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How to raise Bilingual Children? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| JonB Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6349 days ago 209 posts - 220 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Italian, Dutch, Greek | Message 49 of 69 12 February 2009 at 9:22am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Well, that truly has to be one of the most refreshing posts that I have EVER seen on this forum! Of course there is..ehrm..just a vague possibility that you may fall in love with a fellow native speaker of English, n'est pas? In which case I suppose your fox would be rather shot to pieces by the cruel arrow of cupid! LOL :-D 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6095 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 50 of 69 13 February 2009 at 7:58am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Which is why I said this: (emphasis added)
That's English for mother-child and whole family interaction, and then whatever language I feel best at the time for father-child. :-P 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Emilia Newbie Italy Joined 6224 days ago 26 posts - 27 votes Speaks: Italian* | Message 51 of 69 18 February 2009 at 12:19am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Actually, it's not the cognitive aspect which bothers me - I don't think that the child will be confused. It's more that I feel like there is something terribly - and now I lack the word, terribly *something*, almost "prepotente" - in purposely raising your child in foreign language. I don't think my children will be "less Italian" if they speak another language! On the contrary - knowing others will refine their understanding and appreciation of their own, as well as open them some doors. However, there's a difference between knowing and appreciating foreign, and making foreign your own. The latter is what I'd have problem with, as raising my children in languages other than parents'/community's would basically be that. I do think that there is something "less Italian" in speaking another language to your child if circumstances are not such that you have to and/or that it comes natural. It's active introducing of a foreign element - they have time to learn languages, why force it at home? It's not even so much about fearing other reactions. Most of the people I circle around are bilingual/polyglot (including my parents), and yet don't actively speak foreign languages to their children, because it's just... not done. Hard to explain. Let me try to put it this way - for me, English is another world. I love that world. I have many friends and contacts in that world, and many beautiful memories and associations with that world. But that's not my world, my first nature, and I won't attempt to make it my world to raise polyglot children. Even if in theory I could. And it wouldn't necessarily end up bad - in fact, I'd probably do it well. But it's not the question of knowledge, ability or love for that world, it's more a question of personal principle. I respect that which is foreign, but keep that which is mine, especially if life had not taken me to actively form part of some other world... Not sure if I managed to put it coherently, but that's mostly what it's about. I would certainly like to have polyglot children, but I would never make them grow up into foreign world and name the world for them for the first time in foreign language - even if that is done alongside native one. I think that parents need to "name the world" for children in something which is theirs, and then let the child re-name it as many times as they wish in different languages.
Sort of, actually. Can't pinpoint exactly what, but I do think something would be broken if one of the languages spoken at home would be foreign, related to cultures my partner and I have nothing to do with. My partner is actually a polyglot too, but *learned* my language - which is why I said that my children will probably grow up bilingually anyway, as I consider it only normal for him to speak his language to them.
Sorry for the delay, I was busy these days. I realize you probably won't agree, but that's what I think about the whole thing. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| andee Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 7161 days ago 681 posts - 724 votes 3 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Korean, French | Message 52 of 69 18 March 2009 at 4:40pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Perhaps this is a feeling of being an immigrant in her own country? I don't think it really has much to do with the language her parents spoke. Being a cultural outcast is something all immigrants go through - I was raised basically monolingual, but across continents. I'm not British, I'm not Australian, and I'm not Polish... But I am. I'm all three together and individually. It just doesn't feel like it. I feel English. I act English. But I don't really know England or an English childhood. My heart is Polish but I fail at speaking Polish like a Pole. I call myself Australian when I speak a language other than English, and I call Australia my home, but there's only a piece of paper to say I'm Australian. I understand all of those cultures and can fit into any of them, but they don't feel right to me all the time. And the only culture I'm in tune with on a level I feel 100% comfortable in is Korean.. But being white, I'm not treated like a Korean by people on the street. So that fails too. I'm a cultural eunuch basically. All this from being spoken to by my parents in English. Edited by andee on 18 March 2009 at 4:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Emilia Newbie Italy Joined 6224 days ago 26 posts - 27 votes Speaks: Italian* | Message 53 of 69 18 March 2009 at 9:26pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
She is NOT an immigrant and that is the point of the whole example. She is 100% Italian. Both of her parents are Italians, born and raised in Italy, and all of her grandparents, as far as I know. Both sides of her family continuously lived in Italy. She herself spent ALL (literally ALL) of her life in Italy. Instead of having "Italian" childhood and youth, they MADE her feel like cultural outcast in her own country. They spoke foreign languages at home and sent her to international schools. She absorbed the culture of those circles, instead of culture of her place. They did it for silly reasons such as "to have a polyglot kid from birth" and such. The only thing I'm saying is that one doesn't need to go NEARLY as far as speaking foreign languages to your children and raising them up basically in foreign culture to end up with polyglot children. I'm allergic on that as I've seen a lot of examples, I consider it very wannabe-ish, prepotente and just plainly bad. It's one situation if you've got culturally mixed marriage, or grow up in various places, so kids just end up polyglot. It happened naturally. It's a completely different thing if you purposely speak foreign languages to your kids when that's not necessary and doesn't come as a product of the situation you were in. There are ways for them to become polyglot without doing that and without silently treating that which is your as something "not good enough" if not combined with foreign.
What do you mean by "understanding a culture"? What language do you (or are you going to) speak to your children? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6523 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 54 of 69 19 March 2009 at 4:32am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Andee and I appear to be on the opposite extreme from what you rail against: we both come from culturally and linguistically mixed backgrounds, were raised in multiple countries, and were raised monolingual despite this. Both of us have ties to at least one country we can't speak the language of at a native level, despite it being the native language of at least one of our parents. This is also a common situation (as I know firsthand from traveling in the 'international schools' circles you mentioned), and I'm not at all sure it's a better one. Another point: it's possible to grow up monolingual, in only one country, and still feel like a cultural outcast; neither traveling nor speaking multiple languages are always to blame... We are where we are; I don't think assigning blame - to the parents, or elsewhere - helps. Andee or I could probably develop near-native fluency, the girl you mention could work on integration, and there would probably be results. Then again, any/all of us may have other goals - which is also fine. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6095 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 55 of 69 19 March 2009 at 11:24am | IP Logged | ||||||||
The problem is not that she was brought up multilingually, it's how she was brought up multilingually. She was brought up without Italian as the language of any meaningful relationship: she didn't speak Italian with her parents and she didn't speak Italian with her friends, so she can't "connect" with the language. To me, that is misinformed parenting. I've met multilingual parents who run monolingual households, refusing to speak English in the home (in the UK at least, I know some in Spain with the same attitude to Spanish) because "they'll pick it up outside". To me this is a bad attitude and I agree with you that the local language should have an important place in the home (I just disagree that other languages can't play some kind of role) -- but of course it's true that the vast majority of kids do pick up the language in the community, so it's not generally too harmful. However, in the example you gave, the child wasn't exposed to the community. This is an extreme case and I feel you are overreacting. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Emilia Newbie Italy Joined 6224 days ago 26 posts - 27 votes Speaks: Italian* | Message 56 of 69 19 March 2009 at 3:29pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
She's an extreme example, I'm aware of that. She's also the only such extreme example I've met (I know of other examples where multilingualism ended up in a culturally bad way, but they aren't as extreme as this), where one learned the language which was supposed to be her own "by the way" rather than in home, with other children, etc. The problem - as I see it - is that she shouldn't have been brought up in English and French in the first place, since those are neither parent's languages or something they are culturally tied with. Her parents should have (and could have) payed private lessons, sent her abroad during summers to be immersed in those languages, maybe even arranged a year abroad, etc. Those would be "normal measures" for offering your child multilingualism, given that the child does not refuse it. At home they should have spoken Italian and she definitely should have attended Italian school with other kids from the neighborhood. They should have taught her to be a member of her society, proud of that society and her cultural background, who appreciates and knows well that which is foreign. I'm sort of overreacting on this story because I know the family in question quite well. Needless to mention, I refuse to play their game and speak English/French to the kid if I see her.
I sure agree they can. I just think that not in every case they *should*, even if they theoretically could, and that there are other ways of getting your children speak foreign languages. What I'm saying is that in my view speaking foreign language to your child is sort of an extreme act one should be very careful when deciding about, even if they speak the language fluently. You don't need to speak foreign languages at home to encourage your children to become multilingual. Of course, I'm not trying to prescribe to anyone how to raise their child and what to do or not to do. We all do what we think it's best. I just have my opinion about the whole thing and I think that on the whole it's not very nice (even if we don't consider extreme examples). I'm not taking away the possibility of it ending up great some cases that I don't know of. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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