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Family: mono-lingual -> Multi-lingual | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| chobbs Newbie United States Joined 4579 days ago 35 posts - 47 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 1 of 10 30 April 2015 at 1:57am | IP Logged | ||
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Our household is currently a mono-lingual native English environment. My wife and I both had a few years of high school Spanish and she would like to continue to learn Spanish, ultimately up to fluency. My oldest son at ~13 is currently learning German, and my youngest at ~10 has expressed interest in learning Japanese. My language interests are quite varied and always have been.
I have been studying French sporadically for a few years now and have recently come to the conclusion that my initial goal of a passive understanding allowing me to consume media is not in the cards with my current approach. Basically, I need to speak with people to make forward progress. It is possible this wouldn't be the case for me with a language other than French, but at this point I am operating under the impression that it is. With all of the above in mind I am wondering about the process of transitioning our household to another language and from there into a truly multi-lingual one. Specifically I am thinking about switching to Esperanto for all of our in-family communication initially. From there each family member would choose to study any desired language and from there we would communicate in that language when there was overlap - for example, once I am ready to tackle German, speaking to my son solely in German. The goal seems pretty straight forward, but the process for doing so is what I am currently struggling with. For example, does it make sense to have everybody trying to learn the target language at once, or is it better to have one person get a base and have them gradually bring others into the fold, teaching it to the rest of the family so to speak? One thought I had was that my wife and I would each go through the process of learning Esperanto, and as soon as possible start integrating what we could into our conversations. My oldest could easily do the same, but my youngest may need a more interactive environment and would probably benefit the most from picking it up via the rest of us, as opposed to learning on his own. As each one of us gathered new vocabulary the others would then learn it as it came up in conversations. Obviously, we have English to fall back on for making ourselves understood or providing a translation to each other. I did some searching and couldn't find anything about families that had undertaken this type of process. Most the things I could find, as well as all of the family situations we personally know of which are multi-lingual, have native speakers of another language for one, or both, parents. Given that we have no native foreign language to share, I settled on Esperanto as a good target. The benefits to further language acquisition are well known, but also since it has a straight forward pronunciation we wouldn't have to worry about the possible accent problems encountered with a bunch of beginners conversing together like we would with another language. If anybody has had a similar experience, knows of any resources I should look into, or has other suggestions for this process I would appreciate them. Thanks! - Chris Edited by chobbs on 30 April 2015 at 1:59am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4292 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 2 of 10 30 April 2015 at 2:04am | IP Logged | ||
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The most drastic is to ban all use of English within the household. I would do that
within my own house but no one is desperate enough for an immersion environment to do so. But if your family are willing, banning English completely and replacing it with target languages is what I would recommend. I do this right now for myself only, and when I lived alone I did it for the flat in which I lived. It increased my level very much. This includes mobile phones, television, radio, all Internet activities, games, etc. I even write reminder notes to myself in anything but English. Edited by 1e4e6 on 30 April 2015 at 2:07am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| chobbs Newbie United States Joined 4579 days ago 35 posts - 47 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 3 of 10 03 May 2015 at 3:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah, ultimately I'd like to get to the stage of banning all English communication, and the family seems open to the idea. It is getting to the point at which that ban is reasonable that I am still figuring out.
At this point I am leaning towards giving myself a few weeks head start familiarizing myself with Esperanto so that I will hopefully be able to guide the learning for the rest of the family, or at least be able to point them in the right direction for their questions. After that, I will probably start things off with my wife, who currently doubts her ability to learn a new language entirely. Not quite sure when I will bring the children into the mix, but probably shortly after my wife and I can have some short conversations. My oldest is likely to just go off studying on his own. When I start teaching my youngest though, who is the most likely to not learn on his own via independent study, does it make sense to give him a basic grammatical explanation of some rule or simply wait until he has seen hundreds of examples and just picks it up naturally? My concern with the above is that learning through pure immersion seems like it would negate many of those benefits that Esperanto brings for the acquisition of the next foreign language. If you are fluent, but still haven't actually learned the basics of the grammar do you still get a boost for the next language? On the flip side I don't even know if I can simplify the grammatical aspects enough to make it comprehensible for him. - Chris 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Elenia Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom lilyonlife.blog Joined 3858 days ago 239 posts - 327 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Swedish, Esperanto | Message 4 of 10 03 May 2015 at 3:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'd personally think that learning together would be more fun for everyone (but this
is 100% opinion, with no real-life experience to back it up). As your youngest son is ten already, I feel there is no need to shirk away from grammar. The younger he starts to learn about grammar the better it will be for him (both for his English and whatever other language[s] he decides to learn.) Using Esperanto might even be beneficial, as it's much simpler to explain the differences between tenses when there are suffixes to help you along. I assume you know about lernu.net? EDIT: I do question the utility of learning Esperanto as a means to get to other languages (especially for your younger son, who wants to learn Japanese). I can see it being beneficial to inspire confidence, and it might be nice to have a language that all of your family can speak together, but I don’t know that viewing it as a means to reach an end will be of much use for your individual goals. There are other topics about this, but sadly my search function is limited so I can’t find the most relevant ones for you Edited by Elenia on 03 May 2015 at 4:06pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5011 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 5 of 10 03 May 2015 at 5:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think practicing together is great, using only target language if more family
members share it, sure. But Esperanto? I think the propedeutic advantages are a bit overestimated, especially once you've already got the experience with learning another language. In case of your family, from what I've just read, Esperanto looks like: 1.an unnecessary step between family members and their real target languages 2.more of an advantage for those wanting to learn romance languages than for those longing for German or Japanese. 3.it might even endager the quality time you have together. Any family has sometimes trouble understanding each other even when they are all speaking the same native language together. Switching to Esperanto, that somehow doesn't sound right to me but it might be just my opinion I think it would be an awesome thing if you added German to your list so that you can have this tie with your son and help him. If your youngest picked something easier, it might be great to just add another language to your list. I don't know how much your youngest one desires Japanese. While I had been a very stubborn child to learn French (large part of the time on my own) since I was nine, not everyone is like that, even my sister (now 11) isn't. A sentence "I wanna learn Japanese" said once doesn't mean much. And even if the interest is true and lasting, won't forced Esperanto just extinguish this language learning desire in your youngest child? Sorry to sound a bit pessimist, I find your overall family passion for languages awesome and it might be a great step forward. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| chobbs Newbie United States Joined 4579 days ago 35 posts - 47 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 6 of 10 03 May 2015 at 5:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for your insight Elenia. Yes, I am familiar with lernu,net. Everybody will definitely be learning together to a certain extent, it is pretty much just a question of when do they start. I know my wife prefers having me answer her questions on a subject, and so my slight head-start was mostly to facilitate that aspect. My eldest could start at will, but the youngest and his needs, if we head solely down the immersion path for him, is the big question.
One other thing that factors in, which I didn't mention, is my oldest is a voracious reader. Whereas my youngest has struggled with his reading. It is definitely starting to come around, but it is a big factor because I can pretty much hand my eldest any book at all and be confident in his comprehension ... not so much with the younger one. So, studious methods don't seem like they would be the best choice for him. Agree the Esperanto carry-over might not be as high for my youngest (or even for any of us), but I figure that, if nothing else, having a less rigid word->meaning mapping due to knowing two languages should be beneficial and the language is simple enough that we can pick it up and start reaping the benefits in a lot less time than other languages. Since we don't currently have a common specific language in our sights this seemed the most reasonable compromise. I guess most of my struggle with this centers around how to teach my youngest. None of my language learning experiences have included immersion so I am a little lost about how to teach in that manner - especially without being fluent in the target language. - Chris 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| chobbs Newbie United States Joined 4579 days ago 35 posts - 47 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 7 of 10 03 May 2015 at 5:30pm | IP Logged | ||
I don't mind the pessimism at all, and in fact have some of the same thoughts myself. Mostly the proposed switch to Esperanto was to give a common non-English ground to everybody. It seems the easiest to pick up, and if there are other benefits, as many have claimed there to be, then great. Even without extra benefits, everybody would still gain confidence and the other non-language specific benefits. One other factor is that everybody listened to some and like the sound, which was quite the opposite for other languages that were a possibility. The youngest and his desire for Japanese is a non fleeting thing I think. It has been a difficult thing for my wife and I to sort out because of his general desire to want to participate in everything. However, this particular thing has lasted awhile and come up often enough that I think it is something he actually wants. Now, whether he is prepared for the amount of work required to learn a new language is something else entirely. - Chris Edited by chobbs on 03 May 2015 at 5:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5238 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 8 of 10 03 May 2015 at 5:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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You might want to PM Radioclare who is part of the Esperanto movement in the UK, She can certainly answer a lot of your questions. I studied Esperanto briefly and it shouldn't be to much of a struggle, there are only a dozen grammar rules, so everything else is just learning vocabulary.
On big benefit of Esperanto is there is a long standing travel community, where you can stay with people in various countries at no charge, the only rule is you have to speak Esperanto with them all the time. Which I always thought was a really cool reason to learn. This might be one benefit to your son later in life, if he wants to travel to Japan, and can stay with a Japanese family and they have a common language (other than Japanese) to speak. To quote wikipedia: "Several studies, such as that of Helmar Frank at the University of Paderborn and the San Marino International Academy of Sciences, have concluded that one year of Esperanto in school, which produces an ability equivalent to what the average pupil reaches with European national languages after six to seven years of study, improves the ability of the pupil to learn a target language when compared to pupils who spent the entire time learning the target language. In other words, studying Esperanto for one year and then, say, French for three results in greater proficiency in French than studying French for four years." So there is some benefit in your children learning this first. Also, research into the neurobiology of bilingualism has found that being fluent in two languages, particularly from early childhood, not only enhances a person’s ability to concentrate, but might also protect against the onset of dementia and other age-related cognitive decline. So I say go for it. After all what could it hurt, and the advantage is you'd have a language in your family very few outsiders understand, so you can talk about how fat Great-Aunt Bessie has gotten without her actually knowing. :) 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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