Kids with Two Languages

[magicvw]

Are you still bilingual Celine? I sometimes wonder if Poppy would forget how to speak Bulgarian if we move away.

 

[Dinoslass]

Hello!

I am new to this thread. Our children speak both dutch and english, as I am dutch and my husband is from England. Now we all use it both as the children are old enough, but when they were smaller I spoke dutch to them and my husbnd english, so it did not confuse them too much. We still do for our guestchildren. Rayan will be fluent in three languages this way (he is from France) I think it is the easiest for the children this way and it gives them something extra without much effort. I would hate to think my children would not have been able to understand my husband's family or mine if we had just chosen for one langauge.

 

[having#4]

Hey guys! My fiance is Inuit and between him and his mother and the rest of their family, our 2 year old can sing nursery rhymes and speak Inuk, our 3 year old does the same and my 10 year old and I are both learning as well. I think it is fantastic that so many people are teaching their children a second language at a young age as I think it is easier for the kids to pick up on it rather than trying later on in life.

 

[Fluxuspoem]

Hello!

I am new to this thread. Our children speak both dutch and english, as I am dutch and my husband is from England. Now we all use it both as the children are old enough, but when they were smaller I spoke dutch to them and my husbnd english, so it did not confuse them too much. We still do for our guestchildren. Rayan will be fluent in three languages this way (he is from France) I think it is the easiest for the children this way and it gives them something extra without much effort. I would hate to think my children would not have been able to understand my husband's family or mine if we had just chosen for one langauge.

Like Dinoslass said above, I read on a lot of articles that the best way to get your child to learn two languages is to have each parent sticking with one. For example I am greek living in England and my DH is english.

When our baby is born I plan to speak to the baby exclusively in Greek while my husband will only speak english. They say that the child may be a little slow to speak to start with as he/she is processing so many more words but once they start they will be familiar with both languages. This way the child doesnt get confused and uses each language as communication code with each parent.

Also, I read that since the baby will go to an english nursery/school etc the english language will be adopted very quick, so there is no reason to worry about the primary language so much, my husbands interaction with her should be enough when she is a baby, as interaction in the UK nurseries/schools will make the baby super fluent.

 

[curiosa]

oh what a great thread!
I am hoping my baby will be trilingual. I was raised bilingual as my dad is Italian and my mum is Japanese, and I started going to an American school at the age of 4, so I'm trilingual.
My husband is Italian so he speaks to Alice in Italian 99% of the time.
I speak all three languages with her, with English being the language I feel most comfortable talking to her in! But I think I need to make the effort to stick to Japanese most to encourage her to learn it and use it. It's going to be hard though!

I think the most important thing about teaching children a language is to make sure that they USE it, because if you let them start replying to you in another language (the easiest for them), then they won't learn the language as well. In fact, I always replied to my mum in Italian when she spoke to me in Japanese, so Japanese is my weakest language now and I have had to work hard to improve my Japanese over the years.

 

[magicvw]

Curiosa - I think your plans are excellent but I don't know if they'll come off! Although dh and I are both English, and so you'd expect us to only use English at home, in fact we end up speaking Bulgarian to Poppy too (with our terrible accents and grammatical mistakes... )

In reality, you tend to start speaking the language that your child has - which in the early years is a total mish-mash of stuff. If you are really strict I guess you can keep the language distinct, but for us, being able to communicate with our daughter has been so much more important than sticking only to English. She has been slow to pick up English (normal, for bilinguals they say), and she has certain things which she only says in Bulgarian. Since she doesn't react when we say those things in English, we tend to say them in Bulgarian, and use the mish-mash that she uses. That's how creole languages get created! E.g. Poppy doesn't understand "do you want", but she knows it in Bulgarian, so we ask her "iskash li juice?"

Before having Poppy I would have agreed with you that it's better to stick to one language, but in reality just getting the message across and relieving the frustration tends to win the day. I wholeheartedly believe that it doesn't matter and that her brain is sorting it all out, and eventually she will be totally bilingual. But then we are in a slightly different situation to you.

Fluxuspoem - I think your plan is theoretically good too, but what language will you use when you have a 3-way conversation?

 

[Fluxuspoem]

Curiosa - I think your plans are excellent but I don't know if they'll come off! Although dh and I are both English, and so you'd expect us to only use English at home, in fact we end up speaking Bulgarian to Poppy too (with our terrible accents and grammatical mistakes... )

In reality, you tend to start speaking the language that your child has - which in the early years is a total mish-mash of stuff. If you are really strict I guess you can keep the language distinct, but for us, being able to communicate with our daughter has been so much more important than sticking only to English. She has been slow to pick up English (normal, for bilinguals they say), and she has certain things which she only says in Bulgarian. Since she doesn't react when we say those things in English, we tend to say them in Bulgarian, and use the mish-mash that she uses. That's how creole languages get created! E.g. Poppy doesn't understand "do you want", but she knows it in Bulgarian, so we ask her "iskash li juice?"

Before having Poppy I would have agreed with you that it's better to stick to one language, but in reality just getting the message across and relieving the frustration tends to win the day. I wholeheartedly believe that it doesn't matter and that her brain is sorting it all out, and eventually she will be totally bilingual. But then we are in a slightly different situation to you.

Fluxuspoem - I think your plan is theoretically good too, but what language will you use when you have a 3-way conversation?

By the time the baby speaks, she will know both languages so hopefully whatever language we choose to speak she will pick up. So either english or greek depending on the mood I suppose

My husband knows a bit of greek so when its in greek it will be basic but I am determined to help my LO with this plan so she can be able to speak to my parents in greek with no problems.

x

 

[curiosa]

Magic, I know it's complicated, isn't it?
To be honest, even if Poppy doesn't really react to you saying something in English, it doesn't mean she doesn't understand what you are saying. Kids often know much more than they let on, but try to wrap us round their little finger! I think we as parents can just do the best we can do and hopefully our kids will pick up our languages are they go along. I am sure Poppy will be fine with English!

The hardest part for my situation is that Japanese is not a European language. The grammar structure is different, and on top of that, the part that for me is hardest, is that the vocabulary is completely different and cannot be guessed (it can be sort of guessed if you can write it and know the meaning of the characters properly! but you have to be quite advanced to do that) It's not like being bilingual in two European languages... cause lots of words derive from the same root, and one can attempt to speak another European language (not all, but quite a few) if they know the basics...perhaps not perfectly but at least be understood!
So for me it's quite important to try and use Japanese with my child as much as possible. I'm sure that Italian and English will be much much easier for my child to learn.

We are going to start using Skype to talk to the grandparents soon and I think that will also help Alice to hear and eventually use both Italian and Japanese more often. I think that's one fab thing about technology!

 

[Faerie]

I agree Curiosa! We try and get on skype with relatives as much as possible, so Sofia hears more Italian and Spanish.

TBH her two strongest languages will probably end up being English and French. She hears English from me, from DH and I talking and from her baby groups. She'll get French from me talking to certain friends, at creche and eventually at school.

She does have Italian cousins the same age as her who we see quite often, so hopefully she'll have incentive to use it as long as DH and her grandfather keep it up.

MIL always spoke Spanish to DH, once he went to school he stopped speaking Spanish and would respond only in Italian but he's still fluent in Spanish now.

 

[Dinoslass]

Yes, I guess the most inportant thing is to keep it up. We have all these holiday children coming over and even the ones only coming once a year in summer eventually learn dutch, but their base is a bit small. The ones who come more often speak dutch and english like it being their mother tongue!

 

[brumbar]

Hey Magic! I'm here stalking you again ! My god son is here in the UK and he struggled for a bit with both languages...it was really bad when he was 3...he was switching from Bulgarian to English and vice-versa half way through the sentence if he didn't know a particular word ...using the english word with a bulgarian ending etc.... we had real trouble understanding what he was trying to say...he just turned 5 and he's doing pretty well with both languages - even correcting his dad's english in public!!!!!

 

[curiosa]

...he was switching from Bulgarian to English and vice-versa half way through the sentence if he didn't know a particular word ...using the english word with a bulgarian ending etc....

in my family, we still do that now we're grown up - it's our secret language! (for us it's a mix of Italian/Japanese)

 

[magicvw]

Hey everyone!

I've been having a few issues which I never even thought of when I started this thread. Poppy has been assessed by her kindergarten and they have said she is "behind" because in their view she is at the 2-word stage in Bulgarian. This drives me mad - I know her Bulgarian is weak, but what's the point of assessing her progress at this stage - ? I hate the thought that her teachers there probably think she's dumb and I hope to God they don't start treating her that way. Half of me wants to take her back to the UK so that no-one thinks she's stupid, (but I never would).

So the issue is not just about how your kids' speech develops, but about how people around them react and things they say to them. For e.g., I know my LO can understand a hell of a lot more than she can say (in either language, which is normal for all kids bilingual or not). Today at the doctors, the stooooopid doc said to my face that it's not surprising that my daughter is struggling with Bulgarian since I speak it so badly!!!! (Can I just add that we had this convo in Bulgarian, not English!!) What is my daughter going to pick up from things like this? She might lose confidence in her own abilities and she might lose some respect for me, having her mum dissed right in front of her! (Sorry for the rant, I am FUMING MAD!!!) She also gets ignored a lot at kindergarten because the other kids can't understand her. I really hope it doesn't affect her social skills long term or make her feel unpopular. It's so hard being a mum!

Anyway, bit of food for thought for you.

 

[curiosa]

ouch! Sounds really horrible the way they've been acting towards you and Poppy. I know it's something we should be aware of - it really can happen anywhere in the world. A friend of mine was practically bullied into only speaking English to her son in the States because they said he speaking Japanese to him was keeping him behind in English!! I can't believe people still think this way in developed countries.
I'm not sure what to suggest. I just hope Poppy doesn't feel too left out by the other kids and isn't affected by this too much. I think she will probably catch up in no time - but they need to give her a chance!!

 

[mylittlebubs]

Our baby is bilingual too, OH speaks English and I speak Thai. but atm both of us speak English most of the time...soon i will speak Thai with him all the time.

 

[Omi]

Hiya,

i just thought id add my 2 cents/pence of whatever!

Granted i dont have any kids (yet- i live in hope) but i was raised as a bi lingual child. I also had swedish telly all through my childhood so i picked that up too. My mum is Polish and my dad is Norwegian. They both spoke polish at home in Norway as I was growing up.

Its true b-lingual children seem to be 'slower' than other children in their language abilities, usually about the age of 3. This is perfectly normal and to be expected. it is believed that parents must resist (easier said than done, i know Magic) panicking because this is a very temporary thing.

I myself have encountered 3 year olds who have spoken to me in sentences consisting of 3 different languages (luckily for me i knew them all) but comparing them to 1 language children is simply unfair. 2 to 3 times as much work goes into these children's minds and therefore it takes some time before everything falls into place.

When i studied in Poland a few years back there was a Polish/Swedish girl doing her thesis on this very subject. And as some have already pointed out, she came to the same conclusion through her research that the most important thing is to be consistent and to have faith in your children's abilities. Fact is, there really were no evidence that bi lingual lagged behind other children at later stages of development- on the contrary. So there is no reason to believe that leaving them to it to figure things out on their own is detrimental.

As far as consistency is concerned, her research showed that in the case of both parents speaking a different language, it worked best if each spoke to the child in their language. One of her case studies spoke 4 languages in the home but was divided up into lets say, spanish in the house, english in the car, french when out and about and italian with the italian parent only. Phew! But it works!

As far as for me..i used to swith all the time. I cant remember this myself though. My main problem became school. I didnt want to be different - back then Norway wasnt very multicultural! So i only spoke Norwegian. I understood all Polish spoken but never used it. This resulted in me being unable to speak Polish at all as an adult and i have spent many years since studying the language. And although i speak it now i will never have the level of vocabulary or the grasp of grammar or be confident in it had i consistently used it.

If you dont use it you lose it, i guess

Good luck everyone, its an admirable job that really sows dividens as an adult, even if your kids may be annoyed at stages, when they're young. lol!

Oh, and sorry for the essay ...

 

[magicvw]

Thanks for the essay Omi! It's really reassuring to know that everything is "normal". I have tried to do research on the internet about this and weirdly there is not much of any use, apart from the odd sentence saying that bilingual children pick up language more slowly. Being an English teacher myself I do sometimes feel that people around me expect me to teach Poppy and that I am failing somehow. If an English teacher's daughter can't speak English at 3 then she must be a crap teacher! But I know that it is better to let her learn through play - just like any other kid learns their mother tongue. I get approached from time to time by parents over here in the same boat who want to set up language lessons for their children (in English), but I find that idea bizarre.

Poppy is learning really fast at the moment and this week has started saying lots of new things

 

[Lara310809]

Good thread! We have a lot of languages in my family. My mum speaks n5 languages fluently, and she tried teaching my older brother Flemish (her first language) but since he was slow actually speaking, someone convinced her to stop trying to teach him Flemish for a month, and see if it helped his speech. But a month to a child may as well be a lifetime. By the time she started teaching him Flemish again he had forgotten it all and was only speaking English. By the time I came along, she didn't have the time to try to teach me. I'm annoyed at the person that convinced my mum to stop, because I would be bilingual if it wasn't for her, and I can't hold conversations with my family in their own language, and I should be able to.

My brother married someone from Hong Kong so when they have children, they will be taught both English and Cantonese. Her family don't speak English, so it would be the only way their children could communicate with her side of the family. I'm having a baby with a Gibraltarian man, and because we are raising our baby in Gibraltar, it will automatically learn both English and spanish, because those are both spoken widely. You learn English at school, but most people speak in Spanish because it flows off the tongue better. I don't speak much Spanish, so I would predominantly speak to the baby in English, and my husband has already said he will only speak to it in Spanish. From what I've seen here, it works without any problems. 99% of the kids here are brought up bilingually, and they're chatting like nobody's business I would also like to have my mum teach our child Flemish, but since she's living in the UK I don't think she would be able to teach it often enough, so it would probably be all forgotten.

 

[charima]

Hello ladies!

i am Mexican and my OH is technically Welsh (though he only speaks English), we plan to talk to the baby in Spanish only and my OH in English. It is very important that our baby speaks Spanish because my family can't speak English. All the research I've done says that the key is consistency, it's probably easier said than done but I really want our baby to be bilingual!

 

[Dinoslass]

I have never had much problems. My OH does speak english to them and I speak dutch, and they picked it up really quickly. Rayan knows whether it is mummy or daddy he has to speak too. It is so easy for families indeed. My family in law does not speak dutch, so they would not have been able to communicate with their nanna and granddad and all uncles and aunties if we would have done any different.