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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

#51

Post by smcl »

j_s wrote: post #21
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…

> 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 surprised if the US had a greater proportion of bilingual people.

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

#52

Post by ccozan »

This is almost OK. Wait until you have twin boys, like me. They are 20 months now, grown at home, no day care ( KiTa as in Germany ;Kindergarden is later on).

They don't speak, but very few words with a meaning ( mama, papa, apa ). But! Here it comes: they speak between them and communicate using a almost invented language. The language is so strange, because is based on using the same word ( twin 1 uses 'bahdi', twin 2 'budji' - approx phonetic rendering), repeatedly but changing tonality, like in cantonese. It's really amazing to see how they can talk each other and coordinate while playing for hours using this language, me and my wife feel we are completly left out :).

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

#53

Post by tsuyoshi »

te_platt wrote: post #40

I have a friend who grew up in a home where her mom and grandma spoke to her only in Spanish and her dad only spoke to her in English. She was surprised when she went to Kindergarten and her teacher spoke English. She thought Spanish was what women spoke and that English was for men.

I am American and my wife is Cambodian. We live in a Cambodian neighborhood in the United States. We have a daughter, born in Cambodia, who is now 4. I speak to her in English and her mother (and everyone else in the neighborhood) speaks to her in Cambodian. Until she started preschool last September, virtually everyone except myself talked to her in Cambodian.

Not too long ago, she asked me why some person (I think it was a waiter at a restaurant) spoke English and not Cambodian. For her, everyone spoke Cambodian, and then some of them also spoke English. I tried to explain that in America, most people actually speak English and not Cambodian. After that explanation, she kept asking "is this place America?" everywhere we went for a few days.

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

#54

Post by ChristinaM »

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 found the same thing. In the bit of rural Canada where I grew up, it was pretty standard for french elementary students to go on to english high school (with 1-2 classes/year in french, usually french & history or geography). We can all still speak french (with weaker vocab if we don't practice) but we didn't have issues with math/science jargon or having enough practice in english. A handful of students went to french high school but generally because they intended to go to a french university.

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

#55

Post by jedc »

te_platt wrote: post #40

I have a friend who grew up in a home where her mom and grandma spoke to her only in Spanish and her dad only spoke to her in English. She was surprised when she went to Kindergarten and her teacher spoke English. She thought Spanish was what women spoke and that English was for men.

I know a German couple where both parents speak English and German. (Though the wife is much more comfortable with English than her husband.) The way they interact with their daughter is that the father always speaks German to her, and the mother always speaks English. At one point, the mom had to tell her daughter that "you have to have daddy read you that book, because it's in German." :)

It's working pretty well so far for their daughter; she's certainly comfortable and fluent (for her age) in both languages.

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

#56

Post by magic_beans »

mathieuh wrote: post #16

I suffer from the opposite problem: my mother speaks a language I don't. She is French, but despite giving me a French name never spoke to me in French while I was growing up. She'd speak to her family in French, but never to me or my brother. I've studied to B2 level on my own and managed to osmose a fair ability to distinguish words and sounds, but I'll never be able to get the native-level fluency I could have. It…

I could never understand how this is possible. If you have a child, wouldn't it be natural to speak to her in your native tongue? I would NEVER speak to my child in anything other than English, even if I lived in France, if only to avoid propagating non-native grammatical errors.

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

#57

Post by jskonhovd »

ccozan wrote: post #52

This is almost OK. Wait until you have twin boys, like me. They are 20 months now, grown at home, no day care ( KiTa as in Germany ;Kindergarden is later on). They don't speak, but very few words with a meaning ( mama, papa, apa ). But! Here it comes: they speak between them and communicate using a almost invented language. The language is so strange, because is based on using the same word ( twin 1 uses 'bahdi', twi…

I did the same with my twin. It's quite common from my understanding.

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

#58

Post by luxpir »

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 of his life in the 90s.

I have already accepted that the result will be along the lines of my son having a passing familiarity with the sounds and basics of the two languages. Better than nothing.

--

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon_Language_Institute#d.2... // http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/7.08/mustread.html?pg...

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

#59

Post by dmacvicar »

>Viennese daycares—known here as kindergartens—have a very long Eingewöhnungszeit—literally translated as “getting adjusted period” or "acclimatization." Dropping your kid off on Day One while she shrieks "MOMMY!" is looked upon as child abuse.

I went over this in Germany (living here since 10 years) and it is just ridiculous. During my second child "acclimatization" after seeing a mother in tears and making progress for her absence in intervals of 5 minutes each day, I realize this long "acclimatization" period was for them, not for the child.

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

#60

Post by legulere »

_delirium wrote: post #46
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/busin…

At least Swedes seem to be ridiculously good at speaking German after having just a few years of German in school. Language learning has lots to do with similarity.

The other important point is how much you use a language. Americans simply don't have contact with languages other than English most of the time. You also see this effect in Germany where the English level is fairly low for speakers of a language that is so similar to English. And this because tv and movies get dubbed in Germany.

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