Non English kids

[fyimate]

Am I wrong in getting annoyed at non English parents for NOT teaching their kids English (even though they -the parent- can speak it)?
I've seen my DD confused by other kids because they dont speak English when playing with her, and then I hear the parent speaking another language to the child even though they (the parent) can speak English.
Why dont they teach their kids English?
It annoys me more because of the amount of money taxpayers have to fork out in translators which appears to be avoidable?

I think the op's kid might be preschool.

I'd hope I'd learn the local language asap as I don't think it's great to rely on kids to be your interpreter for any great length of time.

But I think the op's kid is young and referring to young friends. I doubt I'd be able to live in china and in 1 year be speaking well enough to teach my preschooler it.

If the child is only 3 or 4, they may just not be sure about which situations to use which language in. The child isn't deliberately being rude, but maybe doesn't yet understand that not everyone speaks her home language.

If the parents speak English it seems very unlikely that they're not encouraging their child to learn English too.

I am pregnant with my first child and my partner is Italian. We are going to make a real effort to speak only in Italian at home because it the best chance of our child being bi lingual. We have Italian friends who were concerns that their daughter would struggle to interact with other children, so only spoke in english to her. Now she doesn't like her grandmother because they can't communicate properly. It's a great start in life to speak 2 languages and something most english people never achieve.

FYIMATE- you are not to clever are you?

drrrr my spelling too not to!

no more vin rouge

My DD is 4, the other child looked about 4/5.

Anyway I've already said my post is wrong. I just felt the mother was putting up a barrier in talking in her own tongue rather then English because it prevented me from speaking to her (seeing as we were standing right next to eachother as our kids played)

When those of you who speak to your children in your mother tongue in order to teach them how did they react?
My DD isnt taking to the idea of Portuguese being spoken to her and insists she wont understand therefore doesnt want to learn!?

If your DP talked to your DD in Portuguese from birth, it wouldn't be strange to her now.

You seem to have "language envy" . You wish your DD were bilingual (Eng & Portuguese) but she isn't because your DP didn't speak Portuguese to her from birth. So you take that frustration out on parents at the playground who do speak their language to their children.

If you have any other explanation for the contradiction of asking your DP to talk Portuguese to your DD while getting angry at others for doing the same with their DC, I'd like to hear it.

KerryMumbles - If you actually read the thread rather than jumped in with expletives, you would realize that we are talking about children BORN in that country and hence IMMERSED in the language of said country. Not children who have MOVED to a country and refusing to learn the language.

No I just felt at the time she was being rude.
I'm totally over it now and tbh my post came out all wrong.

If my DP continues with this though will she get used to it or always meet it with protest?
I don't think my DP feels completely comfortable with it either he's been out of touch with his mother tongue since he moved here years ago.

fyimate well I did find your op really bizarre - as an english speaking mum in spain I speak english to ds almost all of the time, the odd spanish phrase might slip through when in mixed company but i make a concerted effort to then switch back to english. Rarely anything i am saying to my child is of the slightest interest to anyone else anyway and if I want to speak to them or share something i do so in our common language.

I see you´ve kind of backtracked now and actually feel like this mum was being rude to you and this seems quite common in the uk, maybe because culturally we have such little experience of bilingualism and how it works we see other speaking a different language as excluding us and pushing us away instead of realising actually it isn´t ALL ABOUT US.

I can´t remember how old you said your child is..4? I can imagine she finds it odd suddenly being spoken to in a different language but thats not to say you shouldn´t persevere. Could your dp get some cartoons, books, kids songs, stuff he could do with her that is like their special thing together? Ds has been exposed to two languages from birth so has never had a reaction its just what is normal to him. 4 is still so young (if i got the age right) and the benefits of having another language so great I do think you´d be doing her a great service to try and introduce her to your dps language. You might just need to try to be a bit creative in how you go about it and make it seem appealing and fun and not like homework!

The mum was rude for talking to her own child in her own language

hmm yeah well he has to really want to do it because otherwise its doomed before its started. Can you use the whole aspect of maintaining her relations with his family or does that not apply? I can imagine it seems weird to him, its like if after 3 years someone suggested I speak spanish to ds. I could do it but it would be strange and unnatural, logically for him it should feel natural because its his mother tongue but if its been unused for a long time and english has become his day to day language and whats more, their established common language, it will feel strange and forced.

All the same, couldn´t he find dvds of cartoons he watched as a kid, that might hook him in? Or old favourite stories?

A friend said to me the other day she didn´t know if she´d speak her mother tongue or english to her (unborn) baby as she was so out of practice with her MT that it would seem weird. And that made sense. Then I met her mum today and they both chattered away to each other in their language and I thought, well its obviously still there and comes naturally in that relationship so if she WANTS it to be her shared language with her baby it can be...its all motivation

Yeah his mum actually sent her 3 Portuguese books but he hasnt found the time yet to read them to her...disappointing because i think he could make the time...

Anyway I will have a talk to him about it and try motivate him on it.

His parents speak some English but live in Portugal and whilst my DD was keen to learn from her Nan they didnt have enough time together before she had to go back home!

This actually annoys me because I feel no one but me is making the effort...and I only speak English!

Sigh...I may need to make a new thread with a different title...

If your DH has only spoken to your DD in English up until now, it's going to be less easy for her to learn to speak Portuguese but by no means impossible. But he has to speak to her only in Portuguese. And she will understand, eventually. Just like all those children you're annoyed about will learn to speak English when they go to school. Children want to communicate and it doesn't take them long to figure out that there are two different ways of saying the same thing, honestly. Her English is probably going to be her mother tongue but it will put her at a tremendous advantage to be bilingual.

She gets frustrated that she doesnt know what he's saying, so should he translate for her and get her to say it in Portuguese? That's how we've done it otherwise she ignores him because she doesnt know what he said!

I only know people who have spoken to their DC in their mother tongue since they were born but if you imagine those children you're talking about going to school, then the teachers aren't going to be able to translate. There are other ways - showing her what he means by doing an action for example - which would mean she'd understand far more quickly. If he translates, she won't get it. I learned another language when I was five and I was just immersed in it - for my lessons, my teacher never spoke to me in my language. I never even realised she could speak it until I was a lot older! I think that's probably the best way, however frustrating it might seem at first

You've got it totally back-t-front fyimate. The children will pick up English very quickly, they don't need to be taught it at home. If anything it is better that they not be taught Englihs at home unless their parents are fluent English-speakers. The money you are worrying about is spent on the adults, not the children.

Dd has a Polish classmate who didn't speak a word of English when they began in Reception. Their family language is exclusively Polish, yet now, in Y2, he is one of the best in the class at all the English language subjects.

I know someone who has just immigrated to the UK, and their young dc didn't speak any English at all when tehy arrived. She is home-eding, so the dc don't have any total immersion in English. Nonetheless, within 6m of arriving in the UK, the eldest two (youngest is a baby) were already able to communicate clearly and simply in English.

My home language and mother tongue are not English, even though my parents speak English. I learned English at nursery and school. English-speaking friends who came to play used to pick up words of our home language. It hardly harmed them!

OP as others have said, it is definitely possible for your dd to pick up Portuguese, but your dp needs to be dedicated to it, and get comfortable with the idea. Does HE want his dd to become a Portuguese speaker? Does he understand the advantages? Does he want her to be able to speak to his family? If so, is he going to dedicate himself to speaking to her exclusively in Portuguese? He will need to be dedicated to it and to be consistent for it to work. your dd would benefit from dvds, games and books in Portuguese, playgroup with other Portuguese children, trips to Portugal...

Ok I get what you're saying, I will talk to him.
He does want her to learn and we would both actually prefer to move to Portugal because we think she'd be better off over there than here. But that's a whole other story...

Thanks for all your constructive comments, I appreciate it.

My dh's Dad is German but never spoke any German at home at all.

Dh is sadly scarily monolingual - he finds learning other languages exceptionally difficult. Its one of the reasons we went for bilingual education for our children, as dh has such a high level of regret that he never learned German as a child.

If you moved to Portugal and she was surrounded by Portuguese she would soon start to talk ONLY in Portuguese and would lose her English unless you made great efforts to ONLY EVER talk to her in English, even in the playground.

She would be at risk of limiting her English knowledge to that of the level of whatever her age is now.

She would find it very hard to communicate with family from the English side as she got older.

Your talking to her in English ALL THE TIME would be critical for her continued language development in English.

Her ability to communicate in her new country's language would rapidly develop, especially when she went to school. Within months she'll almost certainly be better at Portuguese than an adult learning it from scratch ever would be. She would never be at a disadvantage in her new language - and if you continued with her English development she would have the huge advantage of being bilingual.

Oh - that's the position of the parent of the child in the original post.