Is it too late to get into the whole bilingualism thing with a SEVEN year old?

[megapixels]

Hi, my first time posting on this board. I am trilingual, and my dh is bilingual but our children only speak English. We have been living in the UK for about 4 years now, but I am becoming increasingly apprehensive about our children appearing as outsiders in their own country (none of us are citizens here, even dd2 who was born here), not only when we go there on holiday but eventually if we end up back there permanently.

We have two daughters, 7 and 3. Dh doesn't really understand (or is not that bothered more like!) my concerns about them not speaking the main language of our country (Sinhalese) so I'm on my own here. I am thinking of speaking it to them maybe one day a week to begin with. It just seems so hard when they understand NOTHING. Does it work? How do you do it? Do you speak a sentence, then translate? Wont children of that age (7 and 3) get frustrated with this?

And honestly, do you think I've left this too late?

If it is your first language why don't you and your DP speak Sinhalese together? (curious and very ignorant as I've no idea where it is spoken)

I don't think it's ever too late but IME you will encounter great resistance from your DC if you suddenly switch languages.

Perhaps you could try just singing in your language around the house or saying little rhymes to the DC without making a big deal out of it. Tell them about your country, look at photos and information about it online or in library books. Do you have relatives there that you can skype with or phone?
Then speak it to your husband occasionally until the Dc are used to it.

If your DH is not bothered then this will not be easy.
Good luck

It is spoken in Sri Lanka. Dh and I speak English to each other as it has always been our first language even back home (our parents are products of the 1950s English only education and that generation for some reason just switched to English at home). We were educated in Sinhalese though. It is hard to explain - English was like the language for home and family but Sinhalese was for education, friends and fun. (LOL, I don't know how else to explain it). So with our children English just became the automatic choice. If we were still living in Sri Lanka obviously they'd know it simply from being there (school, friends and also used in the home occasionally as an additional language).

Depends what you mean by too late.

Obviously, it will be harder to achieve the results you could reasonably expect if you had started from birth.

BUT, on the other hand, you're going to do better if you start now than if you start next year, or in two years' time, or never.

Perhaps an OPOL approach might work? The parent with the stronger Sinhalese switches to that language only when interacting with the children, the other parent sticks to English, you can use whatever language you like to speak "between parents."

Expect resistance and confusion from the older child initially but, at the same time, stick at it - you're changing languages, not beating them, and they are likely to come round eventually.

Just my opinion, of course - I'm just an OPOL parent, not an academic.

Good luck.

Thank you MIFLAW (and newname too, forgot to mention earlier). I was reading a discussion somewhere where children of bilingual parents were talking about how resentful they were that they were never given the opportunity to grow up bilingual too. It is what gave me the push to start seriously thinking about it. I suppose I have nothing to lose (and much to gain) by trying, so I am going to start immediately. Maybe It'll work, maybe it won't, but I can try. I think I'm as much worried about myself as the children, I feel a bit silly, I feel that they are going to think I'm being pushy and weird etc. Will suck it up and give it a try.

I think, especially with the 7-year old, you will have to explain what you are doing and get her cooperation and maybe start teaching some basic vocabulary as games, with lots of fun and rewards.

Think how MFL is now taught in primary schools.

For example, you could start by saying 'hello', 'goodnight', 'thank you', etc, then move on to some basic nouns, counting games, finger rhymes, offering choices for breakfast/drinks. I start teaching MFL by teaching a few words and phrases to a tune - choose a well-known tune such as Twinkle, twinkle and use it to sing 'Hello, hello' etc in Sinhalese.

As they learn more words, challenge them to name ten things on the walk to school, or five foods, or as many things as they can think of beginning with 's'.

Gradually they should have a basic vocabulary and you can then move onto talking to them in your language in certain situations and slowly expanding it.

What I think wouldn't work is for you to take a sudden arbitrary decision to do this all at once - very unsettling and worrying. I am an adult and I know how uneasy I have felt in the early stages of being immersed in a new language - I think you will have to go very gently with children of this age.

are any children DVDs dubbed into Sinhalese? or maybe even produced directly in Sinhalese? I have certainly used lots of those to get my son interested in my language.