|
 |
Raising Kids with many languages | ||
Tags: Children | Multilingual | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| anamsc Triglot Senior Member Andorra Joined 6203 days ago 296 posts - 382 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Catalan Studies: Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Written), French | Message 49 of 61 05 March 2010 at 12:14am | IP Logged | ||
I find this really interesting. I would say that in the US, most people who grow up here end up speaking native-level English. Since you mentioned Chinatowns, I will say that I know people who grew up in/around Chinatown in San Francisco (which I think is the biggest Chinese community outside of Asia), and I can attest that you wouldn't know that based on their English abilities (I am in no position to assess their Chinese, however!). As far as Spanish speakers, I would say that the situation is slightly different, partly because there is Chicano English, which is spoken even by monolingual English speakers, and I think some people still think of that as being a foreign accent. But I think for the most part Spanish speakers also grow up with native-level English. In any case, I wouldn't say that I have ever met a single person who grew up in the US and spoke mediocre English. All this is to say that I really wonder what is going on differently in the US (and Canada I think, based on what other posters have said) compared to the Netherlands. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Muz9 Diglot Groupie Netherlands Joined 5524 days ago 84 posts - 112 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Somali | Message 50 of 61 05 March 2010 at 12:33am | IP Logged | ||
|
The accent of the non-Dutch children born here usually sounds very native and they speak with great fluency, the only problem however is that they have poor grammar skills (for instance, problems with the articles (de & het) and even conjugating verbs) together with a fairly limited vocabulary compared to the average child.
Studies have been done that compared the vocabulary of Dutch children to non-Dutch children born in the Netherlands. The children that spoke a foreign language at home with one of their parents ended up having a weaker vocabulary of sometimes up to several thousands of words. Source: http://taalunieversum.org/onderwijs/onderzoek/publicatie/227 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| magictom123 Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5593 days ago 272 posts - 365 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 51 of 61 05 March 2010 at 1:53am | IP Logged | ||
|
Does anyone have advice
for someone wishing to bring their children up to speak a foreign language that they themselves are currently learning - as this is my situation. I want my children to speak another language and I'm learning Italian, and despite my progress I am not in a position to teach them to the point that I am currently at but that leaves the problem of a limited vocabulary which of course is well below that of a native. I understand the answer may be to move to the country where the second language is spoken and indeed that is a hope for me in the future. In the mean time, what can I do? Should I speak to my child in Italian only, not bother at all or something else? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6768 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 52 of 61 05 March 2010 at 2:50am | IP Logged | ||
|
Magictom123, I think you're going to need to provide some kind of regular social interaction with one or more
native Italian speakers, whether it's an Italian babysitter, or Italian Saturday-school for expatriates, or something else. Along similar lines, my kid (just a baby now) will probably end up going to a Turkish Saturday school to play with Turkish expatriate children in Japan, just because the opportunity is there. That will end up being his third language most likely. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cherepaha Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6589 days ago 126 posts - 175 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Spanish, Polish, Latin, French | Message 53 of 61 05 March 2010 at 5:36am | IP Logged | ||
|
I found Bilingual Families List to be an invaluable resource in raising a multilingual child. Many families on the list have more than two languages in the mix and employ all sorts of strategies, including the One-Parent-One-Language and the Minority-Lang-at-Home. There are both parents raising kids in their native tongues as well as in the languages they’d learned themselves. The most notable approaches for raising kids in the non-native languages that I’d come across were where the families a) create a pseudo immersion in the home, where the parents do not explicitly teach that language, but kids are only allowed to watch DVDs, listen to kids audio stories, etc. while playing with each other only in the target minority language b) speak each language for a week, and then switch to a different language the following week. I remember there was a family that was alternating seven languages that way. Both cases require a great amount of preparation by the parent, as one needs to find or create a great number of resources to keep kids occupied in the target language for extended periods of time. In any case, you can find more information about the list at http://www.nethelp.no/cindy/biling-fam.html , or sign up for their mailing list by sending an empty email to biling-fam-help@nethelp.no . I have not been following that forum in a while now, but hope that they are still active.
Personally I ended up speaking only Russian with my daughter wherever we went. Kids tend to bond with adults in a certain language, and then insist that only that language is spoken by that particular adult. This was to an extent what happened, where my child would pause to look at me, if I spoke English with her in front of other people, and would pointedly ask me to speak Russian with her. We live in an area where we were lucky enough to find a lot of classes in our minority language. So, my daughter attended a Russian medium weekend school for a while, where they had language, math, chess, drawing and drama in the minority language. In addition to that she went to a Russian language dance teacher, piano instructor and a Russian language choir. All in all that created a lovely community and a consistent group of friends, who were always there, even while her English medium schools were changing. I also felt that it was important to have all sorts of fun things associated with the minority language, and to not just go on through the droning of the grammar and math classes on the weekends. So, things worked out well for us. My daughter is 17 now, and she reads, writes and speaks both languages fluently. She’d picked up a good amount of Spanish from my in-laws along the way and has been taking French and Mandarin Chinese at school. As she was growing up, I’d seen all sorts of scenarios around us. The most frequent by far is where kids refuse to speak the minority language in order to not stick out. Kids are very different from each other, however, and sometimes even within the same family one would find widely varying results in terms of how fluent and willing children are to speak the minority language(s). In my experience one tends to see the best results in achieving multilingualism where parents were consistent with whatever method they’d chosen, and worked hard at it. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6011 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 54 of 61 05 March 2010 at 11:05am | IP Logged | ||
Short answer -- don't. Why not? Children overgeneralise and only correct based on input. Your child will naturally attempt to say things that you wouldn't know how to, and without direction, will end up doing this badly. Alternatives: Songs. I get compliments on my French accent quite a lot (or at least I did until I started sounding Spanish), and I can hear all the sounds of French. My actual French is still fairly weak and I certainly don't understand everything I hear, but I have the sounds, because as an infant I learned to sing in French. My mum got several LPs of kids songs sent over from France, but she made sure they came with the words as sleeve notes. She taught us the words in her own (very) non-native French accent, then left us to sing along with it playing on the record deck. A week or two of her accent was completely wiped away by two or three years of the natives, and I learned to distinguish all the sounds of the language, even if I didn't understand a word. This has been an immense help not only to learning French, but to learning any language that shares sounds with French that don't exist in English. The best bit is that you don't have to restrict yourself to one language. You can give you child the basis of several languages this way, and he/she will be able to choose which to study at a later date. Videos. A lot of people have claimed that kids can achieve native-like command of a language through watching cartoons and programmes like Sesame St in the target language. I'm not convinced about the "native-like" bit, but I'm pretty sure that they can get a lot out of it. Nanny/Au pair. Have a native talk to him/her in the language. All of these options avoid the child learning your mistakes, most of which come from English which gets in the way of developing a truly bilingual mindset. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| magictom123 Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5593 days ago 272 posts - 365 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 55 of 61 06 March 2010 at 3:56pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Thanks for the replies regarding my question. Unfortunately circumstances dictate that
we cannot afford to have a nanny etc but I will investigate the other area's discussed. There are full episodes of 'Peppa Pig' in Italian on youtube and I let my children watch this with the laptop connected to the TV. The music side of things sounds interesting too. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6294 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 56 of 61 07 March 2010 at 2:15am | IP Logged | ||
|
http://www.early-advantage.com/
Has anyone ever heard of Muzzy? BBC language course for kids. 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. |
