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Two years of raising a bilingual daughter

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Re: Two years of raising a bilingual daughter

#91

Post by zwieback »

mc32 wrote: post #52
zwieback wrote: post #15

This is great, hopefully OP can keep it up. I spoke only my native German to our first daughter and it went great but when the second one came around she wanted to have nothing to do with it. "Stop speaking Spanish!" was her reply (all foreign languages were spanish in her estimation) so I slacked off. Even with my older one I stopped the German when she was a bit older because I didn't want to be the only one having…

One interesting thing is if only one parent speaks the second language then kids will tend to only (obviously) pick up the tendencies of that speaker. So if a dad then the kid, irrespective of their gender, will pick up dad’s masculine tendencies or if mom her feminine tendencies. (dad may say the equiv of "dude" and mom may say the equiv of "guys", those sorts of things.) It’s not good or bad. It just is.

Yeah, it's very context sensitive. My father in law learned Hungarian as his first language in a Hungarian neighborhood in Cleveland. When he went to Hungary decades later they told him he spoke like their great grandparents.

Re: Two years of raising a bilingual daughter

#92

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

ascar wrote: post #87
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #72

It's good to also talk about failures, so let me tell a failure story. I intended to do this the other way round: I'm a native Spanish speaker with good command of English (officially CEFR C2 level which is the highest recognized in Europe) and I intended to always speak to my son in English so that he could be bilingual (or trilingual, as we also have an additional regional language here). It was an utter failure. S…

I'm curious where you are living while trying this and what language you speak with your spouse. I'm German and have a foreign spouse living in Germany. I speak English with my spouse, work mostly in English and spend most of my free time using English. For neither of us English is the native language though. I guess it's a dramatically different experience if you try to teach your child a language that's not used in…

I live in Spain. I use English a lot at work (maybe 50% of my communication at work is in English) but not with my wife, and it's not used in the country. I suppose it's an important factor, indeed.

Re: Two years of raising a bilingual daughter

#93

Post by rcarr »

laurencerowe wrote: post #83
rcarr wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You could just jump on a train for 35 euros and be in France in a few hours So first off, you're assuming that they live in London, as that is the only place with a direct train link to France. Second, the Eurostar website has ticket prices "from £39" which equates to €45. But that's the "from" price. Looking at all availability up to the end of October, there is one day where you can get a £63 ticket, another day…

Living in London is horribly expensive, but being so close, European travel from the UK is often similar in price to travel within the UK. As well as Eurostar there are many cheap flights and both can be similar to the costs of train travel within the UK. Brexit has sunk the pound so the costs of holidays abroad will be relatively more expensive now, but as kids we often took summer holidays in France because it cost…

I get that but, unless you're earning £100k+/year, hopping on the train to France every weekend to go practice your French is prohibitively expensive and not realistic

Re: Two years of raising a bilingual daughter

#94

Post by laurencerowe »

rcarr wrote: post #93
laurencerowe wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living in London is horribly expensive, but being so close, European travel from the UK is often similar in price to travel within the UK. As well as Eurostar there are many cheap flights and both can be similar to the costs of train travel within the UK. Brexit has sunk the pound so the costs of holidays abroad will be relatively more expensive now, but as kids we often took summer holidays in France because it cost…

I get that but, unless you're earning £100k+/year, hopping on the train to France every weekend to go practice your French is prohibitively expensive and not realistic

Doing it every weekend would be prohibitively expensive, but then so would taking the train to Manchester or anywhere else a similar distance within the UK.

Now living in the west coast of the US I really miss the freedom to visit so many different places for so little, whether that be cheap Eurostar fares or cheap budget airline flights.

Re: Two years of raising a bilingual daughter

#95

Post by mazugrin2 »

jncfhnb wrote: post #78
kwanbix wrote: post #3

Good for him. Being bilingual myself (Spanish native, English learned) I always wonder why so many Americans/Brits do not speak Spanish as their second language, or any second language for that matter. Now I live in Europe, and here it is very common for people to know 3 or 4 languages. Being able to communicate on any other language is so great.

As an American they taught us Spanish since grade 4. I would like to say I’m decent. Unusually good grammar. Bad, small vocabulary. It’s never been needed. It’s been a bit useful about 5 times.

Maybe it depends on where in the US one lives, but speaking decent Spanish has come to be really useful to me pretty frequently. And it's always been very rewarding in those moments when it has. It's not an every day thing, but at least once a week I find myself in a situation where having Spanish was definitely useful, if not required. That is far less frequent, maybe once a year or so does it feel "required", but then it's been especially rewarding to have it.

Re: Two years of raising a bilingual daughter

#96

Post by mazugrin2 »

hahamaster wrote: post #70

In my experience it's hard for a child to speak both languages very well if they are bilingual. So you end up with one of two situations: a) one language is spoken much better than the other one, or b) neither language is spoken very well.

I know too many people who were children of immigrants who speak, read, and write fluently in both their parent's native language and the language where they grew up to know that your experience can't be representative.

Re: Two years of raising a bilingual daughter

#97

Post by jncfhnb »

mazugrin2 wrote: post #95
jncfhnb wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an American they taught us Spanish since grade 4. I would like to say I’m decent. Unusually good grammar. Bad, small vocabulary. It’s never been needed. It’s been a bit useful about 5 times.

Maybe it depends on where in the US one lives, but speaking decent Spanish has come to be really useful to me pretty frequently. And it's always been very rewarding in those moments when it has. It's not an every day thing, but at least once a week I find myself in a situation where having Spanish was definitely useful, if not required. That is far less frequent, maybe once a year or so does it feel "required", but t…

Certainly. I would wager about 80% of the US has little need for it.

I like using Spanish where I can. But it’s irrelevant.

Re: Two years of raising a bilingual daughter

#98

Post by rcarr »

laurencerowe wrote: post #94
rcarr wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that but, unless you're earning £100k+/year, hopping on the train to France every weekend to go practice your French is prohibitively expensive and not realistic

Doing it every weekend would be prohibitively expensive, but then so would taking the train to Manchester or anywhere else a similar distance within the UK. Now living in the west coast of the US I really miss the freedom to visit so many different places for so little, whether that be cheap Eurostar fares or cheap budget airline flights.

How expensive is plane travel in the US compared to the EU? The language won't change, but the variety of the US is pretty immense. You could hop on a plane from LA and be in the Texas desert, or the peaks and snow in Colorado, or the Great Lakes, or the swamps in the South. And even leaving the States, tropical islands of the Bahamas are only 5 hours away, Canada is three or four, and Mexico is even closer. I would have expected air travel to be cheaper relatively speaking in America than Europe, especially with the higher salaries. The environmental impacts of all the flying aren't great though obviously.

Re: Two years of raising a bilingual daughter

#99

Post by laurencerowe »

rcarr wrote: post #98
laurencerowe wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing it every weekend would be prohibitively expensive, but then so would taking the train to Manchester or anywhere else a similar distance within the UK. Now living in the west coast of the US I really miss the freedom to visit so many different places for so little, whether that be cheap Eurostar fares or cheap budget airline flights.

How expensive is plane travel in the US compared to the EU? The language won't change, but the variety of the US is pretty immense. You could hop on a plane from LA and be in the Texas desert, or the peaks and snow in Colorado, or the Great Lakes, or the swamps in the South. And even leaving the States, tropical islands of the Bahamas are only 5 hours away, Canada is three or four, and Mexico is even closer. I would…

Where budget airlines exist in the US the fares are comparable, they just fly far fewer routes than in Europe so you often end up paying standard airline prices.

The variety of the US is immense, but its size is immense too! San Francisco-New York is three quarters the distance of London-New York and the western half of the US is practically empty other than the coast.

Looking at my old email receipts I have a lot of £50 each way tickets from RyanAir and EasyJet. My last trip to Mexico was $200 each way (though that was at least twice the distance, Mexico is huge too!)

Re: Two years of raising a bilingual daughter

#100

Post by hfhdjdks »

My lazy guide:

This didn't make my daughter 100% bilingual, but she's up there.

We live in a spanish speaking country. Netflix (where she sees all her cartoons and movies) has always been set in English. She's 7 now and has never asked for it to be switched to Spanish.

Additionally, I read to her almost every day (before bed, sometimes during the day too) and 90% of the books were in English. It would have been tough if, for some reason, she didn't liked the English books, but since I started before she could even speak I think it came naturally to her.

I used to speak in English with her (and she would reply), but at some point gave up.

Her listening skills and reading skills are amazing (and on par with her Spanish), but her speaking ability is not quite bilingual.

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