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?

I think kids start school far too early here in England! In Sweden we start at 6 or 7 and I don't think we're any worse academically than english people. So Pitchounette, if you can yes I would put off reading for a bit... Are the schools flexible at all or does everyone HAVE to learn to read on schedule? Poor DS and you...

Message withdrawn

I have been murking on this thread...

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/860707-parents-who-speak-French-to-their-tots-who-aren- 39

I thought it might interest people here too.

murking.?????

Obviously I meant "lurking"!!!!

I got a cbeebies dvd for dd. She loves Charlie and Lola and Big cook Little Cook but she is really really afraid of a program called "Lazy town" is this normal...??? Is anyone elses child aftraid of this program?

(it came on as I typed murking - well that is my excuse and I am sticking to it!!! )

T42 - Charlie and lola? In French? Where?

Pitchounette - I am planning on hopefully getting dd reading in English before CP. We have it the good way round. She is starting to get interested in letters and sounds so I am hoping by aged 4-5 she will start reading in English and then 6-7 will, like her classmates, read in French.

We are very lucky because the French system gives us time to get the English reading in first.

I really feel sorry for you - it is messy the other way round (trying to fit in reading in French around the English system) but I am interested in how you overcome the challenge... please keep us posted and if I come across anything that will help you I will send it your way!

MIFLAW - No no no it is in English because we only have French TV which I am subtly trying to ban. Now DD is getting so much input in French at school I am trying to make her and my time together as extremely totally very 'specially English as possible!

I have noticed In The Night Garden toys at La Defense so I think they exist in French as do Teletubbies... but I am not sure about Charlie and Lola - I will keep you posted!

I find Lazy Town scary....

We ended up skipping it because I didn't like it either. Bleeeeauuuugh!

Does anyone else reckon that in rl big cook is short and therefore a little man while little cook is tall and therefore a big man? It is as if they accidently picked up each other's scripts... non?

Message withdrawn

Bob The Builder also exists in French and I have just bought a second-hand DVD of Boo (although I don't like it very much). I hate Lazy Town.

Pitchounette, did you try montessori schools? They probably would allow for more flexibility on this.

We are most likely moving to Paris next year and I'm a bit worried about DS1 as well, he doesn't really speak French at all (DH is French). I'm hoping to get him into the bilingual school in western suburbs of Paris and got very excited about the Montessori method.

Message withdrawn

america - I have a friend whose children go to a montessori bilingual school in the West 'burbs... I wonder if it is the same school!!!!

On a different subject - did anyone listen to this???

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00p60hx

I think this radio show is really interesting! What do you think?

For me it illustrates very well how an ability to slip in and out of different ways of speaking is just as important a skill for mono-lingual children as for bilingual children. Growing up in Essex, as a very young child, I used to be pulled up for using "ain't" inappropriately in the same way I pull my dd up for saying "aussi" when speaking in English.

A second thought I had was that the ever evolving nature of language (specifically verbs, nouns and pronounciation) presents quite a challenge for bilingual children in terms of ability to tap into the social, emotional and political suggestions within their non home country language in informal situations. I am interested to know, from people who have visited or moved to a country where they speak the language but don't know the slang very well, do you 'pick it up' and fit in quickly or is it quite a challenge for sometime?

T42

I have long argued, here and elsewhere, for dialects to be taken as seriously as languages (bearing in mind that, in some places, it's only really in the last century that there's been any difference between them anyway). Growing up speaking Cockney and then going to grammar school certainly gave me an insight into speaking two languages before I had even scratched the surface of French ...

MIFLAW - That is a really interesting point. In France Arabic-French children generally pick up English as a second third language at school really easily because they already understand what language is and how it works. What you are saying has a very similar vibe about it.

The core of dialects not being taken seriously, I suppose, is because language is political, often national and has a formal writing system while dialect is organic, local and oral.

It really surprised me to read that on a Worldwide scale there are many formal languages that are closer in grammar and vocabulary than dialects within given languages. Extreme examples given were comparing the distance in Chinese dialects to the closeness of Spanish and Portuguese.

I was in a town six hours drive away from the area I am from in England recently and at a party. As the conversaion got more relaxed it became faster and the people around me fell naturally into pretty strong local dialect and accent. I found my ears straining and my brain working overtime to piece together what bits I understood to make some sort of sense out of the chatter - At one moment I realised I was using skills I draw upon to(try to)understand French - but the big difference was these people were supposedly speaking MY language!!!

havent managed to listen to the radio prog but thats really interesting about dialects - hadnt really thought about it.

We lived in NW england before moving to germany and although we've been here less than a year, dd has already said she's not always sure what her UK friends are saying on the phone. But i imagine if we went back for a visit her ear would pick it back up really quickly. On the opposite side we've moved to a part of Germany with a very strong accent and lots of colloquialisms. Dc have just instantly started speaking using the local accent and i find it easier to understand the local accent probably cause its the one i hear every day.

Accents fascinate me (probably cause i have a pronounced one) and feel a bit lost that my dc wont have a British one and will probably just speak as if their from middle England.

Message withdrawn

I'd just thought I'd post something on here so the thread doesn't fall into oblivion!

DH doesn't speak swedish except for a few words that he has picked up. Sometimes he likes to use those words when speaking to DD. So this morning he said: do you want an apelsin? (orange) Only problem was he pronounced it wrong, APelsin instead of apelsIN. DD corrected him, apIIIN! Very funny.

Actually, I think kids learn to read too early in England - apparently it can lead to some kids being labelled learning disabled when they are simply not yet cognitively ready to learn to read. Makes me glad we are in France, as DD already has enough problems on her plate!
That said, she's been coming out with more and more French of late which we are very pleased about.

I am certain kids learn to read too early in the UK! A lot of children, especially boys and summer-born children, are just not quite ready and therefore start by struggling and failing. Not a good introduction to education. And then if they are working in English which is not their first language ... am quite worried about my dd. (Who is summer born and speaks English as her second language.)

Message withdrawn

I've been lurking on this thread with interest. DS is now 7 weeks old and we're well into our new OPOL lifestyle. DH, who has what I would term an upper-intermediate level of English, says that he now understands 100% of what I say in English when talking to DS, because I naturally speak slower and with more emphasis. So hopefully DH's English will come on leaps and bounds along with DS.

Re: dialects, Melvyn Bragg makes the same point in his book The Adventures of English. He comes from somewhere with a strong regional dialect (cumbria perhaps?) and had to 'learn' when he went to grammar school and switch bewteen the two.

sorry, meant to say 'learn' English

Hi Frakkinaround and teafortwo thanks for linking me to this thread. Asham Asham to everyone else.

Just a quick interrupt and introduction;

I am expecting my first baby in May. Papa is French and a fluent English and Spanish speaker. He came to UK with limited English and now enjoys completing cryptic crosswords. I am English and struggle with my mother tongue. Actually I can order vegetables in Chencha and tell a class to be quiet in Setswana. Mmm not the more useful of second languages to have learnt!

I am looking forward to reading the thread as would love for DD to grow up bilingual and haven?t a clue where to start!! But back to work for now!! XCV