|
 |
Raising Kids with many languages | ||
Tags: Children | Multilingual | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 41 of 61 04 March 2010 at 5:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
How do you envision the logistics of this? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5586 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 42 of 61 04 March 2010 at 5:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
Every other day will either be English or Spanish. We will ONLY converse in that one language, the whole day, no matter what. Since birth.Until a certain point where we can switch easily :) Of course I'm not sure, that's all just my thoughts! I'll have to talk to people that were raised bilingually or with bilingual parents. They know much more than me of course. :) My mom was fluent in Spanish (second language), she didn't teach me ANY when I was a kid, and I feel like I was cheated because I could have learned it so much easier :( Why she didn't teach me is beyond me. 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 43 of 61 04 March 2010 at 6:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
You wouldn't have learnt it any "easier" - the learning would have just been different from the forms of learning you usually try when older.
2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Muz9 Diglot Groupie Netherlands Joined 5525 days ago 84 posts - 112 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Somali | Message 44 of 61 04 March 2010 at 9:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
What about the children’s native language abilities, will it get negatively affected by a bilingual upbringing? In my country there are a lot of Middle Eastern, African and Asian people that raise their children bilingual (sometimes even monolingual and let the school take care of the official language). You might think this is something positive but their skills to express themselves in proper Dutch gets heavily affected by this. This leads to that many of them become underachievers in the education system.
Same thing happens to native people in the dialectal area’s of the Netherlands (Frisians, Saxon area etc). Their kids end up doing pretty bad in school because of their poor Dutch language skills. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 45 of 61 04 March 2010 at 9:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
This is not at all reflected in the experience I see here in English-speaking Canada where are lot of francophone parents teach only French to their kids, and even though the kids go to French schools, their English is the same as all the other kids. In fact, most teenagers in this kind of environment speak better English than French, because the rest of the society they live in speaks English. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Muz9 Diglot Groupie Netherlands Joined 5525 days ago 84 posts - 112 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Somali | Message 46 of 61 04 March 2010 at 9:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
That is interesting, but I think I forgot to add that most foreigners in my country end up living in the same neighborhood in the major cities (like those Chinatowns in the US). Where they could speak their native language (usually Arabic, Turkish etc) to the local shopkeepers and basically don’t even need Dutch to get by. Their children end up only having Arabic or Turkish friends to play with and thus end up with pretty bad Dutch skills (which they only use in school). And this results in a bad academic outlook for most of them. The situation must be very similar to Hispanic kids that live in areas full of Hispanics in the US end up with both mediocre English AND Spanish skills. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Katie Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6719 days ago 495 posts - 599 votes Speaks: English*, Hungarian Studies: French, German | Message 47 of 61 04 March 2010 at 10:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
I don't have children yet, but I would really like to raise them speaking a 2nd language. To do this, I have to learn a language to a high enough level myself (and practice for many years! LOL).
I love the Hungarian language so much, but unless my future husband will know Hungarian, I'm not sure I'd teach it straight away - maybe in some later years... I've just started German... perhaps that will end up being the language? Who knows? But, I've witnessed first hand how the Minority Language at Home method works and I really like it. It limits the pressure put on the kids and the family. It allows for the family to be close and have something 'special' between them. In an ideal world, I'd love to move to Europe to raise a family. My reasons for this are numerous. One of them is travel opportunities/chances to see and experience the world. Another is the sporting opportunities (here in Australia, if you are good enough to do an international competition with your sport or whatever, it can't be done without MAJOR cost - it's a big thing because we're so far away). In Europe, it's not so hard to go across to another country. Another again is the opportunity & 'normality' to learn more than one language (and from what I understand, the teaching of languages in school is much better than here).... lots more, but I won't go into them now. Point is, it'd be good to speak minority language at home, main language in the environment outside of home, and allow the school to teach a third and so on... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| reltuk Groupie United States Joined 6817 days ago 75 posts - 110 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 48 of 61 04 March 2010 at 10:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
The types of language problems you're referring to have everything to do with socio-economic and socio-linguistic factors and basically nothing to do with an individual's ability to be raised multilingual without it impacting their competence in educated discourse, as judged by the public school system of a particular nation's job market or whatever. Things like ghettoization are going to contribute to linguistic and cultural divergence, and such things are sometimes going to result in a subset of the population which doesn't speak or write in the way the rest of the population judges as correct. One thing to remember is that, barring extreme mental defects, it is impossible for a child to grow up in a community without achieving excellent communicative ability and fluency with that community. I don't mean imagined communities, like nation states, but actual contact with actual people, who are relied upon for help, trade, services, and likewise rely upon the child for particular things. So 9 year olds who can't speak any language well basically don't exist, at least when it comes to communicative ability in their community. Writing is not guaranteed, obviously. Writing and reading are not acquired naturally and are not in the same category as speaking and listening. There are a huge number of monolingual people who lack effective competence in either of these category, as judged by the larger context of their linguistic community. Another caveat: the language the child speaks isn't guaranteed to be sanctioned or judged correct by any particular standards body or school system, or guaranteed to have a recognized literature. But it will be a language, and the child will have effectively complete mastery of it (when it comes to listening and speaking). 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
