Teaching your kids your language as a minority

[moumoute]

Not sure if my title makes any sense!
I would like to move to France or England but my DH who is Swedish is worried about being the only one to speak Swedish there and not being able to teach the language to our kid -who is currently a baby.
To me, as long as he speaks Swedish the child will learn it. To him, there is no way he can carry on with Swedish alone. He would speak English to his child.
Anyone in this situation to prove us that it's possible and not such a bid deal to live abroad and have a second language that is a minority?

I know quite a few families who have raised their DC bilingual (or even tri-lingual), while living away from their home country. What's important is that the native language parent always speaks to the DC in their language, the idea being that the DC is then immersed in that language from birth, albeit not full-time.

One family with a Japanese mum and a French dad living in London raised their 3 DC speaking Japanese, French and English this way (nanny spoke English + TV/nursery/school). Family spoke French at home and DM spoke to the DC in Japanese when she was one-on-one with them.

There are support groups and online resources to help you plan and manage this as a family, but it's eminently possible if you're committed.

It’s hard work if it’s not the common language or the country language. Is he the main caregiver? Friends where it was a SAHM succeeded but several others where it was a working dad didn’t. The children have a basic understanding but are nowhere near bilingual.
Once kids are in school it’s quite hard to keep the other language alive unless it’s the mealtime, telly, siblings amongst themselves language. Speaking from experience as a working parent of school age child

It doesn't all have to be on him - what about his parents and extended family - do they Skype? Will they come and visit? Will you go and visit them and spend a week or two at a time in Sweden so you DC can be immersed in the language?

My DS has a friend who is Italian and Brazilian and lives in the UK. They spend a lot of time in the holidays (and own a holiday apartment), in Italy and Italian granny (who doesn't speak English), is often over here visiting.

What juneau said. We've done this. It helps to have both parents able to understand both languages in use. Our eldest two are effectively bilingual. My youngest can understand a lot but cant speak as by the time they came along the eldest two had stopped speaking anything other than English unless hey had to which made it hard going.

Non native English speakers speaking only English to their kids is a common thing in families we know. The kids end up with a strange accent in English and unable to speak another touché with fluency. His is a mistake in my book.

Surely this is an issue now? Where do you live? If you speak Swedish then jUst make it the default language and if you don't then why would it be different where you are from France or England? I'm confused.

I know many tri-lingual children, and a few polyglots, in similar situations. Usually, the child reads and writes the language they are resident in the best once they are at school, especially if both parents have different mother tongues to each other and the country they are resident in. It's not particularly hard though as long as you both stick to your own language until they are fluent. If you expect them to read and write fluently in all 3 languages, you have to work a lot harder ime.

Thanks for your replies! We currently live in Stockholm and I speak French to the baby. DH thinks it is easier for me to teach the kid French language while living in Sweden then the opposite for him. He thinks that Swedish language is pointless if we don't live in Sweden BUT he isn't sure he wants to live here...and so am I! @WiseDad

@Juneau thanks for your positives words. His mum can Skype and come over if we move to France or England but it won't be that often. I would def encourage us to spend holidays in Sweden. Ar least at Christmas and in the summer and hopefully more.

What is the issue? Millions of children speak a language which only one parent speaks at home. It's quite simple, it's called OPOL. I do it myself, about half the kids my children have gone to school with are bilingual from home language and perhaps a quarter are trilingual and quadrilingual, 2 home languages, a common home language, school language.

Just get your husband to do some research.

I understand the relationship between spoken and written Swedish is good so easy to learn to read and write in.

I have very good friends with kids who were schooled in French in a French environment, mum is Swedish, father English speaking pissed off and abandoned them when youngest was 2 but they've kept up with English also at home due to social media, after school in English, they are mother tongue in French, Swedish and English, with French as the strongest written language. Their Swedish remained so strong the eldest 2 are completing IB at a secondary in English and Swedish right now in Gotenburg I think, having had zero Swedish schooling before.

Why is Swedish so important if you are not living in Sweden?

1. Your children can return for IB (lycee years) and study for free, get free lunches even when at school

2. Your children can go to Swedish universities if they are Swedish nationals, never even have to have lived in Sweden before, but obviously speaking Swedish means all courses are available

3. Your children can understand Danish and speak back and understand Norwegian, linguists place these 3 languages as mutually comprehensible separated by national borders and history. This means they could easily move there if ever jobs came up.

4. Swedish has enough in common with Dutch and German that these languages become super easy to learn and a Swede can make a pretty good guess at written Dutch without any prior knowledge, just to illustrate the usefulness of a minority Germanic language.

Now try listing the disadvantages of speaking Swedish.

We live in France and have good friends whose sons are trilingual - mum German, dad English, they speak French at school. English is their minority language and they do speak it with a bit of a German tinge (accent and sometimes syntax), but it's fluent.

Not me, but my SIL is from a nordic country and speaks her native language with her DC. It works pretty well, although the eldest often 'translates' into English for the younger sibling!

It also helps that SIL's parents don't speak much English, so all Skyping and when they come to visit it's all in their native language, and the DC hear those adult conversations. And they have regular contact with their cousins, who are also bilingual.

She also reads to them and has plenty of children's books in their native language.

The eldest is only just in the first year of school, but I imagine as they get older SIL will start teaching a bit of grammar and spelling. At least there's not another script to learn. (My friend is fluent in Hindi, but can't read or write, which I think is where her parents really missed a trick.)

Additionally, I live in a country surrounded by expats in mixed-nationality relationships and their parents. English is the common language and most children learn Chinese at school. In addition many of these kids are learning one (or sometimes two) other languages from their parents. They all manage well and it's great for their developing brains.

Some take additional lessons - one of my DC's classmates went to Dutch classes to help reinforce the language spoken with her dad; a friend taught Finnish once a week to the children of Finnish expats. Others just speak their language with the kids.

I think the key though is consistency. He needs to always speak Swedish, even if your DC replies in English or French, and even if you speak to DH in English or French.

My kid speaks three languages and i know tons of others in Luxembourg who do, if your DH wants the kid to learn swedish he just needs to speak to the kid in swedish although of course your kid may favour the majority langauge when growing up it seems ridiculous for him to just stop speaking his native tongue because you move country. Check out the bilingual threads here.

And you obviously speak swedish so you could make that the family language if you move to France. Your DH is being way too negative.

I think he's right to think about it. It's hard. We're a monoglot English family living on the continent, and we work MUCH less hard on language than families with two home languages. It would require a real effort on your husband's part, and he would have to accept that the kids' Swedish will develop differently than if they were in Sweden. Doesn't mean it can't/shouldn't be done, but he's right to think it through.

There is a Swedish school in Barnes, London, and seemingly an active community.

We live in London and all my foreign friends speak to their children in their Home language. One speaks Italian and Norwegian plus English another Swedish. No one bats an eyelid and your husband should persevere.

My kids all speak English with me, they are fluent but it's not the language of their country. I have to be a bit strict and lose some of my weekend and theirs doing reading/writing activities as speaking alone is not really enough if they ever want to live and study in the UK in the future.
He will need to persevere and want to teach his child (ren) his language but many of us manage just fine.

My Swedish grandmother lived in England, she taught me a little and would often tell me off in Swedish, but my father and aunt are fluent, unfortuntatly my dad never spoke to me in Swedish as he thought it would be "confusing" so my Swedish is not fluent. One of my children has been learning for a year now and as he already speaks three other languages he picked it up really quickly. Swedish is a fairly easy language to learn in later years if you're exposed to it when you're young. So all will not be lost if he does cop out.

We live in London. DH is French Canadian and has always spoken to the DC’s in French. I’m from Belgium . I speak Dutch at home. DC’s went to an English nursery and school. DC’s are tri-lingual and can read, write and speak all three languages. English wasn’t spoken at home and even with an English nursery, English was the last language to come fluently. I’m pleased we stuck with it and gave the DC’s an important part of my and DH’s heritage.

I was raised bilingual but quickly lost proficiency in my other language when one patent decided to switch to English over concerns at my performance at school.