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Raising Kids with many languages | ||
Tags: Children | Multilingual | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Paskwc Pentaglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5681 days ago 450 posts - 624 votes  Speaks: Hindi, Urdu*, Arabic (Levantine), French, English Studies: Persian, Spanish | Message 33 of 61 29 October 2009 at 7:34pm | IP Logged |
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The one caveat should be trying to pass on a language while still being in the process of
picking it up. If you're unable to pass on the language yet, you can still introduce what you know in the hopes of sparking interest but you maybe shouldn't make yourself a model. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| alang Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7225 days ago 563 posts - 757 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 34 of 61 04 March 2010 at 10:30am | IP Logged |
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I believe the parents and relatives are the most important resource without any doubt. Anyone be willing to try resources geared to children. I would suggest looking into dvds like "Little Pim" created by Julia Pimsleur. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ruskivyetr Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5485 days ago 769 posts - 962 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Polish, Modern Hebrew | Message 35 of 61 04 March 2010 at 1:27pm | IP Logged |
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If I ever have kids in the future, I will probably raise them speaking either German (if I
decide to settle down in a German speaking country), or Russian (if I decide to settle down in Russia). I don't want my kids to have the linguistic disadvantage of growing up in America. I want them to have a chance at important languages that are not English. I think my goal is to raise my children speaking at least three languages, and a maximum of five. The three would be from my wife and my separate languages (yeah right I'm marrying someone who only speaks the languages I do), the family or community language, and then I plan to send my children to a bilingual or trilingual school. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5385 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 37 of 61 04 March 2010 at 1:50pm | IP Logged |
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I see a lot of posts of the nature "I speak X, but I will speak Y to my kids". From
experience, I don't find this very realistic. We all want to speak to our kids in the most natural way possible because we care about them and we care about telling them about the world in the most precise way possible with the least interference. We also want our kids to communicate with our parents and to understand our view of the world from our cultural perspective. It should also be noted that if you artificially create an environment where you speak a language and there is no other attachment to that language whatsoever (no family, no history, no cultural background to back it up), even if you did a superb job of it, the child will eventually forget the language and there will be no advantage to the whole thing. I spoke French to my kids because that was the only natural way for me. My parents, my family speaks French, there was no other way. My wife speaks English and so does her family, so there was no other way for her but to speak English to the kids. They now go to a French school, but not in a province (Canada) where I grew up so they actually speak a different variety of French. Though it's sometimes frustrating for me, the bottomline is that I can speak to them about the world in the most natural way possible, and that was the point from the get-go. My kids were not a linguistic experiment; they are bilingual because of their mixed background. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Quabazaa Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5613 days ago 414 posts - 543 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German, French Studies: Japanese, Korean, Maori, Scottish Gaelic, Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Written) | Message 38 of 61 04 March 2010 at 2:21pm | IP Logged |
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So what happens when the parents are both fluent in the same 2 or 3 languages? Since my husband and I always speak both Spanish and English together, I find it very hard to imagine being able to do OPOL! Although we will possibly end up living in an English-speaking environment if we do ever have kids, so I suppose we could do Minority at Home.
Anyway, has anyone else just continued to speak as they would normally at home, eg code switching? Another anecdote for the pile - I have two friends, one native in German, the other native in Thai. They don't really speak each other's languages, so they speak English together, and their own languages to their son. They do know some basic words in each other's languages (no, look, car etc) and use them with their son sometimes. It's very interesting to see him picking it up! He is only 2 and seems to be able to make sentences in both German and Thai, but not English yet. Although it seems clear that he understands all 3! I will be very interested to see how he is doing when he's a bit older :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6015 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 39 of 61 04 March 2010 at 2:30pm | IP Logged |
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Code switching confuses kids as there is no clear logic as to when one language should be used and when the other should be used. Words will be more prone to bleeding from one language to the other.
It's not a good idea. Languages should be separated by context, as discussed throughout this thread. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5589 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 40 of 61 04 March 2010 at 5:44pm | IP Logged |
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My children will DEFINITELY be raised bilingual (or trilingual) if possible.
English and Spanish first. I'm considering German too actually. I'm not sure yet however. :D 1 person has voted this message useful |
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