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?

This is something I'm already worrying about - even though my daughter is 18 months old ...

Obsessive? Me? Never!

We are going to have this problem next year when DD starts German lessons at school. I don't know what they will do with her. tbh, I think that it will be good for them to have an easy class where she does not have to do much work.

If the teacher is ok with it I might give her a book to read, but she might just like to join in and "help" the teacher.

It's very unlikely there will be Chinese lessons in our school, so we are not going to have that problem. One thing less to worry about.

When I was at secondary school, there weren't Chinese lessons (although I DO know a few schools in the UK that do chinese - DH's old 6th form does, for starters) but there were several children whose parents were from HK, who all did Cantonese GCSE...
We've been lucky. Most people we encounter are positive about bilingualism. DD's teacher this year not so much but I think she hasn't really grasped the extent of DD's language disability yet - i.e. she seems to think it's just French DD struggles with because she (the teacher) doesn't speak enough English to realise how behind DD's English is! However, there are 5 bilingual kids in DD's class - English, Hungarian, German, Polish and Dutch, so DD hardly stands out for speaking more than one language!
Unfortunately DD would never be accepted in bilingual school because she doesn't speak her native language well enough!

so my FIL spoke to the english teacher for me (my german is poor but i suppose i could have spoke to him in english!)

plan is for dd to do a project in the english class but he hasnt sorted it out yet so for the meantime she's going to read a book at the next few lessons! think he just hadnt realised how good dd's english was! we live in rural germany - i'm sure there's not that many bilingual kids coming through the school!

Canella - FANTASTIC news!!!

Today I met dd's English teacher at her bilingul school for the first time. She told me it was a big day for dd because it is the first time she has spoken English at school....(which is her strongest language???)

"REALLY???" I squalked "It has taken two weeks for her to speak to you in English???" Then without thinking I turned to dd and giggled "You really are one daft banana!!!"

The teacher suddenly realised the level of English dd is used to on a daily basis and we all had a really big belly laugh!!!

... but I do wonder if she is pretending to be not too strong in English to 'fit in' ...

T4T
Bless! I love that, "a daft banana" and am going to adopt it for my DC.

DD and DS were waiting on my finishing my shower/hairdrying last night for me to read their story. DD got fed up waiting and decided to read DS's story to him.

I have never heard her read before, not a book, in any language. This book was in English, up to a year ago her second, not quite so fluent language.

She just took off, and read. Reasonably fluently. I was so amazed.

When DH came home, I said, "DD can read" and he answered "when did she learn to do that?"

Hi. Haven't had a moment to post recently. Feel great sympathy for rural German teachers who are not used to bilingual children.

I teach in a primary school and am always trying to include the French I hear at home in my classes. I have just discovered that I have a French girl in my year 1 class. Luckily she is very shy and not inclined to shout out and correct me if I make a mistake but her father came to me last week to say that he would like to come into class and 'observe how I teacher French and could he just drop in any time?' I am amazed that he didn't hear me inwardly screaming NO NO NO NO NO and NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO (as I We compromised on NOT DROPPING IN. Please, don't ever do it to a poor language teacher who has not had time to brush up their irregular verbs.

DD is being happily bilingual, constantly making statements like 'Je veux etre avec you.', which drives DH mad but I am sure that will gradually sort itself out. More worrying to her is the fact that she has been asked to use the girls' toilet at nursery when she is Bambi who is obviously a boy.

you should have seized that dad and not let go of him. I'd have ensnared him into coming and singing French songs with the dc. Every day even. LOL at can I just drop in any time?

he he he

That's hilarious teafortwo, I'm also calling dd a daft banana from now on. I really like that too ML

Hello again, I almost forgot about this thread as I've been obsessing about ante-natal testing etc... another bilingual child due in March

I've now read the whole thread from the beginning! One of the many helpful things I read was this from Belgianchocolates:

"I used to speak purely Dutch to the dcs, but now they are a little older and their language is more establised I have relaxed a bit."

That sounds good, and is probably what I'll do too!

DD is 16 months and I'm so proud of her, she's talking A LOT, swedish, english and a lot of nonsense too... I just hope she will continue to develop in both languages and she's not just doing well now when she's little.

In the book I've read about bilinguality it says that it's important to keep the minority language "attractive", ie so that the kids feel that they want/need to talk it. For example meet with other kids who talk it, read fun books, etc. I so wish I knew another swedish family nearby, that would make things a lot easier! Hopefully we'll move back to London soon, probably bigger chance of finding one there than here in deepest Kent...

Really interesting to read everyone's posts on this thread!

Just having problems now with the 'minority language as fun' bit. DD very firmly told DH this evening that butt-er-fly is 'un joli mot' and pap-i-llon is not. (Until I added Schme-tter-ling to the conversation, when she realised that it is always more fun to side with Papa and started saying papillon.) Now realised that it is VITAL that I find some French-speaking playdates, but where, in darkest Dorset?

Message withdrawn

Yeah, the best thing is if you find kids who ONLY speak the minority language... which is hard unless you go "home".

I have heard about Pomme d'Api from various places. Must look into it as soon as dd is old enough. I am also trying with French DVDs, which are very popular at the moment.

My daughter is 18 months and likes (bits of) "Popi" which is the one before "Pomme d'Api" ...

You also have 'Tralalire' which more or less in between Pomme d'Api & Popi.

I think they are normally good quality and my dcs both seem to enjoy them.

Hope everyone had a good / bon / whatever weekend?

DD yesterday asked me for "water", then corrected herself to "vatten" (swedish). Quite pleased about that, maybe it means she knows when to use the different languages...?

Going to Sweden on Thursday for a long weekend, DH not coming, so DD will be bombarded with swedish only for 5 days!

Hi, can I join in?

I recently posted my first thread here and had some lovely and very interesting replies, and then discovered this thread, and I think it's a great idea!

I haven't read it all yet, but I just wanted to introduce myself and then I'll work my way through during my tea breaks

I'm Irish and my dp is from Argentina, and we live in the south of Spain. Our dd is the only Spaniard in the family! Dd is 17 months old and I speak to her in English. Dp speaks to her in Spanish and only knows very basic English. Dp and I speak Spanish to each other. I'm a SAHM so dd is with me all day and we see quite a few English-speaking friends. Many of them have dc dd's age which is fab. I take dd to Ireland twice a year for a few weeks, and my parents and other family visit a lot, so all in all dd has lots of input in English.

Neither of us have family here, which is tough, but I guess that makes us closer as we only have each other! Integration is an issue of concern for us, as we don't have many Spanish friends and don't really get involved with local cultural events (of which there are many!) I do make an effort to speak to other mothers in the park and people are friendly, but very focused on spending time with their own families exclusively, really. I worry that it may be a problem for dd in the future when she realises how "different" we are from her friends' families, and that she may may be at a disadvantage with us not knowing much about local culture and customs...

Anyway, hello to you all!

Well, welcome, welcome, welcome new names and hello old names too!!!

I am going to a meeting tonight at dds bilingual school so the staff can tell us all about the curriculum for her year and what we are expected to do to support this at home. I am looking forward to discovering their philosophies and advice on bilingualism.

pispirispis - I am also interested in your concerns about cultural diferences and influences on social development in terms of peer relationships. It is strange... I have seen children who have parents from a different culure and language to the one around them 'melt in' wih their peers, stand out as being the particularly 'cool one' because of this and stand out as being different in a 'not great way'(children can be so cruel). All situations are potentially loaded with different degrees and types of problems.

A good question is - How do we ensure being bilingual and/or bi-cultural is infact, as it should be, advantagous to our children's social development?

RS - Do you have many French story and song CDs? They can be great fun. Also if your head can stand it you can buy the French version of electric toys such as leapfrog and talking books...

pispirispis, you may find that your dd becomes your gateway to Spanish culture in years to come (just a thought)

I've never thought of dcs being bi-cultural as a disadvantage or as something that makes them stand out

but then dd has been disabled for a long time, and ds has just been diagnosed with the same condition- and disability is obviously more noticeable than bilingualism; when someone's in a wheelchair that's sort of what you see

though to be fair to dd's friends I am not sure they even notice that all that much; they seem to take it very much in their stride and always have done; so no doubt they have also taken her bi-culturalism in their stride

I don't think one has to assume that all children will be cruel- they can be much nicer than their reputation

Hi Pispirispis! The immigrant kids in my class were always the cool ones! I'm sure your DD will be fine! We are in a similar situation, neither me or DH are from the country we live in (England), I'm swedish and he's american. DD has a british passport but we're not sure if she's british? Half swedish and half american? Well she can decide what she is when she's older!

We've just been to Sweden for 5 days, it was great to talk only swedish for so long! DD soon started talking exclusively swedish, for example she said "mer" instead of "more" and "hejdå" instead of "bye bye", which she has never really done before.

I read on another thread someone who said "bilinguality is overrated". What do you think of that...? I think it depends on the situation. If we for example never saw my family maybe I wouldn't feel so strongly about promoting swedish... but we go there about 5 times a year and there's no way I can have my DD not speaking the language.

I don't really think about it all as "bilingualism". I am third-generation Chinese in my home country (not China/Taiwan/HK obviously!) and my parents' and grandparents' generations had to put in a lot of effort to keep our language and culture. Not being melodramatic or anything, but we are not bloody giving it up now without a fight! Of course it's worth it. All those stories and poetry! All the fun and games you can have with the language! How can it be not worth it? (But of course I'm only speaking for myself ...)

Way to go slng! I too would feel my dcs missed something if they didn't have access to the cultural heritage that was part of my childhood: the trolls and the songs and the little joke my grandmother used to make when she was coming home late from a party.

Besides, my family thought languages were important full stop. They took it for granted that as an adult I would have access to English and French and German culture, at the very least, because I would have a nodding acquaintance with those languages. I don't see why dcs should settle for less.

Can I join?

I was raised bi-lingually (ENglish and Welsh) and maybe because of this I had a knack for languages and I now speak Russian, French and, more recently, Japanese. So I feel bi-lingualism is very important.

My DH is Japanese. He speaks fluent English, which is the family language, but we now live in Japan.

I have DD 3.1 and a DS. Originally I wanted them to learn English and Welsh because I wanted to transfer the cultural heritage to them. Welsh is such a rare language I felt it was a waste not to pass it on.

But now I am absolutely panicking about the English and have thrown the Welsh on the sidelines for a while. I know lots of families here whose children are mixed race with one parent a native English speaker
and the kids can`T speak English!

TO be fair, with most mixed race couples here its the man who is the foreigner so if hes at work all day then hes not going to be able to influence the childs language as much as a foreign mother can. They call it "mother tongue" after all. Ive also found it matters a lot which language is spoken between the parents.

But on the whole even kids whose mothers are the foreigners struggle a lot with English here. Most couples just give up and just go with the Japanese and treat English as a second language.
I don`t want this to happen! I want her English to be absolutely, completely fluent.

So now I am worried! And I`m going to be following this thread for advice and encouragement and motivation.

lost this thread for a few weeks and there are so many interesting posts on here that i'm glad i found it again.

in relation to whether bilingualism is an advantage or not - i think that when children are young then they just want to fit in with their peers and will perhaps downplay there abilities in another language but i think they grow to an age (hopefully) where they appreciate the abilities they have to be fluent in different languages and to be brought up bilingually can surely only be an advantage in later life.

oldest dc is only 8 so i'm just guessing at the later in life stuff but i know when we were in the UK she played down her german and she does the same here with her english. Or maybe thats just her bashful personality.

Sakura - i think if your children are exposed to english at home and japanese out of the home then when your dc are a few years older it wouldnt be trouble to throw the welsh into the mix - dc are amazing at picking up languages - makes me so jealous!