fifty years ago, it was commonly thought that doing this would confuse toddlers horribly--despite the abundant evidence of happy, unconfused bilingual children all around the doubters, and all over the world. Many still think exposing toddlers to two (or more) languages is a bad idea.


But the conventional wisdom, if that's what it is, is wrong. There is plenty of scholarly documentation to indicate bilingual children are better off than monolingual children in many ways, including and especially in brain development and flexibility. Countless parents and children have realized this themselves, on their own.

Presently, the Méndez family lives in New Mexico, where bilingualism is probably more common than not, and there's little controversy about the advantages of raising bilingual children. The state Ana first landed in, Texas, is considerably behind New Mexico in that regard, though improving slowly. Any Spanish teacher in one of Texas' many community colleges is familiar with Hispanic students trying to learn Spanish as adults, after their parents made sure to raise them speaking only the dominant language, English.

A similar situation holds for other Texans of ethnic heritage: Czech Texans, German Texans, Polish Texans, Swedish Texans, and many others. They have lost their ancestral language, even though the ability to speak it would not hamper their functioning in an English-speaking society. Instruction in Czech, to give just one example, is offered in high schools and under continuing education programs in the central part of the state. Nearly all the students are second, third, or fourth generation children of immigrants who abandoned their first language at some point. Now, their children want to reconnect. It is possible to hear Czech spoken now in stores and on the streets of central Texas towns: La Grange, Praha (yes, Praha), Moravia (yes, Moravia, Texas), Schulenberg, Shiner, German in Fredericksburg, and so forth.

In addition to the benefits of bilingualism to the individual, the benefits to society are also worth mentioning. Just ask the same Spanish professor mentioned above: who is studying Spanish nowadays? Answer: business people, medical personnel, law enforcement people, all sorts of people. It's a practical, marketable skill. Check the increasing number of students now studying Mandarin Chinese and Arabic. A multilingual populace is an obvious national asset.

But back to toddlers. No one really "teaches" babies a language. They learn language on their own, over just a few years. It's almost a miracle: they acquire whatever languages are spoken around them, painlessly and perfectly. Adults seldom learn a second language perfectly, but children become native speakers.

The record for a child learning languages, as far as Ana's editor is aware, is nine, by a child of British diplomats in India. His parents, his grandparents, his teacher, his nanny spoke different languages, and he learned them all--without having headaches or nightmares. He retained only several into adulthood, but later he remembered that at the time, he thought it was simply necessary to speak differently to different people. His parents took him shopping when he was four, to act as interpreter. It was no problem!

So how do monolingual parents raise bilingual children? That's a good question. It can be done. We will address that in another post very soon.

Earthly Children and Bilingualism (2)

Bilingual & Biliterate Toddlers: Preliminaries (3)

Early Reading and Bilingualism (4)

Meet Ana Darcy!

More Kitties! A Caracal, a Lynx, and Servals!

We haven't put up kitty pictures lately. Here is a caracal, a lynx, and two fun-loving servals from Julie's Jungle. Thanks, Julie! Raised from a bottle, these gorgeous animals are just like regular house cats...only bigger, about five times bigger.

Note: The Méndez family has a caracal, featured in Distant Cousin: Regeneration and Distant Cousin: Recirculation.

See many other cats in the right column under the photo of the blue-eyed Siamese

Meet Ana Darcy!

Another Look at Those Arpilleras from Ecuador

People--not just Ana--have been interested in this unusual textile art form from Ecuador. In the previous post on the subject, it may not have been clear just how three-dimensional they are. They are, in effect, miniature sculptures in textiles (with a few other inclusions). Here are front and side views of two arpilleras: a farmacia (pharmacy) and an orange harvest. You can see that each figure is a separate creation, actually a miniature fabric doll, added to many others to create a view of the artist's society and culture. (Click to enlarge. Enlarging the side views gives an especially good view of the handiwork involved.)

Ana's Discovery of Arpilleras

More on Arpilleras

Meet Ana Darcy!