Mumsnet Talk

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Hello Pitchounette,

I don't have any knowledge about speech development etc but what I did was that I decided to teach my children to read and write the minority language first, on the basis that I want them to associate these fun activities with my language before we get taken over by English when they go to school ... So far we have no problems. << fingers crossed >> But the kids have been going to nursery part-time ever since they were small. I don't know the situation with your DS2?

Sorry can't answer your questions. Don't expect there is a set answer though, do you think?

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Hi Pitch- I read this yesterday and bookmarked it....

I'm no expert either, but am in the same-ish situation....dd is bilingual Italian-English and we are in Italy. We do OPOL at home, and as I've been a SAHM till recently, her main language has been English....although obviously her Italian has always been fairly strong as dp and all his family speak Italian and she has done 3 yrs of Italian nursery. I'd still say Italian is her minority lg though, at the moment at least.

I've been doing phonicky reading stuff with her for a while (also thanks to Moondog's suggestion, we use Headsprout) I have left Italian reading to school- dd has been in first year of primary since September and has amazed me by now being able to read fluently.....(more so than in English) I'm putting this down less to actual hardwiring reading skills between the 2 lgs and more to the plain and simple fact that Italian is a much easier lg to read, as there is only one way of pronouncing the written letters by and large, so with her basic phonic background in English, she took to the Italian like the proverbial duck to water.


Haven't seen Moondog around for a while.

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I reckon so.....more or less.
I'm still obviously in the same experimental stage as you, but thinking about dd's nursery teacher who adopted 3 children from Colombia 2 yrs ago, they arrived with no Italian and were so fluent they had lost their Spanish by the end of their first year (but that may have more to do with their not being brought up in a bilingual household, but simply changing L1 and also because Spanish and Italian are similar)

I know what you mean about the pronouncing things- I have to do the homework supervision because there is so much of it we couldn't possibly wait till dp gets home at night, and I'm v conscious of almost "over pronouncing" my "r" etc to make it sound more Italian than I ever really will!

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