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When your child speaks a language you don’t

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Re: When your child speaks a language you don’t

#41

Post by tobhahn »

epaladin wrote: post #26
j_s wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being fluent in three languages never seemed like a big deal So the joke goes: three languages = trilingual, two languages = bilingual, one language = American

I tested myself to see if I fit the stereotype by trying to explain this joke to a Japanese friend, in Japanese. After a collective effort which determined that there isn't a concise noun phrase in Japanese that's equivalent to "bilingual"/"trilingual" etc (anyone else know if that's actually the case?), I think the point was communicated, which I hope implies graduation to at least some limbo between "American" and…

What about ２言語併用、３言語併用？

Re: When your child speaks a language you don’t

#42

Post by laurentoget »

As a parent of a bilingual 18 month old, my experience is totally different. I speak english most of my day at work, my son speaks english at daycare, and we speak french together at home. When I get to daycare he immediately switches to french and this feels like we have a shared secret. I left a CD of french songs at the daycare and they play it when he needs soothing.

I think this boils down to the fact that I think of myself as an immigrant, not an expat.

Re: When your child speaks a language you don’t

#43

Post by melvinmt »

DavidSJ wrote: post #7
StevePerkins wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious why you chose to truncate a few lines away from the finish, rather than simply pasting the poem in its entirety? Was it because the last few lines take a vaguely-religious turn, and you thought the audience here would be hostile? I have no strong opinion either way there, I just find the edit interesting.

It's not because I thought the audience would be hostile, but I don't like those last few lines (mainly because of that turn), and think it's a better poem without them. Do you think it's better to leave it intact?

Uhm.. the book is titled "The Prophet" so I would think "that turn" is core to the message of the book.

Re: When your child speaks a language you don’t

#44

Post by maaku »

solve wrote: post #23
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What works for babies does not necessarily for adults. L1 and L2 acquisition are quite different.

I strongly disagree, and the education system approach is provably a massive failure in this regard. That's all I'll say for now.

The grandparent's point is correct, although he didn't say anything about formalized education. You inserted that yourself.

Re: When your child speaks a language you don’t

#45

Post by ohjesusthatguy »

le_lenny_face wrote: post #38
true_religion wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd agree with you. The last few lines add a completely new agent and change the meaning of the poem.

>change the meaning of the poem What? Those lines are the poem!

In the short time I've been reading HN, it's become clear that its readership likes to think of itself as more enlightened than the average mouthbreathing yokel. It doesn't mean they don't have their own orthodoxy, though, and religion is one of those things We Don't Acknowledge Around Here.

Hell, I'm an atheist and I would have added the last lines anyway[0]. Of course, he didn't attribute the poem to the author anyway so we're supposed to imagine he wrote it, right?[1]

[0]http://www.katsandogz.com/onchildren.html - the first thing I ran across, but at least the author's name is on it. EDIT: hey, he finally did the same google search I did!

[1]http://nedroidcomics.tumblr.com/post/41879001445/the-interne...

Re: When your child speaks a language you don’t

#46

Post by _delirium »

Spearchucker wrote: post #8

I'm German, and speak that with my son. My son's mother is French, and she uses that with my son. She and I speak English when we converse. He goes to a bilingual French/English nursery school, which has mostly French expats' kids in it, and (happily) four kids that also speak German. We never really discussed this when my son was born - it just happened, because doing it any other way was alien enough to not enter o…

I'm not too surprised that Americans and Brits don't speak other languages. I doubt people here (Denmark) would speak more than one language if Danish were the lingua franca of international commerce. As it is, the vast majority of Danes are fluent in two languages, English and Danish, because they are both necessities to function in modern Denmark (Danish is the national language, and English is the commercial/business language and language of travel).

People do learn other languages, but at about the level Americans learn other languages: a few years in school, rarely able to carry on a conversation. Older people are more likely to be able to carry on a German conversation, but among younger people it's uncommon. If anything there's increasingly a little bit of nationalist suspicion about people who speak third languages, especially third languages natively. It's normal to be fluent in English and Danish, but if you're raised speaking another language at home, that smells of the dreaded "multiculturalism", and people may actually criticize you for raising your kids speaking a foreign language at home instead of fully assimilating into Danish culture and raising them in Danish. (Goes doubly if the foreign language is Arabic or Turkish.)

Re: When your child speaks a language you don’t

#47

Post by mipapage »

I'm going to share this in case someone finds it useful...

I am Canadian and married to a Spanish women and living in Spain. While my son started out sponging up both languages, he eventually took off in Spanish and left English behind. In order to have some form of relationship with him I had to speak Spanish with him.

People would lecture me, "oh, give him that gift of English" or "how can you not be speaking English to him?".

Now that he is older and has discovered the Internet, he has a need to learn English. And he's learned. I'm sure it was there all along, he went from not speaking English to speaking it in about two weeks.

My wife and I would speak English around him, and sometimes I would speak English to him, but it really wasn't until he needed to, like the child in the OP story, that he learned English.

Re: When your child speaks a language you don’t

#48

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

solve wrote: post #23
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What works for babies does not necessarily for adults. L1 and L2 acquisition are quite different.

I strongly disagree, and the education system approach is provably a massive failure in this regard. That's all I'll say for now.

You can't just "disagree". This is a matter which science (linguistics specifically) has lots of research on.

Re: When your child speaks a language you don’t

#49

Post by mipapage »

tonyarkles wrote: post #39
therobot24 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately languages other than English are not pushed very hard in American (public) education. It's really quite sad compared to the rest of the world. My first exposure to another language in school was 8th grade, which was the choice of an elective Spanish or French class. To prevent having to take a class at the college level, the minimum requirement (if i remember correctly) was only 2 years of a foreign lan…

In (non-Quebec) Canada, there's often an option to do French Immersion, even though the primary language is English. My parents put me in this program for elementary (K-8) school, and gave me the choice for high school, which I opted out of. There's a few positives and negatives that I found watching myself and my peers: Pros: - The 9 years that I spoke French in the classroom for every class except for English was e…

I followed a similar line to you, and what I do find about learning new languages is how easy it is to think in those languages once you grasp them; I've always thought this was due to the years of French Immersion.

Re: When your child speaks a language you don’t

#50

Post by bigtunacan »

therobot24 wrote: post #17
Spearchucker wrote: post #8

I'm German, and speak that with my son. My son's mother is French, and she uses that with my son. She and I speak English when we converse. He goes to a bilingual French/English nursery school, which has mostly French expats' kids in it, and (happily) four kids that also speak German. We never really discussed this when my son was born - it just happened, because doing it any other way was alien enough to not enter o…

Unfortunately languages other than English are not pushed very hard in American (public) education. It's really quite sad compared to the rest of the world. My first exposure to another language in school was 8th grade, which was the choice of an elective Spanish or French class. To prevent having to take a class at the college level, the minimum requirement (if i remember correctly) was only 2 years of a foreign lan…

This is interesting. It must depend on the school districts, but I live in central Iowa and my children attend public school where they started learning Spanish since Kindergarten. It is odd for me since I can not speak the language myself.
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