to want to drop a foreign friend?

[livingintheeast]

Firstly let me get one thing straight - I am not a rascist and I have a foreign mother (a genuine one not one of those that people sometimes invent just to prove how PC they are). It is a real bugbear of mine that my foreign friend will constantly talk to her lo in their mother tongue. They are both perfectly capable of speaking english - the mother talks to me/my lo in english and the lo talks to me/my lo in english. Personally I find it blooming rude and so irriatating that I'm not sure I want to be around them much at all. Even my lo has resorted to asking me (in her 2.5 year old way) what they are saying - and I don't have a clue! I know my friend wants her lo (also 2.5) to know her mother tongue but surely on a playdate, with english people etc it's just common courtesy to speak in english. AIBU?

Cory - I accept that all of us only speak of our own experience but I must say my experience from seeing friends struggle with maintaining minority language mirrors more what notquint says (my daughter is only 2 so I can't speak of long-term retention yet). I don't know whether your partner speaks the same language you do or if you've got a bilingual household. I believe it's easier to maintain the minority language if both parents speak it. I'm the only one speaking Estonian to my daughter and I can see the decline in her vocabulary. Lots of words that used to be Estonian seem to be overtaken by the English equivalents. My goal now is to maintain comprehension, I've given up any hope of her attaining fluency or native pronunciation skills. Maybe she doesn't have the talent for languages that your kids seem to have but I have to work with what she's been given and OPOL is alive and well in our house.

Sorry Cory, for not adhering to your communication guidelines.

Nobody is claiming to post from the perspective of an expert on bilingualism (aside from that poster who could read secondary literature by the age of 3 of course), but from their own experience.

YANBU It's rude.

cory learning languages is soo much more complex than learning to use the loo or a spoon.

and languages have to be 'active' to be able to use them. you need to hear the language as well as speak it. my russian is non-existent despite learning it for years in school. I can't even count to ten anymore. just because I don't use it and am not exposed to it.

I agree with the fact that it can be very difficult to maintain bilingualism.

And that the OPOL gives a structure that helps in that matter.

I also think that it depends a lot on the child, the structure of the family and how much time the dcs can spend in the other country.
I know dc1 would have spoken only english if I had been less careful/stubborn (even though now that he is 10yo he is very proud of his dual heritage).
dc2 on the other side spoke mainly the minority language, incl with dc1, for a very long time.
We rarely go back to my country so I am the only source for the minority language.

I think it can be very hard for children (and adults!) to talk about their day in a different language. The words don't come as easily.
The OPOL means that it is 'imposed upon' both the dcs and the parents to use that language and to make the extra effort. It gives structure and a reference which means that the minority language is protected.

Obviously, this can be achieved in other ways but I think it can be quite often 'the easy way' to do it. Which is perhaps the reason why it does generally work better as a method?

I think that what cory says is that it is possible to raise a bilingual child wo using the OPOL.
And that just as much there is never just one method to parent a child then there isn't just one method to raise a bilingual child.

I agree with what Bleeping said, about flexibility being important. I understand OPOL works for lots of people but like Cory, I don't quite get why so many people think it's the only way. I know a lot of people who are bilingual and I don't think any of them were raised with OPOL.

We are not using OPOL and I'm not worried about it.

OP, I don't think you should let it bother you so much, but at the same time I can see how it could be frustrating.

Personally, I think it makes perfect sense to say that if you stop using mother tongue/minority language with your child, you can forget about bilingual language acquisition. I dont understand why I cant say that. Is the baby/toddler going to continue learning the minority language on its own?

But I am not going to argue with Cory, so lets leave it at that.

I think that you can be much more flexible when the dcs are older than when they are little and learning the language/sounds.

My approach has certainly being to be very inflexible when they were little and more flexible now that they are older.

I have the same situation with a quite a few of my good friends, but tbh it hasn't occurred to me to be bothered.

One friend is French and I can understand most of what she says from my schoolgirl French, it's not that interesting. We spend most of the time with the adults talking to each other in English.

Apologies if I've missed this upthread, but on the playdates, does she spend a lot of time talking to her DC? When you'd rather be chatting and the DC entertaining themselves a bit? Is it a difference in parenting style rather than about language use? Or a difference in what you expect from a play date. I expect adult company and for the children not to kill themselves. I get a tiny bit bored if I'm with a parent whose a bit more "helicopter" attentive than me. I'd prefer to let them get on with it unless something looks dangerous or aggressive.

Do your DC talk to her DC yet? Do they communicate in English? Or her home language? Do they get on?

fridge I was getting quite tired of this thread....didn't know why I continuing to read ...and then, your gem about being able to read secondary level by 3 years old has really cheered me up!

op I get what you are saying.

My sister has bilingual children, she is English but talks to them in her adopted language. So, even when we are together, she will talk to them in that language.

I don't like it either, the children can speak English so...

"Quint", you didn't just say "this was my experience"; you told another poster that the moment you address your lo in the other language you can kiss goodbye to the idea of bilingualism. Earlier on the thread we had a poster who worried that her approach would be messing with her lo's brain. The answer is, we don't know that. What we do know is that bilingualism is common in many parts of the world (India, many parts of Africa) and clearly can be achieved in many different ways.

I have read a fair bit about bilingualism as I am writing on historical bilingualism and code-switching and I have not been able to locate a single study that actually goes through a large sample of children brought up by different methods and analyses the differences in their language development. All the well known studies are of single families and the conclusions boil down "this worked for us"- which is hardly proof of how something different would have worked out.

riksti, we are kind of a bilingual household: dh understands Swedish very well but speaks it badly (poor grammar and dreadful pronunciation); dc both have native-like competence, I am the native speaker of Swedish but also teach in the English department of my local (English) university, so have always regarded myself as the person responsible for dc's English literacy.

I think OPOL is an excellent method. It has worked for many many families. But that is a long way from saying "if you don't follow this method you can forget about bilingualism".

What I've always wondered about strict OPOL is, what happens in the next generation? The whole concept rests on the idea that each family member has his or her own mother tongue and that the only natural way is to speak that mother tongue to your baby. Yet the proposed goal is to bring up an individual who is a balanced bilingual and hence has no one mother tongue- so what does that person do to his or her baby? Is it ok for him or her to use both languages? And if it's ok and not unnatural/confusing for my dd to do this, why not for me? Will her babies be brighter than mine? Or does she just have to decide that one of the two languages is her mother tongue and the other isn't?

Feminine does it mean that your dsis children aren't bilingual? Why would she not speak english to them?

escape no they are able to speak both languages.

Obviously, they are stronger in the native tongue of the country in which they live though.

I don't know why she does it. There is no reason I can think of.

I remember when they were little she would only speak to them in her 'learnt' language ( she is totally fluent) My BIL is also totally fluent in English despite it not being his mother tongue...Guess the kids just picked it up as they went along.

My cousins are bilingual, but speak a '1970's' version of English as that is when my Uncle emigrated to Switzerland!

cory that's a very good question re the second generation.
My guess is that these children will use the language they feel the most comfortable with (In my case, I am expecting my dcs to speak english tbh. because even though they are related to be also from another country, the feeling of being english is stronger, even if slightly so for dc1).
Or they will decide that their partner is using english/minority language so they will chose the speak the other language to them to give their own dcs the privilege to be bilingual too.

But more than the issue of speaking your mother tongue, I think the OPOL is about speaking consistently one language rather than mixing up.

feminine who spoke to them in english then? Both of their parents?

Very interesting because for me one of the reason I did not want to speak english to the dcs is because my pronunciation isn't perfect and I didn't want them to learn to speak that way will gloss over the fact that dc2 DID learn english with my own accent and that it took him time to learn to speak english with the 'correct' accent

I'm a native English speaker, living in France with a French DH. I work FT, so my DC's access to English is limited and I try to make the most of any opportunity I get to speak English to them.

DS2 (3) is not, from all the evidence available, a particularly sensitive child.
DS1 (6) is.

However, when I speak French to them in order to be polite to my MIL, who has complained that she doesn't know what I'm saying to them, DS2 gets very cross and tells me to stop speaking French, because "Mummy speaks English."

He knows damn well I speak French, he hears me speaking it every day to DH and everyone around us except my DC. But he is adamant that that is not our language.

DS1 couldn't give a stuff.

I think it's because the 3yr old is still sorting it all out in his head, and doesn't like confusion, whereas the 6yr old has passed that stage.

Fortunately, my friends here are all fine with me speaking my mother tongue to my DC. If they weren't, I hope they'd find a tactful way to help us solve the issue.

cory I wonder that too. especially as my dc are biligual...

escape both of them do.

But I do find it strange that my sister speaks more to them in a language that is not her mother tongue.

I suppose my BIL enjoys speaking English and it balances it out. :)

I actually don't think you need to worry too much, from watching my sister's family, as long as both languages are used enough the children do pick it up~ very well. Fluent actually.

Oh, and even though my sister is fluent, she obviously has an accent as she went to live abroad at 21.

The children don't in their mother tongue , but do in English!

I thought it was quite obvious that I was speaking from my own experience and not an expert perspective, given that I was referring to my own children and our experiences throughout my post.

Anyway, I have asked mnhq to delete my post, seeing it has caused such contention.

YABtotallyU

have you never heard of "one parent one language"? that is the recommended route for mulitlingual children

it would be rude for adults to deliberately not speak English on front of you, but you are just being ignorant by expecting this friend to derail her OPOL practice just because you don't understand it!

so IMO you SHOULD dump her, for her sake, you are obviously totally uninterested in her if you don't understand what she's doing and why

DS has friends whose parents practice OPOL, I like that he gets to hear it!