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?

CriCri

let's stay in touch then and see if we can sort something out. We attend a French-language palygroup on Saturday mornings in Crystal Palace if that's any use to you and I know there is stuff going on in Blackheath and Greenwich too.

Glad you like the blog - tell your friends!

Pitchounette - where are you based?

Oh yes - cricri - you and I will have to do something too I am likely to be in Suffolk at Christmas - maybe we can do your zoo! ... but it has occured to me it is a must that my dh comes along too - as I am English so dd just speaks English with me which isn't quite what you are looking for .

Message withdrawn

Oh please please let me share a conversation I had with dd while we were making a plum cake today....

(DD pokes her finger in the sugar)

Me - Are you being a little naughty? (Giggle giggle)

DD - No (Giggle giggle)

Me - Are you a good girl?

DD - No (Giggle giggle)

Me - So you must be in the middle, like me?

DD - No!

Me - I give up. What are you?

DD - Urrrmmm.... well...I AM..... English!!!

Hi there. Haven't got time to read through this all now - I should be working, but just wanted to introduce myself and join in.

I am English, my DH is French but has lived in England for 15 years and is totally fluent. We live in England and our dd is bilingual, mainly speaking French. DH always speaks French to her, I usually speak French to her and she speaks mainly French to us, sometimes mixing languages. My French is not bad, but I frequently get genders, etc wrong.

I know that I should speak English to her - this is the received wisdom, as I am frequently informed, or she will learn my bad French. However, I am half German but did not grow up bilingual (although my German is now pretty good) and I talk to other families in our area who say that the dc refuse to speak French / Spanish / whatever at home, so I want to make home life basically French.

We have DVD's, books etc in both languages but encourage French and are looking into getting French and German satellite TV when our analogue is turned off in the near future. Cost is a factor, though.

People have recently asked me if DD feels French or English (she is just 3). Since she actually believes that she is Bambi at the moment it is not an issue.

Welcome Racingsnake !

Bambi

National identities are so yesterday. We are international (and cross-species in some cases ) citizens now.

Hi. I've ventured into the bilingual section for the 1st time in jonks and stumbled upon this thread. If you don't mind I'll introduce myself and if you do I'll still do it anyway

I did try to read the whole thread, but 9 pages is just a little too much at this time of night. It's a great idea though to have a chat thread to share experiences. It gives one a better idea of all the individual varieties of multilingualism around.

I'm raising my 3 dcs bilingually. Although 1 is a baby and doesn't count yet. 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. Especially doing homework just doesn't go without using English.
So basically I speak Dutch to the dcs, DH is English and doesn't know Dutch so he speaks English. And funnily enough the dcs speak Dutch to eachother exept during imaginative play. They do mix their languages, but I learnt to be relaxed about that thanks to the book "growing up with 2 languages" and after observing them play with their Belgian cousins who are monolingual.

There, that's me.

DD had her first day at her bilingual school yesterday.

On the way to the ice-cream stand (a first day at school treat) she said "Mummy I am Fr-wench and I am in-gerlish."

Message withdrawn

Re bilingual school - my nearly 12yo DD is in a bilingual section of a normal school, and yesterday she said she definitely preferred the lessons taught in English by English speakers because the teachers are so much nicer and a lot less bossy!

The differences in teaching style can be vast.

Can I join too? Dutch mama living in Scotland with two DDs (nearly one and nearly 3). I speak mostly Dutch to the girls - and DD1 has great understanding, but speaks back mostly in English. We're working on speaking back in Dutch - and I hope that onces DD2 starts to talk they will start talking Dutch to each other too.

One of the things I find most amusing is situations where (new) Dutch words, sound like English ones she already knows; the other day we were playing a game, and I really didn't get why she started chattering about there being no birds all of a sudden - until it struck me I told her it was her turn, which in Dutch (beurt) sounds very much alike.

Nice to meet you all

pitchounette My eldest 2 are 5&7, the baby is 4m. I live in the UK, which is why it has really taken me by surprise that they communicate in Dutch. They also speak Dutch to the baby, which is really cute.

oricella your story was funny. That reminds my of my ds, who does things the other way around. He'll take an English word e.g. hot dog and ask for a heet hond to eat Sometimes when he does that sort of things it takes me a minute to click what he's on about. Dd1 doesn't do that for some reason.

I was talking to a half Dutch mum at a m&t group yesterday and it made me really sad when she told me that her Dutch mum had never spoken Dutch to her. The woman wasn't sad about it. She told me that her mum had made the decision because she'd heard that children end up not speaking either language properly, which is off course a myth. My dcs might have been a bit slower learning to speak and their vocabularly in either language is slightly less than their peers, but overall they must have more words. They do mix languages at home, but I noticed my ds making a real efford to only use Dutch words when he was visiting his cousins this summer. I think at home they know they can be a bit more lazy as I'll understand them, but they know that their 3&6 yo cousins don't understand English.

Message withdrawn

pitchounette My dcs only mix English in Dutch, but not the other way around. I think the reason behind them communicating in Dutch at home is similar to yours. I was a SAHM with ds and so he spoke Dutch all day. He was 2 yo before he went to any nursery. DH works away from home and we have Dutch au pairs (to help with their Dutch language), so I suppose Dutch is the main language at home. I do correct them when they mix their languages, but they just seem to be ignoring me I do know that they'll speak 'pure' Dutch if they have to, so I'm not worried about it.

Hello, I looove this thread. I'm English, Dh is Italian, and we've lived in lots of countries, now in Belgium. Our boys, 7,5 and 3 go to French lycee. Our family-altogether language is Italian, because dh works very long hours and their time with him is limited. I speak English with the dcs. They used to speak French in lessons and Italian in the playground in Rome. Now they're at a school with a fully bilingual French/English programme, which should help with English reading and writing, and the community language is French (and Dutch, though it's not essential here to speak it). The playground language is definitely French, and most of the children at school are French nationals. I suspect their Italian will suffer a bit, but we will take lots of holidays there and get mil to come and stay periodically.

None of mine spoke late and they didn't mix up their languages when very little, though they do a bit now (ds3 calls his teeth his 'dents' and they all seem to have trouble with the difference between hear/smell/feel which are the same word in Italian. It's actually going really well.

We were a bit concerned about the national identity thing, especially as they were born in different countries (continents even), and we'll move every 3 or 4 years, but I think the pros outweigh the cons. So far they are very well-adjusted and nearly perfectly tri-lingual.

Hello!

I only just found this thread, I'm slowly working my way through it but I'd love to join in

I'm British and live in the Netherlands with my Dutch DP. We have two DC who we're bringing up bilingually, DD is 21 months and DS 3 is months.

I speak only English to the DC and DP speaks only Dutch. DP and I speak Dutch together but I think we may need to change this although it would be a very hard habit to break!

DD understands both languages very well but only has the odd word in English whilst she's up to 3 word 'sentences' in Dutch. She has a major shortage of input in English, it's just me and a couple of programs on CBeebies in the mornings. I read to her in english too but the situation is far from ideal. TBH I'm worried she's not actually going to speak much English at all despite understanding it well. Only time will tell.

I, by the way, was completely monolingual, grew up in the same place etc, though I always loved learning languages and can speak several.

I shouln't worry norktastic - all the completely dutch people I know seem to speak perfect English! (Maybe false impression as I only know expat dutch?)

'tis true that most Dutch people speak great English but it's often heavily accented. Because DP and I speak Dutch to one another and DP speaks Dutch to the DC it's very much the dominant language in our house/lives. So, our friends speak Dutch to the DC too.

TBH I always thought people should be encouraged to speak only their native language to bilingual DC. Is that not right?

I mean if the native language is one of the DC's languages IYSWIM.

Dutch accents can indeed be pretty atrocious - I still cringe every time I hear a Dutch football player on telly here (not so much now, as I think the SPL seems less orange these days)

Having said that - DD1 seems to have a natural inclination for a Dutch accent resembling that of 'de schilderswijk' or somewhere thereabouts - not good! (those in the know may understand )

lol. Hopefully the accent will sort it's self out in time!

DP is from Brabant but we live in Zuid Holland - he's not at all impressed that DD's developed a 'hard G' rather than the soft Brabants G sound. He was convinced she wouldn't

Message withdrawn

Message withdrawn