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Raising Kids with many languages

 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
61 messages over 8 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next >>
Choscura
Diglot
Groupie
United States
Joined 5549 days ago

61 posts - 82 votes 
Speaks: English*, Thai

 
 Message 1 of 61
23 September 2009 at 7:02pm | IP Logged 
I've got to start thinking about this soon, and I'm curious what others here have done or plan on doing in terms of raising kids to speak more than one native language. I'm kind of inspired by that classic scene in Indiana Jones where he goes in to tell his father about the thieves and his father says "count to ten first- in Greek!", but I don't have any real plans beyond this.

So: what did you do with your kids? What did your parents do with you?
1 person has voted this message useful



anytram
Bilingual Tetraglot
Groupie
France
Joined 5670 days ago

85 posts - 89 votes 
Speaks: German*, Polish*, French, English
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 2 of 61
23 September 2009 at 7:21pm | IP Logged 
My parents spoke Polish only with me, I learned German at kindergarden.
What I hear a lot about is in mixed-couples every one is just speaking their mother tongue, so the kid knows with whom what language to speak.
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Choscura
Diglot
Groupie
United States
Joined 5549 days ago

61 posts - 82 votes 
Speaks: English*, Thai

 
 Message 3 of 61
23 September 2009 at 7:50pm | IP Logged 
The only thing that worries me with this is when both parents speak both languages and mix them, I found a statistic the other day that showed kids growing up in families like this actually had much weaker linguistic skills than kids who spoke just one or the other language.
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yong321
Groupie
United States
yong321.freeshe
Joined 5543 days ago

80 posts - 104 votes 
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 4 of 61
23 September 2009 at 8:25pm | IP Logged 
Choscura wrote:
The only thing that worries me with this is when both parents speak both languages and mix them, I found a statistic the other day that showed kids growing up in families like this actually had much weaker linguistic skills than kids who spoke just one or the other language.


I read about it too. But it has no reference. Do you have a URL pointing at (preferably) a scientific study of this? Or just journal name and issue number?

Yong Huang
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izan
Bilingual Tetraglot
Newbie
Spain
letmewritealittlebit
Joined 5870 days ago

20 posts - 34 votes
1 sounds
Speaks: Spanish*, Basque*, EnglishC1, FrenchC1
Studies: German

 
 Message 5 of 61
23 September 2009 at 11:27pm | IP Logged 
My father spoke Basque to me and my mother Spanish, so it was easy for me to learn both of them. About mixing languages, one friend of mine and her husband are doing that. Apparently, they choose one language randomly each time... We'll have to wait to see the results because their child is still too young, but it sounds like a bad idea to me.
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Felipe
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6031 days ago

451 posts - 501 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Italian, Dutch, Catalan

 
 Message 6 of 61
24 September 2009 at 1:17am | IP Logged 
We are teaching our children both Spanish and Portuguese. My wife, who is from Brazil, only speaks Portuguese with the kids and I only speak Spanish. The real key is consistency. No matter what, we do not speak English to them. We make them put their DVDs in Spanish or Portuguese. My daughter, who is now 5 years old, can speak English, Spanish and Portuguese very well and she does not mix them at all.


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Glendonian
Bilingual Diglot
Newbie
Canada
Joined 5718 days ago

26 posts - 37 votes
Speaks: French*, English*
Studies: German, Italian

 
 Message 7 of 61
24 September 2009 at 8:01am | IP Logged 
I guess it looks like the key is each parents speaking only one. I'm yet another example; my father spoke
exclusively French to us and we virtually always spoke English with our mother. We all became flawless
bilinguals.
1 person has voted this message useful



Glendonian
Bilingual Diglot
Newbie
Canada
Joined 5718 days ago

26 posts - 37 votes
Speaks: French*, English*
Studies: German, Italian

 
 Message 8 of 61
24 September 2009 at 8:02am | IP Logged 
I guess it looks like the key is each parents speaking only one. I'm yet another example; my father spoke
*exclusively* French to us and we virtually always spoke English with our mother. We all became flawless bilinguals.


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