| विषय में पृष्ठों की संख्या: < [1 2 3 4] > | Welcome! विषय पोस्ट करनेवाला व्यक्ति: Berni Armstrong
|
|---|
Michael Roberts 
संयुक्त राज्य अमरीका
Local time: 12:10
सदस्य (2002)
जर्मन से अंग्रेजी
+ ...
Michael, father to Vivienne (9) and Orion (5)
Father EN/US, Mother HU, street varies but usually US
Father+Mother speak DE (just for laughs)
Usual strategy: mLAH with an admixture of OPOL when my Hungarian gives out.
And we're planning on moving to Puerto Rico, so there's about to be a fourth language in the mix.
Anyway, our kids have radically different language strategies. Our daughter is resistant to speaking Hungarian when we're in the States, but... See more Michael, father to Vivienne (9) and Orion (5)
Father EN/US, Mother HU, street varies but usually US
Father+Mother speak DE (just for laughs)
Usual strategy: mLAH with an admixture of OPOL when my Hungarian gives out.
And we're planning on moving to Puerto Rico, so there's about to be a fourth language in the mix.
Anyway, our kids have radically different language strategies. Our daughter is resistant to speaking Hungarian when we're in the States, but adapts quickly (enough) when we visit Hungary, which we try to do every summer. She attended the last six weeks of school fine last summer, and went to summer camp for a week, so obviously her Hungarian, while behind her age group and accented, is competent. But her English is far better.
Our son, though, switches with wild abandon and his Hungarian is somewhat better. He's not in school yet, though. An interesting thing is that when he was learning to speak, he would use Hungarian grammatical structures to build English sentences, and vice versa. And not always at the sentence level, either; he tried to make new English words using Hungarian particle logic. So "this many" turned into "thenny." Which made sense, in a way, if you approach it with your right brain and if you're bilingual, but boy did it confuse the ambient monolingual mundanes.
Our daughter, at 6 months, could detect the difference between languages. She would look surprised when we'd switch in normal conversation (since we ourselves speak a sort of English/German/Hungarian creole as a result of having had only German in common when we married, there is a lot of casual language switching in our household.)
Conversely, our son took quite some time to realize there were two different languages going on. He did eventually sort it out, though.
Neither child has ever shown any interest in learning or speaking German, even though they hear it a lot. But interestingly enough, we lived in Germany for a month last year when I got lucky with a short job, and the kids picked up an amazing amount from watching TV. My daughter actually started to speak German, isolated sentences, like a sudden, "Dieser Hund ist schoen" out of the clear blue sky.
Multilingualism is fun, and kids are fun. And multilingual kids are fun squared.
[Edited at 2004-06-26 21:18] ▲ Collapse
| | | | ACOZ (X)
आस्ट्रेलिया
Local time: 01:40
फ्रांसीसी से अंग्रेजी
| Reply to Yolanda (and others) | Jun 26, 2004 |
Angela
Mother of James (07.04.1984)
BPBL
Father FR; Mother ENG; Street FR or ENG
(whichever, as they say!)
We lived in France until James was 18 and brought him up to speak English in the house/garden/car i.e. our "worlds", as long as there were no French speakers around. If there were, we all spoke French and we explained to him that it was the polite thing to do so that our guest didn't feel left out.
Outside our "worlds" i.e. in the street, in shops... See more Angela
Mother of James (07.04.1984)
BPBL
Father FR; Mother ENG; Street FR or ENG
(whichever, as they say!)
We lived in France until James was 18 and brought him up to speak English in the house/garden/car i.e. our "worlds", as long as there were no French speakers around. If there were, we all spoke French and we explained to him that it was the polite thing to do so that our guest didn't feel left out.
Outside our "worlds" i.e. in the street, in shops etc. we spoke French. This prevented the embarrassment felt by many bilingual children. They are already known at school to be different ("he's the one with the English mother", "he's the one who speaks two languages" etc.) but at least they don't stand out from the crowd in "public" situations.
The system worked well and James never confused the two languages.
He went through a stage, when he was about 12 or 13, when he would just go on speaking French when he got home from school. In a way, it's understandable.He might want to tell me about some event at school and the language in which it occurred was French so it was easier to describe it in that language. However, we were fortunate enough to be able to go to Britain every year to stay with family and he quickly realised that, by not "practising" his English on a daily basis, he took a couple of days to readapt when we crossed the Channel so reverted to the original system. I never insisted on English, by the way, just continued to answer in English as long as we were in our "world". I think it's probably a bad idea to make a big issue of the bilingual thing.
A last point to ponder. James has recently admitted that the one downside he experienced as a bilingual and very definitely bicultural child related to humour. There were humorous references he'd picked up in the UK that meant nothing to his French friends so he couldn't use them in a French situation. The reverse was also true. And his huge ability to make puns drawing on both languages simultaneously was also a "no go". So he feels that each group of friends or family knows only part of him and that only his parents know him fully. An interesting thought, no?
A bit long-winded but I hope this helps others. ▲ Collapse
| | | | JTLingos
Local time: 12:10
डच से अंग्रेजी
+ ...
| Dutch and English | Jun 27, 2004 |
We live in the U.S. My husband is Dutch and I am British. We speak Dutch at home. My daughter who is 13 has passive knowledge of Dutch as she was born in Holland and it was her first language, however, my son who is 6 has no knowledge of Dutch and totally tunes it out. I would welcome any suggestions on how to get them speaking Dutch.
| | | |
i am linda, mother to elisa and santiago.(1977/1983)
opol
mom eng, dad esp, street, esp/val
my husband is the one who has most profited from this bilingualness in the house!
his english , just listening to me with kids, has improved ten fold when the kids were young. now i speak both languages to them,(when we are alone) with no real reasoning behind WHY. it just happens. they rarely answer in english unless other english speakers are with us.
i think ... See more i am linda, mother to elisa and santiago.(1977/1983)
opol
mom eng, dad esp, street, esp/val
my husband is the one who has most profited from this bilingualness in the house!
his english , just listening to me with kids, has improved ten fold when the kids were young. now i speak both languages to them,(when we are alone) with no real reasoning behind WHY. it just happens. they rarely answer in english unless other english speakers are with us.
i think it is natural for each parent to speak his native tongue, but when we are surrounded by others there comes a time when one must think what is POLITE in public, or in a social group that is not bilingual.
the one thing i would encourage new parents is to not be pressured by family that they might be "confusing " the child.
your child may speak a little later, or express himself clearly later than his mono-lingual cousins.. but do not despair! in no time, your kids will take off and surprise you at how they know which language to speak to each person.
i have a friend who wrote her doctorate about bilingual kids. i will try to see if it is posted anywhere for reference. ▲ Collapse
| | |
|
|
|
| My experience | Jun 27, 2004 |
Hi all,
My name is Reiko and I'm glad to find this forum.
I am Japanese mom to Laura (18) and Marianna (16); their dad is Italian.
We live in a small town in Italy and we visit Japane only sometimes. Practically my daughters have chance to speak in Japanese only with me, however I think I have been successful in taching them Japanese, at leaset in speaking.
Japanese writing is very complicated so I didn't insist so much when they started to study hard in sc... See more Hi all,
My name is Reiko and I'm glad to find this forum.
I am Japanese mom to Laura (18) and Marianna (16); their dad is Italian.
We live in a small town in Italy and we visit Japane only sometimes. Practically my daughters have chance to speak in Japanese only with me, however I think I have been successful in taching them Japanese, at leaset in speaking.
Japanese writing is very complicated so I didn't insist so much when they started to study hard in school (from junior high school on), but they speak Japanese natuarally and they have dreams during night in Japanese language.
Cheers,
Reiko ▲ Collapse
| | | | | they invent their own | Jun 27, 2004 |
[quote]In which language will a baby start to speak its first words
I am French, my husband is bilingual English/French, we speak French at home (appart from my husband who speaks English to our children)and live in the UK. My son (now 20 months old) calls me mamum and his dad papa. He started with both languages depending on the occasion he learned the word (for example said fleur because he learned from me and car because he learned from dad or tv or song). He is very interested in songs so starts to make a preference for English as his favorites are the one from Sing and Sign (we did sign language for babies and it really helped him to relate the 2 languages and to understand both at the same level as you do the same sign for the same word in English and in French). He hasn't started sentences yet but definitely has a lot of vocabulary so not all bilingual kids are late. I'm looking forward to hearing him making cute grammar mistakes (la bleue voiture...)
hope to speak soon on that very welcome forum.
Nadège
| | | | translatol
Local time: 17:10
स्पेनी से अंग्रेजी
+ ...
| Identifying languages | Jun 27, 2004 |
nothing wrote:
I am so glad you have started this forum. Maybe someone can help me to solve my problem.
One of my children has a very peculiar behaviour. I have never heard of anything like it. I call her a bilingual alternator: She refuses to speak Spanish when we are in the UK and English when we are in Spain, so if she is spends a long period in one of the countries, she almost forgets how to speak the other language. At the moment her Spanish is worse than what you get from a machine translator (for example, adding an "o" or an "a" at the end of an English word, in the hope that it will become a Spanish word).
I know that she will speak properly again after a couple of weeks in Spain, but it is still a problem when she tries to talk on the phone with members of the family who cannot speak English.
I hope you will have some advice for me.
D
Yolanda
Mother of Hannah (19-09-93)
OPOL
Dad Eng Mum Spa
Dear Yolanda,
Like Fabiana, I would say, "Don't worry - she'll grow out of it."
You have to bear in mind that YOUNG children identify languages with places and people. For them it's not English or Spanish but "the way Daddy speaks" or "the way we speak when we're in Spain." Perhaps that's still going on in Hannah. A child in a bilingual family may even refuse to speak the mother's language with the father and vice versa. It may be that this way of 'signposting' languages helps the child to keep them unmixed. (I say 'may' before everything because I don't think there's been much research, though the Harding & Riley book is worth reading.)
There may also be 'peer pressure', meaning that often children don't like to seem different from the other children around them and one way to seem different is to use a minority language. I live in a bilingual area in Spain and see that peer pressure affects adults as well as children.
Hope this helps.
| | |
|
|
|
translatol
Local time: 17:10
स्पेनी से अंग्रेजी
+ ...
| Send them home for an immersion. | Jun 27, 2004 |
JTLingos wrote:
We live in the U.S. My husband is Dutch and I am British. We speak Dutch at home. My daughter who is 13 has passive knowledge of Dutch as she was born in Holland and it was her first language, however, my son who is 6 has no knowledge of Dutch and totally tunes it out. I would welcome any suggestions on how to get them speaking Dutch.
Dear JTLingos,
Send them to Holland. Seriously. You must have family there who would be delighted to see them in the summer. Nothing motivates learning a language so much as living 'immersed' in its native community and being forced to speak it in order to communicate. In America your children probably feel that speaking Dutch is pointless.
Good luck!
| | | | Goodness
यूनाइटेड किंगडम
Local time: 17:10
अंग्रेजी से पोलिश
+ ...
| not forgetting a language | Jun 27, 2004 |
NowEva wrote:
My Mum-in-law insists that I should take the kids to a Polish school on Saturdays but I\'m not sure about this idea (especially looking at my husband\'s example for whom \"learning\" Polish became just another chore) Anyone would have any experience or suggestions on that?
Goodness - Mum to Aleksander(21 March 2003 )
BPBL
Mum PL/ENG Dad ARB/ENG(not very grammatical) street PL
I saw a few months ago a Polish mother in London in the forum at londynek.net. trying to find a few other Polish mothers with small children to arrange regular informal meetings with ONLY POLISH spoken so that the children could be exposed to Polish. I thought it was a very good idea and as far as I know there were some mothers who responded.
My situation is as follows: I\'m Polish, my husband is a native Arabic speaker. We live in Poland and use English between us. My husband\'s starting to pick up some Polish, but I think in the same pace as my son is, which means him using Polish terms for \'lamp\', \'son\' \'cat\' \'grandma\' etc. My husband\'s English is not grammatical and sometimes I\'m afraid my son will follow his \'easier\' (un)grammatical rules. I believe Alek will speak Polish before English, we would like to move to an English speaking country when Alek is 3 or 4 years old and will try to visit Polsnd every year for a few weeks. My husband does not want to speak Arabic to Alek at this point. We might be moving to an Arab state (instead of an English speaking country) in the future; then we hope to place our child(ren) in an English school.
I believe it is difficult to prejudge what is best as each child is so different-some are linguistically gifted, others are not. Another thing that I think matters is how different are the languages they are exposed to. It may probably be easier for them to learn e.g. Polish&Czech&Russian than Polish/English/Arabic.
Speaking from my personal experience, I moved to live in Russia (then the USSR) when I was 7. I went to a Polish school where I did not have Russian classes for the first two years and after that I didn\'t really need them that much as after two years I started to speak and understand Russian without problems. I remember it came suddenly: one day I was watching TV and suddenly I realized I can understand everything. My brother had the same thing happening to him although he was 4 years older than me and he had Russian classes at the Polish school. At the end of my stay in Moscow, native Russians stopped recognizing me as a foreigner-it made me feel real good. : ) On returning to Poland I continued with Russian lng taught in school- only then I really learned more about grammar and made startling discoveries about the lng- e.g. some expressions I used actually consisted of two or three words etc.- I became more grammara and spelling conscious. I haven\'t been to Russia for 19! years now (well, 10 days in Ukraine 7 years ago), but whenever I have a chance speaking to a Russian, the language gradually comes back. I\'m sure if I went to Russia for a few months I would speak Russian fluently soon again. ( I have to give it a go!)
Sorry-I\'m too long...
Goodness- Mum to Aleksander(21 March 2003 )
BPBL
Mum PL/ENG Dad ARB/ENG(not very grammatical) street PL
| | | | | Great Forum! | Jun 29, 2004 |
Dear Monika and Berni.
Thank you for starting this very interesting forum.
And thank you all for informative and enlightening contributions.
Raising a child in a multilingual environment seems like a big challenge, both for the child and the parents. My main worry is about Nathan's potential to communicate clearly. I wonder if our linguistic diversity could have adverse effects on his development, and wish to find solutions to assist both his communicative and so... See more Dear Monika and Berni.
Thank you for starting this very interesting forum.
And thank you all for informative and enlightening contributions.
Raising a child in a multilingual environment seems like a big challenge, both for the child and the parents. My main worry is about Nathan's potential to communicate clearly. I wonder if our linguistic diversity could have adverse effects on his development, and wish to find solutions to assist both his communicative and social skills.
We use Spanish with my wife since we met in Bolivia, and despite changing countries we have not changed this habit. After two years in Quebec, my French is as good as, or maybe even better than, my Spanish, but still Spanish is the language we use to communicate as a couple. However, when speaking to Nathan, I always use Turkish and his mom French. His first words sound mostly French with Turkish sidekicks. "bye bye" becomes "baba" (TR "father"), and is used for both bye and dad!
When friends are around, English is added to French, Turkish and Spanish, and I keep wondering how this will affect Nathan. After storing many words from 4 languages, would it not be difficult to find the right channels to communicate with them?
As far as I gather from my language learning experience, it seems to me that we will need to move a lot in order to improve them all! And I look forward to days when we will be able to pass a few months every year in each country where our "family languages" are spoken for immersion and better learning purposes!
Immersion is the key. But any ideas about solutions for linguistic confusion?
Cheers.
[Edited at 2005-11-04 19:29] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Kurt Hammond
संयुक्त राज्य अमरीका
Local time: 09:10
जापानी से अंग्रेजी
What a great place to come.
I am not sure I understand the formatting well.
Kids: 3.5yr old and 1.5yr old, both boys.
BPBL (Both parents both languages?)
Mom:JPN Dad:ENG Street:JPN
Until he started going to preschool he almost exclusively spoke English at home. (Since 'street' language is Japanese we gave him English at home assuming he'll get the Japanese outside whether we teach him or not. )He tried to use English on people who he saw ou... See more What a great place to come.
I am not sure I understand the formatting well.
Kids: 3.5yr old and 1.5yr old, both boys.
BPBL (Both parents both languages?)
Mom:JPN Dad:ENG Street:JPN
Until he started going to preschool he almost exclusively spoke English at home. (Since 'street' language is Japanese we gave him English at home assuming he'll get the Japanese outside whether we teach him or not. )He tried to use English on people who he saw outside or came to visit but they never can understand him.
Now that he's been going to preschool for a few months he's using a LOT of Japanese.
Possibly because of how different the two languages are, we don't really see him mixing the languages too much. He tends to get out at least a complete sentence in one language before switching to the other.
Not sure if good or bad that both parents know both languages, but I've heard that in the long run he'll learn both languages better than if one parent is not bilingual. ▲ Collapse
| | |
|
|
|
sylvie malich (X)
जर्मनी
Local time: 18:10
जर्मन से अंग्रेजी
| The issue of pointlessness | Jul 5, 2004 |
translatol wrote:
Dear JTLingos,
Send them to Holland. Seriously. You must have family there who would be delighted to see them in the summer. Nothing motivates learning a language so much as living 'immersed' in its native community and being forced to speak it in order to communicate. In America your children probably feel that speaking Dutch is pointless.
Good luck!
Dear translatol,
I'm so glad you bring up this "pointless" point. I grew up being FORCED to speak German and was sent to German school on Saturdays in Canada when all the other little girls where taking ballet and riding... My revenge was to reject German, refuse to speak it -- my (and my brother's) reasoning was that it was a pointless language! I knew no other kids my age who spoke German. My parents socialized within their encapsulated "oom-pa-pa" German community, which we kids thought was "old fashioned" and archaic. (BTW, they still socialize with them keeping a type of ideal Germany alive that really never was).
So please parents -- make your second (or third) language absolutely irresistable. I can't emphasize enough the importance of like-minded family friends with same-age kids. Make your language fun or else your well-intentioned experiment will die a slow death after your kid enters school...
sylvie (who now regrets having rejected German at age 12)
Mum and Dad separated
Mum native AE, (second language German, Grandparents German, English fluent): Minority language spoken exclusively in the home
Dad native German, (Grandparents German and Spanish): Majority language spoken in the home
Child: age 10, fully fluent in German and English, written and oral equally with the aid of bilingual schooling
[Edited at 2004-07-05 16:29]
| | | | Michael Roberts
संयुक्त राज्य अमरीका
Local time: 12:10
सदस्य (2002)
जर्मन से अंग्रेजी
+ ...
| Pointlessness | Jul 5, 2004 |
I have to agree, based on my daughter, mostly. My wife (Hungarian) and I (American) speak German together, as it was the only language we had in common when we met and married. (Since rectified, of course.) So my daughter has heard German on a daily basis all her life, but never spoke a single word of it -- until we went to Germany and she realized people other than her parents spoke it. This was when she was about six, and we drove down through Germany (visiting some friends) on our way to ... See more I have to agree, based on my daughter, mostly. My wife (Hungarian) and I (American) speak German together, as it was the only language we had in common when we met and married. (Since rectified, of course.) So my daughter has heard German on a daily basis all her life, but never spoke a single word of it -- until we went to Germany and she realized people other than her parents spoke it. This was when she was about six, and we drove down through Germany (visiting some friends) on our way to Hungary one year.
That sparked some interest, but *last* year (she was nine) we spent a month in Germany while I worked on a short contract. The kids watched a lot of TV and my daughter suddenly started speaking German. OK, not a lot, just a sudden and surprising sentence or two -- but the key is to make the language a tool, not an end in itself. If the language is the means of communicating with fun people, the child will learn it. If not, probably not, unless you have a language maniac for a kid, which happens. But you can't count on it.
Monolingual grandparents, cousins, etc. are your best bet. If at all affordable, arrange some time together with the family, and the language will happen on its own. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | See my intro a few pages back | Jul 6, 2004 |
translatol wrote:
JTLingos wrote:
We live in the U.S. My husband is Dutch and I am British. We speak Dutch at home. My daughter who is 13 has passive knowledge of Dutch as she was born in Holland and it was her first language, however, my son who is 6 has no knowledge of Dutch and totally tunes it out. I would welcome any suggestions on how to get them speaking Dutch.
Dear JTLingos,
Send them to Holland. Seriously. You must have family there who would be delighted to see them in the summer. Nothing motivates learning a language so much as living 'immersed' in its native community and being forced to speak it in order to communicate. In America your children probably feel that speaking Dutch is pointless.
Good luck!
Hi JTLingos,
I sympathize. (See my intro post a few pages back!)
I agree with the above advice, though. We are planning to try that this fall, hoping that being in a country where the minority lang. is the majority language (barely, though, as Riga is also Russian-speaking, but that's another thread entirely...) will give my husband extra practice and "kick start" my older daughter with trying to speak Latvian more consistently.
Best of luck to you, and I'm happy to commiserate any time!
Cheers,
Daina
PS Sylvie - I was sent to Latvian school every Saturday when I wanted to watch cartoons instead! I had friends the same age, though, and you're right: it makes it much more attractive.
| | | | | विषय में पृष्ठों की संख्या: < [1 2 3 4] > | इस मंच के लिए कोई मध्यस्थ नहीं है साइट के नियमों के उल्लंघन की सूचना देने या सहायता के लिए कृपया साइट स्टाफ » से संपर्क करें Welcome! | CafeTran Espresso | You've never met a CAT tool this clever!
Translate faster & easier, using a sophisticated CAT tool built by a translator / developer.
Accept jobs from clients who use Trados, MemoQ, Wordfast & major CAT tools.
Download and start using CafeTran Espresso -- for free
Buy now! » |
| | Pastey | Your smart companion app
Pastey is an innovative desktop application that bridges the gap between human expertise and artificial intelligence. With intuitive keyboard shortcuts, Pastey transforms your source text into AI-powered draft translations.
Find out more » |
|
| | | | X Sign in to your ProZ.com account... | | | | | |
Login to reply/comment 
