|
 |
More than trilingual? | ||
Tags: Children | Multilingual | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Lucas Pentaglot Groupie Switzerland Joined 5168 days ago 85 posts - 130 votes  Speaks: French*, English, German, Italian, Russian Studies: Mandarin | Message 73 of 80 24 October 2010 at 2:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
@Cainntear
OK..then you're speaking about bad bilingual education. Let's not generalize them! I think the majority of bilingual families applies the following basic rules to avoid the confusions you mentioned: 1. Speak only the home language at home 2. If there's a second home language, the father or mother who speak that language will use it only when he or she is alone with the child. And of course, it is FORBIDDEN to speak to you child in a language you're not native in...it was so obvious for me that I didn't even think I should mention it. Most parents aren't really aware of bilingual education...but after all, most parents are not aware of education at all! 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 74 of 80 24 October 2010 at 2:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
Unfortunately kids hear many discussions that are not aimed at them. When a French woman goes shopping in London, she will have to speak English, even though the child is present. When her English husband's parents come round for dinner, she will have to speak English, even though the child is present. And what language will she use on the phone to the insurance company. The inverse will happen when they visit family in France. The father will be forced to speak French in the shops and with the in-laws. The strength of one-parent-one-language is not specifically in the quality of the language model presented, but in the fact that the child learns the boundaries of when to use one language and when to use the other. An infant rarely has problems when a parent speaks to a third party in a different language, because they learn to recognise the different contexts. The downside of one-parent-one-language is that it reduces the opportunity for the parents to practise each other's language, so when one parent is forced to speak the other's language, there will be more errors. Perfect native-only isolation is an unobtainable ideal. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7016 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 75 of 80 25 October 2010 at 12:50am | IP Logged | |||||
I hope so! The problem is that TV, school, friends and other family members use English only so it's a continuous struggle against the odds. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lucas Pentaglot Groupie Switzerland Joined 5168 days ago 85 posts - 130 votes Speaks: French*, English, German, Italian, Russian Studies: Mandarin | Message 76 of 80 25 October 2010 at 9:58am | IP Logged | |||||
|
You shouldn't consider it as a struggle against the odds.
Just speak Spanish to him as much as you can, this should be natural. And no matter if he replies in English (or in bad Spanish). Children doesn't care about mulitlnguism, but for an efficient communication...when you speaking Spanish to him your children are probably thinking: "how funny is my dad, he always want to speak Spanish with me...I don't want to hurt him, so I let him do it beacause I understand Spanish. But why should I answer in spanish? I could, but I don't feel it natural for me so I always answer in English". :) It would be a struggle if you children would refuse to listen to you when you're speaking Spanish, but I think this phenomenon never happens... PS: yes it happens...but this is very rare, and there are examples of bad language education. Edited by Lucas on 25 October 2010 at 10:08am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5829 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 77 of 80 30 October 2010 at 6:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
What about reinforcing the second or third language by limiting the media your child consumes to certain
languages, ie. all TV is in Spanish, all books are in French, and all music is English? Or perhaps mingling them all together, but ensuring that your kid gets a LOT of access to said media. And what about teaching your kids to read fluently in each language? Once they are able to read they can gain access to a huge amount of native material that should help correct any errors in the way their parents spoke. This is what I'm curious about. I would also like to point out that playing is learning, and kids learn best when they are constantly- and I mean CONSTANTLY- being taught via fun methods. I was raised by very smart parents, and every single thing I did with them involved them teaching me. When we went outside to go shopping, they would point out different types of flowers and name them, or talk to me about meteorology, etc. If I wanted to buy junk food, I got a nutrition lesson on the spot. Dinner conversation was always something scientific or political, and even when we were very, very young, my parents never hesitated to engage, explain, or answer anything me and my siblings asked about. I played only educational computer games and watched only educational shows. Even board games were mostly puzzle games that improved my logical thinking. All the toys I was given encouraged me to play creatively when I was alone (and I was given a normal amount of time to play alone). Did I suffer for this? Not a smidge. I had a blast, I enjoyed what I was doing and I learned from it. This upbringing gave me a lifelong enjoyment of learning and formed a powerful foundational knowledge I can build off of. The point of me saying this is, there is no way in hell that teaching your kid a massive amount of information as a child necessarily has to prevent them from having fun. Make learning time into fun time, and your kid gets to "be a kid" and still learn whatever it is you want them to. By the way, my parents taught me to read and do basic math before I even entered the school system. I was reading at a college level by age 8. While this time scale might have been pushed up a bit if I was learning to read in two or three languages, it's still certainly very easy to teach your kids to read in a fun way even before they enter school, so no one aiming for a multilingual child ought to overlook it or consider it "too difficult". 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 78 of 80 30 October 2010 at 8:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
The process of reading takes advantage of assumptions we learn through spoken language, so it pays to do a bit of everything
bilingual experts all agree that "initial literacy" should be in one language only. Bilingual schools generally only introduce a second written language after 2 or 3 years. Generally, if a kid is fluent in two spoken languages and a fluent reader in one of them, learning to read in the second comes very easily. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5220 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 79 of 80 31 October 2010 at 1:46am | IP Logged | |||||
|
Interesting discussion chaps.
I've since spoken to the child face to face over a very good dinner. Her English is natural, perfectly natural and idiomatic - there are references to current TV for example that I wouldn't understand anyway. I don't always understand the reference my partners children make to current TV ! I am not qualified to judge the quality of her Italian, or for that matter, her Spanish but she is grammatically correct from what I can hear: her mum says her Italian grammar is correct. She doesn't seem to mix up similarities between Italian and Spanish. The most interesting thing the daughter did say was that she was surprised that I am only capable in three languages...... Ouch! Oh and I speak Spanish with a French accent. So it seems her 'initial literacy' is Spanish as she outputs far more Spanish than anything else, BUT she speaks grammatically correct Italian and English (English with her fathers accent) to the relevant person who initiates the conversation. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lynxrunner Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States crittercryptics.com Joined 5923 days ago 361 posts - 461 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Haitian Creole | Message 80 of 80 31 October 2010 at 3:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
I'm curious about the 98% figure I saw earlier. Does this apply to both languages or
just one? I would say that my English is fine with absolutely no interference from my Spanish. My Spanish has a few odd structures but that's just due to lack of exposure and I'm certain they'd go away if I started reading more Spanish literature. Then again, I think the situation I was in was not the usual one for bilingual children. I was raised by Spanish-speaking parents in an area that also has a large amount of Spanish speakers. My mom doesn't speak English and my dad does. My parents are lucky enough to be able to speak in Spanish when they go out so I didn't get exposure to "bad English" (although my father's English is excellent). We speak only in Spanish at home. However, most of the literature I read is in English, all my classes are in English, and the people I speak to outside of my family all speak English. They don't bother speaking Spanish. I got a lot of exposure to English that way and rarely any "bad Spanish". So I grew up in a condition that produces a lot of bilingual children. Most of the people in my school are bilingual (English/Spanish) and it's considered odd NOT to be bilingual. There are kids who actually forget their Spanish (two of my friends knew Spanish as children but stopped using for a while and now speak it with an odd accent and don't know a lot of words) because they use English so much more, but they are the exception. This situation is, once again, not the norm for most people in the U.S. (and I'm guessing in most Western countries, too). It's lucky I grew up in an environment with both a lot of Spanish and English (though always more English than Spanish) because if we had lived in some other place, I'm certain my Spanish would be much worse. Trilingual... I've never met a person in real life who is actually trilingual. As in, they have native or native-like fluency in three languages. The U.S. isn't the best country to go to if you want to raise your kids knowing more than one language. I know that Angelique Kidjo grew up knowing Fon and Yoruba (her mother and father were from different ethnic groups), possibly French, and later on English, and speaks those four languages fluently. Fon and Yoruba with native fluency; I've never heard her French and I don't know when she learned it (French is the official language of Benin, her country, but she also lived in Paris for a while and could have learned it there). Three languages natively and a fourth fluently seems pretty good; it's a shame I don't know more about how she learned French and English. 1 person has voted this message useful |
If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
