Bilingual family chat thread

[teafortwo]

I come from a very mono-linguistic background. All my family and extended family speak the same language and being able to speak another language was seen as something rather nice but not really necessary for life. A bit grammar "Ooooh aaaarrr - d'jya know 'e gows to Grammar school yeeeaah! 'e even tawks French, my God!" I suppose.

My family are lovely and deep thinking clever people who don't talk like that - but it is just to show you in a sentence what I mean!

So... it is intensely fascinating and a great challenge to find myself bringing up a bilingual daughter.

I am a bit very addicted to reading any articles or books on bilingualism and am keen to know people in real life who are also bringing up bilingual children. Actually most of my friends children speak two languages - Some Moldavian friends of mine gasped at the idea that I only speak English fluently... "Just English? But how do you live?!?" They asked - as if I had announced I never drink water.

I thought - it might be fun to have a kind of Mumsnet bilingual chat thread where we can talk about the day to day highs, the lows, the funny bits and the sad bits of having a bilingual family and swap advice, ideas, theories, reading material (I am after a good summer read) and anything-else it would be useful to pool.

So.... .... what do you think?

Pitchounette I'm at home with DD 3 days a week and in the weekends. The other two days shes at a (Dutch speaking) nursery. From December she'll be going down to just one nursery day though.

We hardly ever go back to the UK, DD has been once for two weeks... DM visits for a week two or three times a year and DB a bit more often.

I definitely need more English 'material' I'll see what I can arrange.

norctasticninja I too think people should speak their native language to my dcs. I'm forever telling my aunties at home to speak Dutch to them. Even after 7 years of bilingualism, they are still that the dcs know how to speak Dutch. Sometimes I feel like I'm banging my head against a brick wall with them. It's not as if bilingualism is something unusual in Belgium

romana I'm equally impressed by your trilingual family. It's great if you get to do it though.

I'm pleased that my boys are getting to learn lots of languages with not much effort

It's easier for us as we can all speak all the languages so jumping from one to another doesn't exclude anyone.

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Re: reading/writing in the minority language. I had decided to let ds learn to read and write in English first as that's the most difficult language to get the hang of and do Dutch when he's a little older. To my biggest surprise and delight of course I discovered this summer that he can read Dutch with a little help. Hopefully the writing will follow on from that over the years.

I like the suggestion of a magazine subscription. I might do that for my dcs. Maybe a good b'day present as their b'days are just before christmas.

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Is there anyone like us where the home language and school language are completely different? Would like to know your experiences because ours is completely thrown by DD having severe language disorder. Now watching my two-year-old, would like to know how it's SUPPOSED to happen. He goes to French halte-garderie (nursery) 1.5 days per week. Vocabulary mainly in English but plainly understands French. Guess he won't really start speaking it until school. Huge irony for us is that DH and I are both multilingual, studied modern languages. I grew up in a family where everyone spoke French or German to some extent, and so to see DD struggle is quite sad as we thought we were doing her a favour, moving abroad when she was a baby!

Brioche - I speak Chinese to my children at home and school language is English. So far no problems. DS1 is in school now and DS2 is in nursery for school hours. They speak both languages, DS2 mixing more than DS1. At various points one language would be dominant, but it changes all the time. They never speak the "wrong" language to people who don't understand it though. I don't know much about language acquisition, though I thought that language disorder doesn't have much to do with multilingualism?

Today DS2 spotted a Chinese word he knows in nursery, on one of those posters with greetings in different languages. >

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Hi everyone! I've just found this thread, will probably read all of it when I have more time...

I'm swedish, DH is american and we live outside London. DD is 16 months and so far she is doing really well with her bilinguality. But I'm worried that it will be more difficult later on, when she'll be more influenced by the outside (english) world... (?) We go to Sweden quite often though so that's good.

Anyone read any good books about bilinguality? I've read Raising a Bilingual Child by Barbara Pearson, it's helpful but perhaps a bit too scientific.

One more question, does anyone talk your minority language when with english people? I feel almost a bit rude doing this but I feel even weirder suddenly talking to DD in english which I never normally do.

Sorry, to clarify, DD's language disorder has nothing to do with being bilingual. She is diagnosed with "Trouble specifique de Langage" which I think more or less corresponds to Severe Language Impairment in English. It's a neurodevelopmental delay. Basically she has severe problems with language acquisition, and on top of this we have complicated matters by moving to France where she has to learn a new language as well. It used to be that kids like DD were discouraged from being bilingual but more forward-thinking therapists are now saying that it's not a bad thing after all (i.e. that these kids will learn both langs but will always have problems in both). They've done studies in India and hispanic kids in US, for example.
DS is not affected, speaks fine, but so far mainly English (he's 26 months). Looking forward to see how he progresses when he starts school. Was so happy to bring up my kids bilingual (I speak several languages but didn't start until I was older) and it was a bit of a shock to discover that one of them will probably NEVER speak "correctly".

Annamama, I usually find I speak both langs when surrounded by French people - i.e. speak to my kids in English, but then repeat in French so that others can follow the conversation. Seems a bit rude otherwise...but yes, very odd speaking the majority language to your DC (but you'll find you do it more and more when they start school because that will be a whole area of their life that is carried out in the majority language).

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Oh, how did I miss this thread? May I join in? I have not read the whole thread (for some reason MN is all in bold today which is rather hard on the eyes)

I am Scottish, met DH in Germany and lived there for 16 years, gave birth to DD and DS there then moved to Geneva last year so we are now heading towards trilingualism.

The DC are in local school so completely immersed in French, while I am struggling along in the weird expat bubble that makes Geneva so different to anywhere else I have lived.

can i join too!! (not stalking you mme lindt - honest!)

I'm also scottish , DH german - we moved to germany 6 months ago with our 3 dc (8, 5, 3).

Oldest child (dd) really good with speaking, reading, writing both languages but only really speaking english at home - dh works long hours but she does speak to him in german when he gets home.

Its my 2 ds's who need to improve their german - they're both at kindergarten every day for 4 hours and bless them they love to speak german but ds1 should go to school next year so i feel he's got a lot of german to learn before them!

someone on a different thread suggested we should speak german at home to help us all out (my german needs a lot of work too) but i feel i would be a traitor to my english language - surely they need to keep that up too?

Canella
Keep speaking English with them at home. They are in a German environment and will hear enough German.

My DD started school here in Geneva without speaking any French and is doing well.

Why is this thread all in bold type? Is it just me? None of the ohter threads are.

thats what i need to hear mme lindt!! i make sure they spend time most afternoons with german friends in the village and they watch german tv! i think the english we speak is essential to keep that up!

no idea why it is in bold - it really hard on the eye!

Ouch!!! This bold is really overwhelming!!!

DD's English teacher at school has a name with 'th' in - much to my delight dd pronounces it a little exaggerated but I'd say pretty well!!!

canella - I think you really need to speak English with your children. They are getting German everywhere but you will be their main English influence. A friend of mine thought her son's French was poor so stopped speaking to him in English. She only speaks to him in French now and he as a result only speaks French which is a big shame.

The headteacher at our local school told us we should do the same when I visited and asked her for advice on scaffolding dd's development in English and French when she starts school. Us speaking English at home was viewed as a disadvantage in terms of her education and she explained we should use French as much as possible in our family home. Hense the reason dd attends a bilingual school - where the teachers think a bit more like me, and view bilingualism as a massive advantage and English as something to be cherished in our family unit!

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whey hey its not in bold!

thanks for your advice about speaking english - will carry it on then!!

dd had her first english lesson at school yesterday!! she went to the teacher at the beginning of the class and explained that she had only come from the UK 6 months ago and her English was probably better than her German and what should she do in the lesson! the teacher said "well you can just correct any mistakes i make then!!!!"

how's that for trying to let her get the most out the lesson!! so dd spent 45 mins saying with the rest of the class "my name is ...." "whats your name?" any ideas as to how we approach this - thought she could have taken some work in with her or done some german work at that time?

My DH went through this when he was a boy too. There was an airport near his school so he used to sit next to the window in English and used the time to look out for planes.

Thank goodness he found a passion for planes - Otherwise it sounds like quite a painfully boring experience to me!!!!

How old is your dd? Just to give me an idea what her level is.

What about starting off by suggesting dd uses the time to read in English - get some heavy weight authors in to make the case particularly strong - someone everyone knows.

Now... Slowly slowly catch the monkey she can eventually use the time to do projects in English lit and lang too.

I would suggest finding a good English teacher for home and your DD can then use the class time to do her homework for her English teacher.

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she's 8 - she's just gone into the 3rd class here but would be in Y4 in the UK.

She'll be having english twice a week - each class is 45 mins.

She's an amzing reader - she devours books at home - she got the malory towers set for her birthday and had read them all in 10 days! think even if she took those books in or some factual books then it would be better than repeating "my name is .."

I am friendly with another english speaking family who's kids will also go to that school - so thats 7 kids between the 2 of us over the next 6 years who'll all have this problem (the age range is 8 - few months) so surely the school need to address it. Cant get hold of the headteacher to speak about it - will keep trying!

its me that needs english lesssons!!!
that should have read "whose kids"

its me that needs english lesssons!!!
that should have read "whose kids"