We live in a part of the world where seismic activity and volcanos are part of life. We live in a house where dinosaur-books and water-play is a common feature in everyday activities. We are a family where we use three languages in our conversations. Unsurprisingly, this all gets mixed, and sometimes in the cutest ways.
Starting with volcanos, they are fascinating with their glowing lava shooting up into the air. You often see them in the dinosaur books and there are old volcanic mountains close to us reminding us of their existence. My son loves his volcanos and they often show up when we are playing, almost always expressed as the English word volcano.
Water next. Fountains are another form of elements-shooting-up-into-the-air phenomenon. In central Fukuoka there is a place called Canal City where there is a big fountain performance every hour or so, and when we went there my son was very fascinated by it. Since then we have been looking for fountains in the city where we live, but so far has not found any. However, my son has discovered that it is fun to make his own fountains, whether in the shower or in our little garden.
Every time we give water to the vegetable garden, it is more fun to play fountain, pointing the water up towards the sky, instead if spraying it on the soil. Pappa, jag vill göra en fontano, my son says, pronouncing fontano like it was an English word. Daddy, I want to make a fontano. In Swedish, fountain is called fontän, and I just think how adorable it is for my son to have mixed the Swedish fontän with the English volcano to make the word fontano for his water erupting play. And rather than correcting him, I have started to use the word as well – it is just too cute to resist.
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