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?

Message withdrawn

Just joining in. I'm English, DH is Israeli, we live in the UK. I speak English to the DDs (3.10 and 1.4), DH speaks only Hebrew. While I can speak Hebrew, DH and I speak English to each other but I know we should speak Hebrew more often. Firstly so I don't go completely rusty, and also so that the DDs hear more of it.

Anyway, DD1 understands everything DH says but only speaks English at this stage. She's getting more interested in speaking Hebrew though. She keeps asking DH how he says various things, and we try to make sure she repeats the word back, so she's picking up the vocab slowly.

We go over to Israel to see DH's family every year, and each year we hope that DD1 will start to speak Hebrew as it's a couple of weeks of total immersion for her... I speak Hebrew too (albeit badly!) while we're there but apart from the odd word, it hasn't happened yet.

I just hope she'll start speaking Hebrew soon. I'm concerned that if she starts speaking too late she won't ever speak it with a native accent.

Message withdrawn

AnnieLobesender,
My dd was like yours (with French) and it was only when we came to live in France (she was 3.10) that she started speaking (after about 2 months of absorbing all around her). I don't know how long it would have taken had we stayed in Ireland, but I believe it would have without a doubt.

Do you have any Hebrew speaking visitors (with children?), I think once she makes a little pal, things will improve rapidly. Certainly from hearing all the stories here there's nothing to worry about, she'll get there, WITH the accent!

I can't make my mind up about accents. For one thing, one's accent changes. Even native English speakers sometimes adapt their accents to their audience. (Remember Tony Blair's cringe-worthy accent when talking to the youfs? But ime that's quite normal. Willing to be proved wrong.) I certainly speak differently to different people, especially if I am in conversation with fellow Malaysians. Also most of the world probably speak English NOT with an English accent ... Does it matter very much, this "native accent"? Who's "native" anyway? Also, more importantly for one's sanity, can it be helped in our environment? Clearly it's nicer if you can have a "nice" accent, but should we beat ourselves up over it, especially if it can't be helped?

I think it is important to be able to be taken seriously. Your accent may tell us something about you and will change depending on the environment you are in to suit it more....

... but if, like me in French, your accent makes you sound cute (I wish) , comical (tick) or difficult to understand (double tick) then it is a big disadvantage especially in professional situations.

Israelis always think English accents are hysterically funny (they're more used to American), and think DD1 is the cutest thing ever when speaking English. I know my accent is dreadful when I speak Hebrew, but then DH's accent is awful even though he speaks English completely fluently.

I do need to find DD1 some Hebrew-speaking friends, but Israelis are a little thin on the ground here! There are some at synagogue, but everyone speaks English there.

She needs more Hebrew exposure than just DH. I think it's better when the 'foreign' parent is the primary carer, so at least they're hearing the second language all day, instead of just evening and weekends.

Oh well, she'll get there eventually!

Thanks for the welcome!

It's one thing being incomprehensible, and another thing having a "funny" accent. In my world (academia) one learns not to take accents too seriously. In fact it seems more important to be able to write well (holding up Joseph Conrad as example ... He must be sick of being held up as an example by now ...). Since my main "ambition" for my children is that they will be able to enjoy Chinese novels I try to be more relaxed about their accent. It's not that I don't try to influence their accent - of course it's better to be comprehensible than not, and arguable it's better to have a more "prestigious" accent, if there is such a thing, than not. But one can only do what one can in one's situation, IYKWIM.

arguably

Message withdrawn

Pitchounette - I know what you mean. I've met French people who refused to socialise with French Canadians because "they speak funny", and Chinese people who looked down on Malaysian Chinese because we have "appalling pronunciation". If you go by these rules half the world would be beneath contempt because they speak funny by someone else's standard. In this day and age surely we cannot be still holding on to this kind of imperialism! I must say I have no patience with this kind of attitude... While certain languages may sound cuter than other languages with certain accents, surely the main thing is the ability to communicate. Bah humbug and all that. >

This is completely true.
I live in rural France and DH speaks French with an Irish accent. It is incredible the number of people who lose interest half way through a sentence because DH doesn't speak fast enough. DH's French is very good and fluent BTW. Also some people genuinely cannot understand if a word is pronounced with a slightly different emphasis.
Very frustrating.
I speak English with a French accent and I never had a bad experience while living in London (10 years).

Wow, I didn't realise that people in other countries could be so funny about accents! Being English-speaking, which of course comes in a million accents, I'd never really thought about it. And because there are so many new immigrants in Israel they're used to weird accents too. Like I said before, they love an English accent. It's just the Russian one they're not too keen on...

I agree, the French are very precious about accents. I was looked down on because I re-learnt most of my French in the South and therefore had a Nimoise (as opposed to Parisian) accent when I moved to Paris. Thankfully I'm a fairly good mimic.

The ability to do a variety of accents is good, but it's important to know the 'standard' one too.

Is that because the Russian accent is not easy on the ear in Hebrew Annie or because they just generally are not that keen on the behavíour of Russian immigrants? Your dc are still really very small, I am sure you can get the accent sorted if you want to (via DVDs and holidays and so on).

As a non-French person who has near-native competence in French, I have to say that in my experience it is not the French who are snooty about accents, just the Parisians! If non-Parisians pick up my accent at all, it is normally to say how almost unnoticeable it is, or how charming it is (in the case of my Caennaise ex - perhaps she was biased ...)

But I've had waiters in Paris who speak rubbish English try to take my order in English as soon as they pick up the accent. I generally just ignore them and keep speaking in French until they take the hint.

That was meant to be light-hearted, btw - apologies to any Parisien(ne)s here, I'm sure you're lovely!

Miflaw,
French people among themselves will certainly have a 'reaction' when they hear another regional accent. (Don't we all?) My DH has Parisian French but I don't think he's been shunned or laughed at down here in SW France. His knowledge of rugby won him a popularity ticket.

I find the mix of people around here is amazing. I know of very few people who came from our town even one generation ago (let alone 2 or more). Most people when you scratch the surface have Spanish/Italian etc parents/grandparents, or have migrated here from another area of France. I'm always astounded to realise that some of these people feel as foreign as me here. And some find it harder to integrate - it's easier for me to break the ice by asking questions about how the school system works, a lady who's just moved here from Lyon can't ask such obvious questions.

Of course - and, as I say, it was a (mostly!) light-hearted generalisation.

But, just in my experience, although I would guess 90% of people who I speak to probably guess I am not native, it is only Parisians who react to that by speaking to me in English, even though my French is better than their English. It seems, at least, that everyone apart from the Parisians judges me on my competence rather than whether I was born in l'hexagone ...

That's what I cannot bear. It's so provincial.

Message withdrawn

Hi all
This is all very interesting... I'm French, my husband's English, we live in London, and I'm trying to speak French to my son as I would like him to grow up bilingual. My family in France are very keen that he should speak French (if only to communicate with the local kids when he holidays with his French family).
But my husband doesn't want me to speak French to him when he (my husband)is there because he doesn't speak French and feels excluded... He even worries that DS will only speak French and not English! Daft as everybody here except me will speak English to him...
Anyone else had that problem?

pitchounette,
Like your Swedish example, I know an English/French girl here who's about 19 or 20. She babysat for us for a while. She came here when she was 4 or 5 so has practically no memory of England. So, when she arrives here with her perfect English and quite a strong regional English accent, I can't help but say things like "so how often do you go home?" and "are there other English kids in your class?". But to her she's not English at all, she just happens to speak the language at home.

Mouette,
I think your Dh will just have to invest in a linguaphone or similar ; By the way I think it CAN be an advantage having parents who don't speak the other language well. It can help the kids make a proper distinction between the 2 langs and not slip foreign words into the other lang.

Miflaw,
Yes I hear you on the Parisian waiters. I suppose they deal with so many tourists all the time - and probably quite a few foreigners who are attempting to use their 5 French words badly, and just want to speed up the process a bit, then don't know how to react when you DO actually speak better than them...

"The emphasis on grammar and spelling is SO SO strong in schools too."

I think Caen and Nice have been missed out by the Ministry of Education then if the (university) students I used to teach and socialise with were anything to go by.

I seem to remember my girlfriend in Caen (who went on to do a maitrise in sociology) misspelling "tant pis" in a letter once ...

Message withdrawn