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Advice on Spanish and French/German/Por..

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justonelanguage
Diglot
Groupie
United States
Joined 4243 days ago
98 posts - 128 votes 
Speaks: English, Spanish

 
 Message 41 of 91
10 September 2012 at 7:42pm | IP Logged 
Good point--I may marry an English monolingual because we love each other. (Language-wise, it would suck, but that's not the most important thing).

1. For English: no need to really improve much, native-speaker and I use it everyday/will use it every day in work.

2. Spanish: Find as many native speakers and do language exchanges or go abroad as often as possible.

3. Third language: I would only learn another language if I could teach it to my children. How good do you have to be to teach your children a language? Conversational-level? B1 level? I like German because it *seems* more phonetic, it is influential, and I like how it sounds! However, I don't know any German and probably wrong about the phonetic thing. The other two languages that are feasible are Portuguese and French. I like that French is more wide-spread but I don't like the spelling and phonetic issues. It also doesn't sound (although I don't care about "beauty" of languages as much) as good to me as German.

Portuguese would be the fastest but since it is relatively similar to Spanish, I don't know if that would give my children as much of use; ideally they would learn languages that are more diverse and different from each other.


hrhenry wrote:
justonelanguage wrote:
What about this: I speak Spanish (my children will
*definitely* know Spanish from me) in the home and if my wife speaks another language,
she speaks to our future children in the other one. (French, Italian, Chinese,
whatever) I can also speak English to them so they get a head start in school.

It's all fine and good to plan out your kids' future, but realize that life rarely goes
the way you intend it to go. You're talking about a future that still doesn't include a
wife (or even a significant other - you don't know what language she'll speak.)
Everything you're talking about could change or not materialize at all, because these
things don't even exist yet in your life.

At this point in your life, why not concentrate on the original emphasis of the thread:
how to improve your own languages?

R.
==

1 person has voted this message useful



WoofCreature
Diglot
Groupie
Canada
Joined 4307 days ago
80 posts - 118 votes 
Speaks: English*, FrenchB2
Studies: German, Portuguese, Norwegian

 
 Message 42 of 91
11 September 2012 at 1:07am | IP Logged 
Serpent wrote:
As they won't have any family members that speak Mandarin to them, chances are they won't be fully proficient. You'd need a lot of additional materials, like cartoons and music in Mandarin, and later movies and comic books when they grow up. Between ALSO giving them media in Spanish and the kids just wanting what their peers like ie American media... I don't think it's a good idea. They might end up hating it:( Or if you're so eager to teach them Mandarin, you have to be okay with the fact that they might not do as well in Spanish as you'd want them to. With a Spanish-speaking mother, they would of course understand Spanish, but getting them to speak it would be more of a challenge, especially if their maternal relatives also speak English. Truly multilingual kids usually just HAVE to use several languages in their daily life, it should be more than the parents' choice. Actually, it might even be hard enough to convince your wife to speak Spanish to the kids!

If teaching your kids Mandarin is important for you, learn it yourself first. This way you'll be there to speak to them and to help them with reading/writing.


Basically, it's true that kids can absorb a language easily. But they also forget what they don't need. Look for information online about raising bilingual/trilingual children to have a more realistic idea of what it takes.


I would just like to comment about the whole immersion school thing. I have been in French immersion classes(the whole school wasn't immersion though) since I was 5 and I have only now started exposing myself to French outside of school. No, I do not speak at a native level, but because I started so young, if I ever want to bring my French up to that level, I think I could without too much difficulty. I imagine Mandarin might be a little different because of the writing system, but the point is, they wouldn't necessarily need to be exposed to a ton of Mandarin at home. They would be much better at it if they did, but they could easily bring up their level when they were older if they so chose. If they did not like learning Mandarin you could always pull them out of the school. You never know if you don't try.

Anyway, as has been stated, we are discussing a very hypothetical situation, but I just wanted to address your concerns about the whole immersion school thing.
1 person has voted this message useful



hrhenry
Octoglot
Senior Member
United States
languagehopper.blogs
Joined 4911 days ago
1871 posts - 3642 votes 
Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese
Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe

 
 Message 43 of 91
11 September 2012 at 2:30am | IP Logged 
justonelanguage wrote:
How good do you have to be to teach your children a language?
Conversational-level? B1 level?

I think you'd need to be at a high enough level for them to believe you're a credible
source for the language. I don't believe B1 is it, unless all you want to teach them is
a few phrasebook-type sentences. B1 isn't really enough for you to realistically carry
out your day in the language.

R.
==
1 person has voted this message useful



Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6378 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes 
4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

 
 Message 44 of 91
11 September 2012 at 2:30am | IP Logged 
Well, how old are you now? What do you think would happen if you moved away from Canada for a few years and lost contact with French? What if you also stopped learning Portuguese?
Although you might not have sought for exposure to French, sure you've had more in Canada than what one by default has in the USA? Even the exposure to French, let alone to Mandarin.
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justonelanguage
Diglot
Groupie
United States
Joined 4243 days ago
98 posts - 128 votes 
Speaks: English, Spanish

 
 Message 45 of 91
11 September 2012 at 2:44am | IP Logged 
So C1? (my level) I'm very comfortable with teaching my children Spanish even if my future wife doesn't know it; it was my major and I taught it in college some.

hrhenry wrote:
justonelanguage wrote:
How good do you have to be to teach your children a language?
Conversational-level? B1 level?

I think you'd need to be at a high enough level for them to believe you're a credible
source for the language. I don't believe B1 is it, unless all you want to teach them is
a few phrasebook-type sentences. B1 isn't really enough for you to realistically carry
out your day in the language.

R.
==

1 person has voted this message useful



WoofCreature
Diglot
Groupie
Canada
Joined 4307 days ago
80 posts - 118 votes 
Speaks: English*, FrenchB2
Studies: German, Portuguese, Norwegian

 
 Message 46 of 91
11 September 2012 at 3:34am | IP Logged 
Serpent wrote:
Well, how old are you now? What do you think would happen if you moved away from Canada for a few years and lost contact with French? What if you also stopped learning Portuguese?
Although you might not have sought for exposure to French, sure you've had more in Canada than what one by default has in the USA? Even the exposure to French, let alone to Mandarin.


I'm in high school. Obviously if I stopped being exposed to French I would forget it. Most people who graduate from the program I'm in completely forget French within a few years. Other than packages(cereal boxes, etc) having often horribly translated French, I almost never have contact with the language. I actually spoke more French in a month in Brazil than I have my whole life in Canada(outside of school).

That's not to say that it's useless though. I think that learning another language at a young age makes it easier to pick up other ones. For me it gave me an interest in languages that I likely wouldn't of had otherwise; language learning is almost discouraged by part of my family. But my point was that just because there's a chance that justonelanguage's hypothetical kids won't reach native fluency right away or that it will be hard or that they just won't like learning it doesn't mean he shouldn't send them to a Mandarin school if that is what he wants. Although I don't particularly like French and it likely won't be of much use to me in my adult life, I am still very grateful that I was put in a French immersion program. It has certainly helped in learning Portuguese.
1 person has voted this message useful



justonelanguage
Diglot
Groupie
United States
Joined 4243 days ago
98 posts - 128 votes 
Speaks: English, Spanish

 
 Message 47 of 91
11 September 2012 at 1:55pm | IP Logged 
Wait, but how did you not speak much French in the immersion school? Why not?

I live in a US state that has very monolingual but I know a girl whose mom was a French-Canadian. She sent her daughter to a French school in our state and she speaks native-level French. I don't know how good her mother's French is. I just know that she has a very demanding career and was always working; she may not have taught her much French. Thus, the immersion school really gave her daughter native level French.


WoofCreature wrote:
Serpent wrote:
Well, how old are you now? What do you think would happen if you moved away from Canada for a few years and lost contact with French? What if you also stopped learning Portuguese?
Although you might not have sought for exposure to French, sure you've had more in Canada than what one by default has in the USA? Even the exposure to French, let alone to Mandarin.


I'm in high school. Obviously if I stopped being exposed to French I would forget it. Most people who graduate from the program I'm in completely forget French within a few years. Other than packages(cereal boxes, etc) having often horribly translated French, I almost never have contact with the language. I actually spoke more French in a month in Brazil than I have my whole life in Canada(outside of school).

That's not to say that it's useless though. I think that learning another language at a young age makes it easier to pick up other ones. For me it gave me an interest in languages that I likely wouldn't of had otherwise; language learning is almost discouraged by part of my family. But my point was that just because there's a chance that justonelanguage's hypothetical kids won't reach native fluency right away or that it will be hard or that they just won't like learning it doesn't mean he shouldn't send them to a Mandarin school if that is what he wants. Although I don't particularly like French and it likely won't be of much use to me in my adult life, I am still very grateful that I was put in a French immersion program. It has certainly helped in learning Portuguese.

1 person has voted this message useful



Julie
Heptaglot
Senior Member
PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6684 days ago
1251 posts - 1733 votes 
5 sounds
Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French

 
 Message 48 of 91
11 September 2012 at 3:41pm | IP Logged 
justonelanguage wrote:
So C1? (my level) I'm very comfortable with teaching my
children Spanish even if my future wife doesn't know it; it was my major and I taught
it in college some.


The thing is there are two ways how you can teach a foreign language to your children.
You can either 'teach' it in a very meaning of the word (design some activities in a
given foreign language, teach a couple of phrases, support their interest for the
language, show books/cartoons/games in TL, organize 'lessons' etc.) or you can speak TL
to the children (so they're raised bilingually, and with some support of TL media or,
preferably, immersion kindergarten/school/playgroups) they become 'native speakers' of
TL (even if they may not reach native fluency).

To do the first kind of teaching it is obviously good to know the language well but
it's not necessary. My parents who were learning English themselves when I was a little
girl made me interested in the language, taught me some phrases, provided me with some
interesting materials and tried to help in the very beginning. They don't even really
speak English.

To do the second thing, you have to be a very comfortable speaker of TL. Preferably,
you make a decision to speak a foreign language only with your children, with all the
consequences. This may be hard emotionally (singing lullabies in TL, not being able to
teach the songs you know from your own childhood etc.). You may also notice you don't
know the TL names of various everyday items, such as all the kitchen devices, pots etc.
It may be a real challenge both for you and your child. It may be very successful,
though - I know some examples of bilingual children that have learned one of their
languages almost exclusively from a non-native parent.

Hypothetically, if I had children and lived abroad, I am sure I would raise them
bilingually and speak Polish with them. If I stayed in Poland though, I'm not really
sure if I would decide to speak German only with them (despite my C2 level and my
foreign language teaching experience).

I think you shouldn't plan that much: think about your languages first, and wait for
actual wife and children with other decisions :). BTW, do you speak any dialect of
Chinese yourself? It may be difficult to convince your children that Chinese is part of
their heritage if you don't speak it.


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