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Family involvement in language studies | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5274 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes  Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 9 of 24 09 January 2011 at 7:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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Interesting question. My grandparents and even great-grandparents were more into languages than my parents.
For instance, my great-grandfather knew Slovene, German, Serbian, and Czech and my great-grandmother the same - Czech + French. My grandmother and great-aunt knew Latin very well, as well as French, German, Slovene, and Serbian. My grandfather knew French, German, Serbian, and Russian. So there was definitely a sense in the upper-middle class that knowing a few languages (French, German, and either English or Russian) was important. On the other hand, whereas my father studied French, German, and English in school, he only became fluent in English because he moved to the US and really learned it here. He respects languages a lot, especially French and German, but I would say looks down a bit on Spanish (which is what I'm learning now). In fact, he wanted to have me learn French in school, but my mother absolutely would not have it. My mother has historically expressed a disdain for foreign language learning. She says that English is the lingua franca and that nowadays learning languages is a waste of time, since they are just a medium of communication. On the other hand, she does have a sort of classical snobbery and wouldn't mind me learning Latin, ancient Greek, or Biblical Hebrew. She absolutely hates French and her having me take Spanish in school was as much because Spanish is more spoken and more relevant in the US as a product of the "anything but French" mentality. Had my high school offered French vs. Zulu, I'm sure she would have preferred I take Zulu. That was when I was growing up. Today they think it's a bit funny that I study Spanish. My mother thinks I do too much of it, saying that if I had devoted as much time to "my mother tongue" (Serbian), I would speak it perfectly by now. Every now and then, she will say, "what you really should learn is Russian/ancient Greek." Like many Serbs, she is a Hellenophile and a Russophile. My father certainly does not respect Spanish as he does French and German, but I try to draw in his interest by pointing out the ways in which Spanish lines up with French, or points of grammar that are more complex in Spanish, etc. He likes linguistic discussions, so that does draw in his interest. My sister looks down on both French and Spanish. She took French in school and purposely refused to pronounce it correctly, although it seems she could have done so quite well. She hates Spanish and absolutely refuses to learn it, despite its potential usefulness in her profession. She also tells me that the Castilian Spanish I'm learning "sounds gay" due to its supposed lisp, after which my dad jokes that I am learning "gay Spanish," (as opposed to the heterosexual variety). Now, I know that if I learn Spanish well and take up French, my mother will lose it and my father will love it. If I take up German, my sister will rail on the supposed evilness of the people whose language I am learning. If I take up Italian, my sister will approve and my mother and father will laugh. If I take up Russian, everyone in the house will be content. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Préposition Diglot Senior Member France aspectualpairs.wordp Joined 5115 days ago 186 posts - 283 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC1 Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Swedish, Arabic (Levantine) | Message 10 of 24 09 January 2011 at 11:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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My paternal grandmother used to speak fluent gallo, my paternal grandfather "Gwenedeg" Breton, and my maternal grandparents both speak "Kerneveg" Breton. Unfortunately they didn't really pass on the language to my parents, and neither them, nor my sister or me speak Breton, or only very few words.
A sister of my father moved to England and got two kids, whom I used to be really envious of because they were bilingual, and I think that's what triggered my motivation to speak other languages. My dad did Latin and Greek at school, alongside English and Spanish, but hasn't retained much. My mum did English but is completely useless at it. A late great uncle was a monk and I think he spoke something like 30-40 languages, and that really inspired me, even though I never got a chance to meet him. We have to study at least two foreign languages at school in France, although if you manage it well, you can take up to 4 languages (I did 3), and I had a school that wanted to open itself on the world and were offering further classes in English, so that's how I got to improve mine. Now I can't say my family is really into languages. My mum doesn't really care about learning them, neither does my sister who can get by in English, and thinks it's enough for her. Due to the nature of my dad's, he's more encline to learning languages, and is trying to make efforts in English. He also did a bit of Michel Thomas, so whenever there's a word in French that's of Arab origins, we start talking Arab-sounding gibberish (he "speaks" Egyptian and I "speak" Syrian). If we're not that much into foreign languages, we're definitely careful of our mother tongue and often fight over grammar rules, vocabulary, expressions that should be used or not and often have fun facts about French or other languages, which I'm quite appreciative of. Or sometimes, we'll be the complete opposite with my sister and completely butcher the language in a way or another, be it using English in French, speaking verlan, or putting on silly accents. Edited by Préposition on 09 January 2011 at 11:47pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| RedBeard Senior Member United States atariage.com Joined 6103 days ago 126 posts - 182 votes Speaks: Ancient Greek* Studies: French, German | Message 11 of 24 10 January 2011 at 1:37am | IP Logged | ||
I am considered a freak, but for a host of other reasons. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ilperugino Pentaglot Groupie Portugal Joined 5175 days ago 56 posts - 75 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: Mandarin | Message 12 of 24 10 January 2011 at 2:02am | IP Logged | ||
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I don´t for now but soon will: my mother learned chinese some years ago, has no one to pratice it with and regrets the seemingly lost effort, so I´ll try to catch her up somewhat this year on a language I never intended before.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5227 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 13 of 24 10 January 2011 at 4:29am | IP Logged | ||
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In my family we've been involving others in some way all the time :)
At some point my father (who has only spotty English and even more spotty German vocabularies, and reads French with little effort, even if he speaks none of them) enrolled in a local languages school to study German, and he enrolled my mother and me as well (surprise!) My mother enrolled in English classes recently, in advance of her retirement (she's planning to travel a lot and she wants to add to her perfectly accentless, if rusty, French), so I help her a bit now and then, and I keep gently teasing her about her classes, etc. Now, I have developed this little 'f***ing advanced' game to tease my brother, because he's somewhat of a showoff. Basically I come up with random colloquial expressions or words that are as simple/common as possible and yet extremely advanced or unlikely to be known from the point of view of a foreign language student (usually because of lack of exposure). When I find something, I approach him and ask him 'ok, if you're so f***ing advanced, how come you don't know...?'. Always a laugh when I get it right and he doesn't know it. Last one was 'chickpea', a vegetable we use somewhat often. Besides that, as a general rule I always try to help people waste as little time as possible, and I always tell them about how I failed at things so they can make their own, _different_ mistakes. One of these things was not getting official titles for my languages long ago. Taking my little game a step further, I'm thinking of enrolling my brother in a language school and going 'ok, if you're so f***ing advanced, you certainly won't mind to take this official test (on me) in two weeks' time, right?' :) Edited by mrwarper on 10 January 2011 at 4:33am 1 person has 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 14 of 24 10 January 2011 at 4:43am | IP Logged | ||
I think you should take up something completely random, like the Zulu you mentioned before, just to see what their reaction would be. :P 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 meramarina Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5968 days ago 1341 posts - 2303 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Italian, French Personal Language Map | Message 15 of 24 10 January 2011 at 5:22am | IP Logged | ||
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No. We don't talk about languages in my family. I come from a very uncommunicative family, to say the least.(pun intended!)
We didn't talk much at home, at least not as easily and as honestly as many more extroverted folks. Neither parent was interested in foreign language or spoke anything other than English. There was a lot of family tension and parental conflict at home, so I mostly hid myself away with books and words and stories. I had friends to talk to, of course, but most of the talking at home came from the TV. I didn't really feel comfortable conversing freely until I got into my university classes. So, I sort of learned to speak at about age 20 - and that's just English! I heard Polish from my grandparents, but they had zero interest in teaching me. Later on, everyone was tolerant, if a little bemused, when I took up Spanish in school, but it was never really discussed amongst us. Today, they are aware that I study languages, but don't have much to say about it, big surprise. But I don't bring up the subject much anyway. I have no children, but if I had any, I would certainly want to share my enjoyment of language with them - that must be very rewarding! The only other person in my family who studies languages is my youngest sister. She is an Art Historian and needs competence in several languages for her work and travels. We talk about languages sometimes. Sometimes I wonder if I like to work on language learning as much as I do just to make up for all those silent years! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| wv girl Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5240 days ago 174 posts - 330 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 16 of 24 10 January 2011 at 4:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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I speak French to my little girl and have been pleased to find that she will sometimes respond to me in French! It
mostly revolves around food or games that we play. She will ask for bleuets or framboises or une serviette, tell me what she wants to do, what she likes. It just thrills me! She's figured out that if she asks for something in French, she's more likely to get it from me. When she was very young and just learning to talk, she kept saying "gace" and pointing to the freezer. I figured out she was asking for "glace" (ice cream) and gave it to her for breakfast! For those of you who were fortunate enough to have had exposure to another language as a child, this may seem ordinary. I grew up in a monolingual environment and learned French and Spanish the hard way, with a lot of memorization and work with a textbook and tapes (this was before CDs were common!) followed by practice with native speakers. It just seems awesome that I can share my love of languages with her in a painless way and she gets it! No conjugation, partitive, stress pronouns ... I speak and she understands. Just like learning English. And now she's enjoying speaking back to me, although her comprehension is still better than her production. Unfortunately, no one else in the family shares my interest in languages, although it's tolerated and thought of as rather odd, but everyone has their own interests. I'm just glad that my daughter is interested in something that I love! She really wants to go to France this summer to practice more. I was leaning more toward Spain, but if she asks me in French ... 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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