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Family involvement in language studies | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5335 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 24 09 January 2011 at 3:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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Do the rest of you involve your family in your language studies in any way? I do constantly. I am perhaps in an uncommon situation in that I grew up in a family where my father taught English, German and French, my mother was fluent in German, and used every trick in the book to make me learn more languages and my sister taught French and English and has learned Italian on her own. My husband is fluent in English, speaks good German and some Polish, and grew up with a mother who taught German and English and dabbles in French.
Having learned from my mother, I also use every trick in the book to shower languages over my daughters. The result is that - my youngest daughter has suggested that we speak English at home, - they both have a perfect French pronunciation after they went to school in Belgium for 4 months - even if they remember very few words - when I wake up my daughters in the morning, I will say "Bonjour, il faut se reveiller", they then answer "Je suis fatiguée" and then I ask "Vous voulez encore 5 minutes? and when they say yes, I will let them sleep for another 5 minutes. - my youngest says "Te quiero, mama" ever now and then in Spanish in stead of in Norwegian - they don't use dictionaries when they read English, they use me - when I discovered the other day that I could send text messages in Russian, I wrote "я люблю тебя" to my oldest daughter, and she answered me back immediately, "I love you too" - when my oldest gets bored at a party, she will ask me in Spanish if we can go home. The other day she had gone for a walk with my husband, and when they came back, he said: "You know there is something fundamentally wrong, when I am out for a walk with my daughter, and she asks me something about Russian, which neither she nor I speak" (as I mentioned, he speaks a bit Polish, and she just naturally assumes, that we as parents should be able to answer any question she has). I have tried speaking French with my sister but it doesn't work more than for a couple of minutes at the time. The only time I remember that we made it work was at the Canary Islands when we were surrounded by a bunch of drunk Norwegians, and we were desperate for neither them nor the local Spaniards to find out that we were Norwegians. I have also tried to speak French with my colleague and German with my husband, but with the same result. Do you involve your family in your languages, or would you be considered a freak if you did so? Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 09 January 2011 at 5:12pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| translator2 Senior Member United States Joined 6920 days ago 848 posts - 1862 votes Speaks: English* | Message 2 of 24 09 January 2011 at 3:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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I live in the U.S. so all of my family and friends think I am weird for studying one, not to mention several, foreign languages. Studying, especially studying foreign languages, is considered stupid and a waste of time by most who prefer to spend their time watching sporting events. Quelle misère! Edited by translator2 on 09 January 2011 at 4:01pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| WANNABEAFREAK Diglot Senior Member Hong Kong cantonese.hk Joined 6828 days ago 144 posts - 185 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, Cantonese Studies: French | Message 3 of 24 09 January 2011 at 4:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I read an article about multi-lingual language acquisition within the home. It suggested you need at least 33% of time (whatever time means), to successfully acquire a foreign language fluently and accurately.
Let's just say my father randomly says to me each morning, "kako si? dobro sam", I will hardly be able to speak it fluently as the input is just ridiculously small. If you had 4 hours per day speaking French, 4 hours per day speaking Norwegian and 4 hours per day speaking Spanish; then maybe an advanced fluency could be achieved by your kids.... but what do I know? you may have very gifted kids :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5848 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 24 09 January 2011 at 4:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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When I was a child, I didn't want my German parents to speak English with me when we lived in the United States.
My family members (father, brother, sister) would never speak with me a foreign language. My sister once felt insulted because I sent her birthday card with multilingual birthday wishes. My brother would never send me an e-mail in English. Only my father has some fun in exchanging with me e-mails and SMS in English and French. He even tried writing in Latin, but - what a pity - I can't reply much in Latin. And my father payed for me the exam fee of my Foreign Language Correspondence exam in English. Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 09 January 2011 at 4:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 budonoseito Pro Member United States budobeyondtechnRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5806 days ago 261 posts - 344 votes Studies: French, Japanese Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 24 09 January 2011 at 4:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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We were going to try when my son started high school last year with French. However, he
quickly lost interest because it requires studying. His cousins are fluent in French from living in Quebec during high school. Next year my daughter starts high school and wants to take French. So, maybe we can kick off family French time again. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5335 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 6 of 24 09 January 2011 at 5:11pm | IP Logged | ||
Like all mothers I am confident that I have very gifted kids :) but I am not so delusional that I think a sentence here and there will give them basic fluency in any language. They are not THAT gifted. I was more thinking of creating an environment where it feels normal for them to go to other countries, and to aspire to learn several languages. It is a big help for me too, because then they will consider me less of a nutcase. I hope:). It was in that context that I wondered whether any of you did the same, or was in an environment where you had experienced the same. My daughters' random sentences are just cute right now, but I am hoping it will be useful for them in the long term. What do the rest of you do? Do you manage to involve your family, or do they just shake their head at you? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5694 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 7 of 24 09 January 2011 at 6:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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My family supports my language-learning (coupled with a bit of gentle teasing from time to time, but I suppose that comes with the territory). They don't get particularly involved, though. My parents both had years of French in school and can still remember some, and my sister studied French for three years too. My dad also knows a bit of German and Italian, and he's the most interested in language in general (besides me, of course!) in the family. My sister has a natural talent for languages but she doesn't realize it – I think high-school French did some damage there. Now she's picking up some overflow from my passion for German, and sometimes asks me to translate random wacky sentences into German (which I do gladly).
Ideally, I would completely involve my family in my language studies, and in a perfect world we would all practice French or German (or something, anything!) together at home, but the simple fact is that they're not as interested as I am in spending their small amount of free time working hard on languages. So, out of respect to them and so I don't look like I'm showing off, I generally keep my language stuff to myself. It's not a perfect situation, but at least I'm not discouraged from my studies, the way some other people on this forum have been. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6143 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 8 of 24 09 January 2011 at 6:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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I envy you and your children. I grew up in a fairly language-friendly family too, but not as much as yours, as most of the language-friendliness comes from outside my immediate family.
Growing up I'd hear Greek a lot as I still had lots of relatives (mostly older ones) here that either didn't speak English well or at all, or just didn't want to speak it because they were stubborn and didn't want to change. Through this I gained a passive understanding of spoken Greek as a child, although I couldn't say much myself. Unfortunately most of these relatives have died now, so they only ones I ever speak Greek with are my paternal grandparents, of whom only my grandmother is a native speaker. I also have a couple relatives who had language-related careers. My maternal grandfather was a linguistics professor specializing in Native American languages and speaks very fluent Spanish, French, and Russian, along with a few others such as Greek and German at lower levels. He's currently writing a dictionary and grammar on an obscure Algonquian language from Montana, and studying Japanese on and off. His wife was a French teacher at the high school I currently attend, and also spoke fluent Greek. My great-uncle also used to be a university Russian professor, and his wife also taught Russian and French, in addition to speaking Greek. My uncle (my mom's brother) has taught Chinese and French, and speaks fluent Swedish and passable Greek. Back in Greece I have two aunts who are English teachers, and a cousin who just got a degree in translation/interpretation for Greek, English, Spanish, and French. My parents themselves aren't very inclined towards languages, but they do at least have a knowledge of some foreign languages. My dad speaks pretty fluent Greek and my mom speaks passable Greek and some French. They did, however, have enough sense to enroll my brother and me in a bilingual school, although it closed after my fourth year there. My brother is one of the only people in my close family who doesn't speak another language, although he is learning Greek and Spanish. Despite all this, I don't feel comfortable engaging in my language studies with my family because they think it's weird or something (hypocrites), and are simply too lazy/busy to do so anyways. My great-uncle has offered to give me private lessons in Russian, but for some reason I never took him up on the offer. I still do weekly Greek lessons with my grandmother, but I still find it a little weird speaking Greek with her. I talk with my grandfather about languages and linguistics, and he has helped me on occasion with French, Russian, and German. Nonetheless, I'm regarded as a bit of a freak in my family, so that's why this forum has become my sanctuary. I get mixed messages from my parents about languages too. For example, my parents were extremely proud of the fact that I learned some Swahili before going to Tanzania, and kept showing a video to people that my dad took of me speaking with locals in (poor) Swahili. However, they often criticize me for studying languages, so I don't know what to think... This was a quite a bit longer than I intended to make it, and I'm not even sure if it's exactly on topic. I apologize in advance. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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