Moving back to the UK - how to keep our daughters 2nd language?

[sel2223]

Currently living overseas in my husbands country with my husband and our 4 year old DD1. We've lived here all her life and she is completely fluent in both English and my husbands language.

Where we currently live, English is very widely spoken and my husband is fluent so we tend to speak 99% English at home. My language skills are basic to moderate at best, certainly not fluent, and it's more often my daughter correcting me now than me teaching her anything.

The only reason my daughter can speak her second language is because she attends a local nursery full time where the only language spoken is my husbands. We don't live near his family and she maybe facetimes with them twice a month, max. She'll also have the odd conversation when meeting people out and about or playing with other kids in the park etc but her preferred language is definitely English.

We are all moving to the UK in the next 6 weeks and already have a place for DD1 in a British school.

My question is how do I keep up with her second language as I really do not want her to lose this skill? I've asked my husband to make sure he speaks to her in his language but I know he'll revert to English every single time unless prompted. What else can I be doing? DD1 only wants to watch tv in English, her tablet is set to English, she only wants English bedtime stories etc and i know changes to these will come with a battle. Her second language isn't a common one in the UK and not taught in schools- maybe a private tutor is the way to go just to keep up the conversions?

I'm also pregnant with DD2 and wondering where to begin to teach her the second language when she won't be living there and immersed in it like DD1 was?

It seems to be far more important to me to embrace the culture and language of their father and that half of their family than it is to their father who is more happy that they will grow up in the UK and just sees English as the priority for their future.

Any advice will be much appreciated, thank you.

Not to be a downer, but this is going to be tough; it doesn't sound like your husband is terribly organized or committed, and if he can't really be bothered using his own language with his daughter now, he's likely to use it less and less as time goes on and she orients more towards English. You may have to a) push this more from your own efforts (trips to the other language country, Zoom with relatives, online class) and b) accept that she may end up only passively bilingual, which is still far better than nothing; she will be in a good position to polish her skills later on when she becomes more interested in her "other" identity as a teen or young adult.

No, you're not a downer, I completely agree with what you're saying.

I do not have much faith that DH will do this very often off his own bat (if at all!) although he will when I push him or remind him.
It will come down to me and just giving her as much exposure to it as possible.

Passively bilingual would be fine for now and better than losing it all together. Like you said, she can then make a decision later if she wants to polish up those skills when she's older

I am an immigrant (but from an English speaking country) and the majority of our close friends are also immigrants. We have seen a variety of ways our friends have tried to maintain a second language for their English speaking children. The only children we know who are truly bilingual are those whose families prioritised it. One family only speaks the second language in the home or to each other. One does one parent one language (which is quite hard for my friend who is the mum and doesn't speak the language fluently so is often left out). M

Another child I know spends every single school holiday in Poland with his grandparents - all summer, every Christmas and Easter. He has several chats with them each week on FaceTime as well.

It depends a lot on the actual language - the families above are maintaining Hebrew and Swedish so they couldn't get that elsewhere. If it was Spanish or French or Polish or Arabic there are local groups and library meet ups and such that are lovely, but if it's a less common language it is entirely going to come from the home.

It's a tremendous amount of work and most of the children pushed back at some point - and they did take longer learning to read as they learned both at once. But now they are all truly bilingual so it's just maintenance and being super committed.

My friends who - for a variety of reasons - couldn't maintain this level of focus and intensity now have English speaking children who struggle to communicate with their extended family. Not ideal but also really common as it's really hard to keep up the work with jobs, clubs, play dates etc.

I'm another who says this isn't going to work without OPOL. We''ve done OPOL with ours (mine, English, being the minority language - dh and I speak in his language, which I am near-native level in, at home) and I've been absolutely strict in only ever speaking English to the dc, even in company (repeating things in the other language where needed/appropriate). The dc are all completely bilingual, English is their co-first language but it's not their 'native' language - you need the whole surrounding environment for that. Your dd has a great foundation in the years she's spent in the other country and I'm afraid I'd consider it very poor parenting on your dh's part not to pull his finger out and keep that going for her. When my first was born I'd been functioning almost exclusively in the other language for a while - I had quite difficult associations with English due to difficult family stuff -. but I knew I would have to revert to English if I wanted the dc to be bilingual. So I did, and I'm very glad I did. I think IIWY I'd be putting it to my dh that this is one of the 'sacrifices' one makes as a parent.

I’m not gonna lie. This is a hard one.

Not least because your husband doesn’t seem on board since he reverts to English. That tells me his heart isn’t into it. Why are you pushing it, instead of him?

I don’t believe I’ve seen the language mentioned, but some groups produce more media than others; so if it’s something like Japanese or Korean, there will be plenty of interesting media for them to watch (and not fake stuff like Harry Potter in Polish, for example).

Will your husband have a group of co-ethnics he will be socializing with? That would be the most helpful tbh, then she has a group she can code-switch to, instead of ‘performing‘ for her family. It’s gonna even be harder as she’s gonna be speaking in English to her sibling so building a community of speakers of that language will be essential.

This was me and my brother.

I'm afraid it's extremely difficult to force the situation. Your daughter will probably retain the chatting capability to an extent, but your new baby is going to be difficult.

I'm the second baby and although I always understood everything, it wasn't until much much later (and an alevel and uni degree that I was really able to speak it properly.

We also refused to speak the language to anyone who also spoke English. To this day my mum speaks her language and I answer in English.

This is how I was brought up, my mother French father English. Though they both had basic understanding of Italian as well as being fluent in each other’s language. My dad said it found it hard speaking French but worked at it as we were growing up and became fluent by the time I was born (3rd child). I went to an Italian speaking school, where the pupils mostly spoke English, but were also taught French and Italian, by the time I left at 18 I was fluent in all three languages. Unfortunately both parents are now gone and my first language is English. My French is still there but Italian is bad I understand and speak basic but better at reading/written in both languages.

I wish I had taught my children more, I raised them with both French and English, but my husband didn’t like it, and made no effort to learn, when he wasn’t home we spoke mostly French in the house until they left home, their French like mine is conversational but no written or reading.

the only way for them to learn is for you to learn too, and you need to speak it all the time at home, with English being out the house basically how she is now with her father’s language at school.

the draw back to learning more than one language is that you can never be perfect in them all. My English is fluent though I have a better understanding in reading I have problems pronouncing some words though I know the meaning when written down.

To this day my mum speaks her language and I answer in English

People forget how unnatural it can be to speak a different language to someone you’ve already coded as ‘speaker of X’ in your mind. For little kids this can actually be somewhat unnerving. Possibly this is why the husband is resisting speaking to his daughter in the second language—it feels unnatural to him for whatever reason

It's interesting you mention this actually as DD1 has always resisted speaking to me in her second language.
It's like she just instantly had an inner sense of who was English and who wasn't and she still gets it now..... she just seems to know which language to speak to someone in before they've even open their mouths.

Even though DH prefers to speak in English, they can still have full conversations in his native language whereas I will speak to her in that language and either get really simple responses or she'll reply to me in English.

I remember last year worrying she couldn't understand anything at nursery and wasn't picking up the language etc as I'd never heard her utter a single word and she would look at me blankly if I tried. DH said she was fine but I didn't believe him then I got sent a video of her having a full blown conversation and was absolutely gobsmacked.

lol sounds like an excuse. It’s actually quite common in chinese, african and indian cultures to speak multiple languages with the same people. I DC speak 7 languages fluently between them and have progressed to study 2 at gcse + English.

We went the opposite way - so UK to my European country.

We speak English at home, DD is fluent in both languages now at the age of seven. For a long time she actually had a preference for English and her Dutch was behind, but she has caught up.

It's a lot of effort, we expose her to English at every opportunity. She has a library worthy amount of English books at home (honestly, she has so many books), my DH reads to her every other day in English, she watches a lot of cartoons, movies and tv in English. We have workbooks as well, those Biff, Chip and Kipper ones and some books from a phonics scheme. She likes engaging with those. We have workbooks as well, those Biff, Chip and Kipper ones. She likes doing those. She is a very good English reader, but her spelling skills are behind her English peers (I suspect, I am not a teacher).

It has totally been worth it for us. DD always gets praise for her language skills.

Thank you all for the replies. It's especially interesting to those who have experience of this themselves either as a parent or child.

Sorry if it comes across that I'm trying to 'push this' as someone commented. I certainly don't want to push anything and it absolutely won't be the end of the world if DD1 doesn't keep the language. I'd just like to give her the best chance I can so she doesn't ask me later why I didn't and I'd also love for her to be able to maintain her relationships with that side of her family.

With regards to DH, I hear you all! It's incredibly frustrating.

I think it's going to depend on the language how easy it'll be. Around me there are lots of resources for Spanish, French, German, a few for Mandarin. But none for Turkish, so would really put the onus on you and your DH to make that the language spoken at home and encourage both of your children to actively speak it in order to keep it going.

@CocoDC I dont quite agree there.
I think learning many languages isn’t an issue as such. Most people in the world are bilingual at least anyway.

But it’s true that when you’ve learnt something in one language, it’s hard to express it in another. There are things I’ve learnt in English only. I struggle to explain them in my mother tongue. I can but I’m basically translating word for word and sometimes can’t find the right expression/word anyway.

Plus when you stop using your mother tongue, you forget. It doesn’t come naturally. Some expressions jus5 can’t be translated. After 25 years in the U.K., I know the reason I still speak my native language is because i used it with my dcs.

I'd just like to give her the best chance I can so she doesn't ask me later why I didn't and I'd also love for her to be able to maintain her relationships with that side of her family.

Tbh that’s a question that should be directed to their father… its his language and his family afterall….
And I agree with you re contact with his side of the family. I know my dcs would have struggled to have a relationship with my parents wo being bilingual.

Tbh that’s a question that should be directed to their father… its his language and his family afterall….

Oh, I know, and I completely agree.
We've had many, many conversations about this and I'm still hopeful DH will step up when it comes to this but I'm preparing myself for what else I can do if he doesn't.

I lived in France for a couple of years as a child. When we came back to the uk we had a rule that on Sundays we only spoke French. My parents also hired a teacher to give us French reading and writing lessons once a week. 50+ years later I can still understand and read French but don't speak it fluently.

I feel for you OP. My partner is not English. He speaks to the children exclusively in his language but doesn't expect them to respond in kind and won't push it. I've explained they won't do it without encouragement or a 'need' and he says that's their choice. They're 5&3! Hardly old enough to realise the long term benefits of speaking two languages. But as others have said it's not my language, not my culture, not my thing really. Can only encourage so much and after that it's up to him and for him to answer any questions later down the line.

Will say that it makes a real difference when I speak the language too. So I try to do this at home as much as possible which encourages the children to try too. Though to be honest this is still limiting as the conversation of the home is rather repetitive in nature. You don't cover every topic with your parents that you would at work or with friends. But it's something.

Finding tv programs which are native to the country/language that you are in may be a good start. Once she's a bit hooked she'll be away. Even if they have a dubbed version she a) doesn't need to know and b) it will probably be inferior.

I'd much rather watch Scandi drama with subtitles than dubbed. I don't know why. I found Borgen dubbed into English on Netflix and it just sounded all wrong in an American accent :) .

He may surprise you. His ambivalence may be less when he is actually away from his home country. Your daughter is also older so it's easier for her to sustain conversations with grandparents on FT so that gets easier too.

lol sounds like an excuse. It’s actually quite common in chinese, african and indian cultures to speak multiple languages with the same people

Not in my experience. Multilingual families will tend to use a mixture of home language with street language (assuming their home language is different to the street language) but it’s actually very true people tend to associate certain languages with certain people or groups and will be resistant to change in that status quo.

And this phenomenon you speak of is definitely NOT a thing in Mainland China. Are you Singaporean?

It’s also a reason why weekend Chinese school is so popular among Chinese expats in the US. If they did not the language would quickly vanish as siblings tend to speak English to each other and this is reinforced with parents (eg only speaking back in English even if the parent requests them to use Chinese). Honestly a whole community is required, with a sort of ‘spirit’ being in the original language

I'll also add that you do have to force it with children, worrying that 'they'll grow to hate it' just isn't an option if you actually want them to speak.

I'm living in a country where the local language is less used in favour of English, and the parents that adopt this attitude 'oh I don't want him to hate it' or 'he only wants to watch English tv and I can't force him' have the kids that don't speak the local language because the older they get the
'Harder' it gets .

You have to make it a priority, and like yourself I'm not a native speaker and in fact am only a recent learner so the scope of my conversation is limited, so it's hard.

In my experience of 3DC now AC. Children love watching passively TV. In their day it was videos which would now be DVDs or the Web, from a very young age. I know you will be against devices but they are drawn to watching whatever the language if caught at a young age. My rule was if they wanted to watch it was in the second language no choice so they accepted it.