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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

#71

Post by luxpir »

Spearchucker wrote: post #63
luxpir wrote: post #58

I can speak two other languages fluently, but I live in England and neither of those two other languages are native. As such, my infant son rarely hears them. I know others in my situation who have given up, resigning themselves to being able to help with language homework. I'm tempted to push on though, much like the (possibly misguided) attempts of a man to speak to his son only in Klingon for the first three years…

Far be it for me to suggest to another how to raise their child. If it were up to me I'd so totally stick with it. The insane pace of development in these early years will never happen again. Another language is another life. The mind is also very good at adaptation, so anything you teach incorrectly today will auto-align/correct when your son is older and experiences that culture for real. What you're doing takes co…

Thanks for the encouragement. Did you do something similar yourself?

I'll give it a bash, I think, based on your words. Just think of the influence that comment might have had on his future life if it does pay off. Thanks again!

Edit: I see from further up the thread you've got a complex situation of your own underway. It's great when you've two native languages at home because English seems to always be an easy third to pick up.

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

#72

Post by emodendroket »

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.

"Provably" how? Many people learn through a class and go on to speak a second language, so what's the proof?

Sure, eventually you just have to use it. But as an adult learner, you can get going a lot faster by using your knowledge of other languages, understanding of rules, and so on, before jumping in, and it's not always practical for people to just take off and spend months or years in a foreign country in the hopes they'll learn a language while they're there.

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

#73

Post by emodendroket »

mipapage wrote: post #47

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 Engli…

Yeah, unfortunately kids get pretty clever about this and resist doing language acquisition that isn't necessary.

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

#74

Post by emodendroket »

e40 wrote: post #5

I kept waiting for the payoff from the title. It never arrived. It's not the language her daughter speaks at daycare, it's that she's at daycare. That's the cause of this. Same thing happened to my son and he went to an English-speaking daycare. They grow apart from you, for a reason.

You found yourself smiling and nodding at daycare teachers who were saying things you could understand less than half of?

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

#75

Post by solve »

smcl wrote: post #51
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

It's a cute joke, but I feel that the US gets an unfair rap around languages. I know for a fact that plenty of people the UK (where I'm from) declare their hopelessness with foreign languages with a good deal of ... I don't know ... pride? humour? There's always going to be a number of talented bilingual folks there, but they're in the minority. I'd be interested to see how the UK and the US compare, I wouldn't be su…

It's so strange that people often lump US & UK into the same group. They're vastly culturally different in many ways, opposite even.

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

#76

Post by gingerlime »

My wife is Japanese, I'm Israeli, and we both live in Berin, where our son was born. We talk to him in our native language, and between us in English. He goes to the Kita, where they speak only German...

He's still fairly young (17 months), so doesn't really talk much, but we can spot a few German words (Ja! Nein). He does seem to understand Hebrew and Japanese when we talk to him, and says one or two words in Hebrew (Aba, means Dad) and in Japanese (Wanwan, means Dog).

We're very curious on how things will evolve from here. It's very likely that his German will be his strongest. But we're sure he will understand and can speak with us. Our biggest hope is that he can help translate German for us though ;-)

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

#77

Post by blackkettle »

gingerlime wrote: post #76

My wife is Japanese, I'm Israeli, and we both live in Berin, where our son was born. We talk to him in our native language, and between us in English. He goes to the Kita, where they speak only German... He's still fairly young (17 months), so doesn't really talk much, but we can spot a few German words (Ja! Nein). He does seem to understand Hebrew and Japanese when we talk to him, and says one or two words in Hebrew…

wanwan is the sound the dog makes (like ruff-ruff in English). wan-chan is a colloquial term for dog. [just to be a nit-picking ass].

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

#78

Post by [deleted] »

gingerlime wrote: post #76

My wife is Japanese, I'm Israeli, and we both live in Berin, where our son was born. We talk to him in our native language, and between us in English. He goes to the Kita, where they speak only German... He's still fairly young (17 months), so doesn't really talk much, but we can spot a few German words (Ja! Nein). He does seem to understand Hebrew and Japanese when we talk to him, and says one or two words in Hebrew…

[deleted]

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

#79

Post by munificent »

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…

One thing many people in Europe don't realize is how huge the United States is. (This ends up often causing some hilarious confusion when they come visit and realize you can't do a road trip tour of the country in one weekend.)

Let's do some comparison. For kicks, and because I work with some Danes, we'll use Copenhagen. Denmark has about 5 million people. The state I live in, Washington, has more than 7 million.

From Copehagan, you can travel 28km and be in Malmö Sweden. Hope you know Swedish! Meanwhile, I'll still be in the metro area of the city I live in, Seattle.

Go 151km out and you can reach Stralsund in Germany. I'll be able to just reach the tip of Canada, since Seattle happens to be near the corner of the state. But if I go East, I'm still less than a quarter of the way out of Washington. And, of course, even taking Canada into account, I'm still surrounded by only English speakers.

Up to 251km, and now we've reached Kolobrzeg in Poland. Still mostly in Washington, though I can just reach the edge of Oregon. Everyone there speaks English.

At 392km, we can get to Kristiansand, Norway. Meanwhile, I can still be in Washington.

A 530km jaunt across the Baltic gets us into Lithuania or Latvia. That just gets me to Oregon, Idaho, and a bit of Montana because Idaho is so narrow.

Going the other way, a 784km paddle across the North Sea gets us to the UK. That gets me a little bit of the way into Nevada and California. 44 states are still out of reach.

804km will make it to France. That gets me to... still just Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and California.

To get to a place where English isn't the main language, I have to go about 1,700km to Mexico. That distance will take a Dane well past Moscow.

To get to Florida, the last place I lived, I have to go about 4,000km. That distance will take our Danish friend to Sudan, Saudia Arabia, Novosibirsk, or well past the North pole. In fact, it will take them just about over the Atlantic all the way to Canada.

So, yes, I do wish I was multi-lingual. But I don't think it should come as a shock or be considered a failure that most Americans are when it lets us converse with all of the more than 300 million people that are in a several thousand kilometer radius around us.

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

#80

Post by smcl »

solve wrote: post #75
smcl wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a cute joke, but I feel that the US gets an unfair rap around languages. I know for a fact that plenty of people the UK (where I'm from) declare their hopelessness with foreign languages with a good deal of ... I don't know ... pride? humour? There's always going to be a number of talented bilingual folks there, but they're in the minority. I'd be interested to see how the UK and the US compare, I wouldn't be su…

It's so strange that people often lump US & UK into the same group. They're vastly culturally different in many ways, opposite even.

I don't disagree, but in the context of this joke I was just wanting to say "Hey America, us too!" :D
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