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?

Pinocehtte - DH reads to the girls every night, and DD1 can tell the difference between "mummy words" and "daddy words". But because of the whole different alphabet thing, we're not too sure when/how to start her on Hebrew reading and writing. She'll do a bit at syagogue Sunday school but we'd probably want her to learn a slightly higher standard of Hebrew than they learn there. But I'll wait until she's a little more confident with the English alphabet first....

MIFLAW - Yes, it's all coming back to me. I did briefly scanned that thread and dismissed it as being irrelevant, since we are doing Chinese and it seems rather unlikely that it is going to "disadvantage" my children socially. In fact the children seem to keep this aspect of their lives quite quiet, though DS1 apparently scribbled something for his friends in school recently and telling them that it's Chinese for something... Goodness knows what it was and what anyone made of it ...

Besides who is going to teach them if I don't?

The crawling stage is also coming back to me. Things progressed slowly at one point or the other, but since we are not doing any exam or competing with anybody, we just put it on hold for a bit and then return to it when everyone is happy again. It is the most gloriously stress-free and happy way to learn anything.

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For writing I follow a bit of the Doman approach:

1. keep a diary (well, we write every now and then) where I record what the children want to put down in writing. This way they understand what writing is all about, as a means of expression. The children like it and fight over who gets to dictate first ...

2. I gave DS1 a "special" book (actually a WH Smith blank A4 size notepad but cover decorated by stickers and such) where he writes a Chinese word/phrase a day and draw pictures. He chooses what he wants to write (mostly car-related). At first I tried to ask him to write the easier words, but soon realised that to him there is no such thing as easy and difficult words. If he wants to write something he wants to write something, and after about 1 year of haphazard writing he has learned most of the fundamentals anyway. I conclude that all this simple-to-complex progression approach is not necessary when teaching your own child, because a child who is interested will achieve more, and also because you can afford to do very very short sessions more frequently since you are stuck with them anyway. DS2 is desperate to have a go and I've promised him (for months now ) a book of his own. He asks about how to "make" words, and sometimes I write them for him to trace. Doman approach believes that writing is a form of expression and if they want to trace let them trace.

3. Teach them to read, since writing is meaningless unless you can read what you write.

As far as I am concern, our approach of the Doman approach is

1. very short sessions (I never spend more than a couple of minutes telling them words, and I never ask DS1 to write more than he wants to, though he does spend hours drawing the corresponding pictures.)
2. frequent sessions (but we are quite slack on this)
3. follow child's interest.
4. never bore a child.
5. respect child's intellectual ability.
6. only "teach" when everyone is happy.
7. always stop while the going is good. Goodness! That's long-winded. Hope it makes sense ...

Dd has learnt to write naturally in Swedish; just from reading the language and writing to friends on her internet forum. Wouldn't say her spelling is perfect, but it has improved a lot.

I did think about just letting it come naturally, but decided that perhaps Chinese script is sufficiently different from the how-you-call-it alphabet-based languages the children would encounter daily to warrant a separate attempt. I've even bought the soft calligraphy pens but the daunting thought of the combination of black ink and small children has delayed their introduction ... But I have a cunning plan - I'm going to borrow how-to-do-Chinese-ink-painting books from the library and we'll learn together ... Actually am quite excited about it, since I don't know the first thing about Chinese ink painting.

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Pitchounette - I can't find a reference. A friend lended me the book ages ago but it seems to have disappeared from the world. They do sell the "How to teach your baby to read" books on amazon, but nothing about writing ... Beware though you will be labelled pushy and threatened with hell fire, as MIFLAW said.

I don't think it matters about exceptions and rules. Don't think that's how children learn a native language, but I may be wrong. Many children do learn to read and write and do all kinds of unnatural things naturally.

lended?

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"Well I think I am already labelled as pushy"

....

I think, in terms of learning to read, a mixture of formal learning of reading and writing at the same time (see www.amazon.co.uk/How-Children-Learn-Penguin-Education/dp/0140136002/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1 247902210&sr=8-1) and all the 'natural' 'free' stuff cory speaks of is a recipe for complete success!

I was wondering....

What are all your views on the importance of visiting a country where a child's usually non-native language is native? How often and how long do you think children should visit if at all?

In your experience is it best to always go with a parent? Or is it best to go alone or with friends or siblings once past a certain age?

Also - What if the other language is spoken in many countries - do you think we should take advantage of this and travel say across all the French speaking lands of the World if living in Birmingham but speaking English and French or should we be focusing on a sense of 'belonging' so instead or perhaps as well as this should we encourage an affiliation with one place where perhaps language will bloom because the child feels very deeply a part of the place, people and culture along with the language they all speak?

Also - if financially, politically, culturally etc visiting the other country is tricky - what can be done to give a sense of the other place where the non-native language is the normal language to converse in?

Pitchounette Sun 12-Jul-09 21:14:56 Add a message | Report post | Contact poster

"Cory how difficult is swedish on a spelling point of view?
My concern with french is that there are lots and lots of exeptions and lots and lots of rules (that are not always followed). So I am not sure you can let it happen naturally."

well, as somebody who taught myself both French and English spelling through reading books with a dictionary in my room at night, I am not convinced that it can't be done

Swedish is fairly regular with the exception of a few sounds (the y-sound and a couple of others) which are spelled in several different ways

interesting post teafortwo

for my children, the sense of belonging fostered by our twice-annual trips to Sweden are definitely the single most important thing

when we are here, other things that help to root them in that culture are (in order of importance): books, talking about holiday memories, dvds, phone calls to family members, and the internet

teafortwo: interesting ... Certainly Mandarin is spoken "natively" in quite a few countries... I haven't thought very deeply about this, and perhaps don't really intend to. For better or worse we are here now (and travel back "home" is only feasible once every two years or so) and we shall make our own identity. Here the things that makes us us in this language are I think, me, stories, family relations we have visited, Chinese-speaking friends, perhaps in that order of importance.

T42

From my perspective, visiting a Francophone country is vital - but I might think that because I am not native myself (so I want to be absolutely certain that there are native models in my daughter's life, even strangers, in case I make the odd mistake) and because such trips are potentially cheap enough to consider every year and/or to combine with family hols.

As my daughter is not yet 2 she will be going with me for the foreseeable, but equally I can imagine a time will come where she will travel with or to friends and I will stay at home.

As for the multicultural aspect, in principle I think she should have access to them all, but with one predominant one (in our case, France, as the culture I know best) to provide a "default" position - but, in practice, Canada seems too expensive and Burkina Faso too risky so most of our travels will probably be in France, maybe with a bit of Belgium and Switzerland thrown in as and when.

While we're not in France, we watch a lot of French children's DVDs, listen to French pop together, read a lot of French children's books and attend a (multicultural) French-language playgroup once a week. The goal of all of these activities is the same - to broaden her exposure to the language, but also to validate it - she needs to be aware that French is a language that other people speak too and that it fulfils all the same social and cultural functions as English, even if she happens to know fewer French than English speakers at the moment.

I think you can bring a child up bilingual without having a sense of belonging to another country/culture - there are plenty of bilingual children I know in Paris who are completely and entirely culturally French but speak perfect English - so visits to a country where English is the native langauge aren't important for them. My charge feels no affiliation to England or any other anglophone country. He is entirely French. In fact his 'Frenchness' is probably exacerbated by being bilingual and having had English nannies! I think, however, he will grow up being more comfortable in an Anglo-Saxon culture than his classmates who only have linguistic English input because, much as I respect and integrate into French culture, there are probably some things which are, and will always be, entirely English!

For my own children I want them to be bilingual and bicultural. In all likelihood they will be trilingual as we'll be living in a third country or moving around a lot so visits to both France and the UK are going to be important for them linguistically and culturally. Other English or French speaking countries will be nice to visit, as tourists (in the same way I would visit Canada or America) but their home cultures will be more important.

Re: going with parents/alone/with siblings or friends - for my as yet unborn children I will encourage visits first as a whole family, then to their grandparents as siblings, to friends they might have there alone and I would like them to feel able to invite friends with them if they continue going to visit family as teens. As older teenagers/young adults I would encourage them to spend time in both countries, either for university or working, in order to get a real sense of belonging and to really immerse themselves in the language and way of life. I suppose they will inevitably feel that they belong more to one culture than the other but I don't know which one that will be yet! I suspect we will have a more Anglo-saxon culture at home but DH2Bs French extended family will be more important than my (small and dysfunctional) extended family.

My Mum started to teach me English when I was about 6, for no deeper reason than a love of English literature. There was never any question of my "becoming" English- though looking back over the years, I see how it started then . The assumption was that we would then go on in the same way with French and German and Italian, which to some extent we did- but it is that early contact with English that has really shaped me. Not that I thought of myself as half English then, or thought I would ever become English,but it started then. Gradually I became less and less of a tourist. I was all set up for falling in love with an Englishman, it was bound to happen.

Hard to learn the language without taking in the culture at the same time.

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Pitchounette - that is a really interesting question.

[ponders]

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Oooooh - it is a bit quiet around here!

So... while we wait for Pitchounette's answer I will tell you some of my news... We are in England for a bit and it is lovely to see dd chatting to the neighbours, playing with her cousins and paying for the shopping for me and feeling really at home here. I am very proud of her!