Worried I will confuse my baby - pls advise

[jaabaar]

Hi,

I would really appreciate your experience and advise with the following:

I was always told as long as one parent speaks one language and the other speaks the second language all is fine - no confusion for baby.

I have following prob:

My language is a minority language of Switzerland (Rhaeto-Romanic). Only a few thousand speak it. So, no childrens books, no CDs with song rhyms etc. in RR.

1. I speak to her in RR
2. Husband speaks in english
3. I sing rhyms in English to a CD
4. I show picutre books with english words (e.g. Duck etc)

Shall I just switch to english as well until she is for example 2 years old? Instead of mixing? If I dont mix, then there are no books, no songs, no rhyms?

Will it not confuse her hearing from me english and RR?

THank you very much for your advise on this as I have a strong feeling I am doing no good by mixing.

It is entirely up to you. If you ask Cory, she will tell you that this won't confuse your child anyway.

But, if you're worried it will, then I think you're being a little bit defeatist.

I speak only French to my daughter - but, for the first week or so of her life, I thought I was being silly and spoke English to her. This meant that, when I changed my mind back and decided to speak only French again, I was totally unprepared. I had no French children's books (or really any books apart from a few old crime novels) or CDs and didn't know where to get them.

So, initially, I made my own. I bought second hand English kids' books at my local library and in charity shops and translated them myself, writing my translation on the page so that, like a "real" book, the words would be the same every time. Who cares about the English text? She won't even have a hope of getting confused by the printed word till she's 2 or 3. By then, you will have found another solution.

As for CDs - well, I didn't initially bother. i just sang to her myself in French, and that meant we could sing whatever we liked.

If the culture exists in the language, you can share it with her. Published books and CDs just make it a bit easier.

Also worth hunting really hard online etc - you never know what some eccentric has published in the past. It could be sitting on Amazon or at AbeBooks, or even at Grant & Cutler or Foyles, just waiting for you to come along ...

Good luck!

MIFLAW

Thank you so much for your input!

I find the idea with making your own books very good! I will just tape over the english words and write RR on it.

Rhaetoromanic only about 60,000 people speak. from this 60,000 it is again devided in 4 grammars with totaly different vocabulary. So only about 10,000 speak my language. In england these books are not avaible.However I have asked my relatives to look for some baby books, to no evail. There are books once the child can read and write.

I will defo do the book think at least I can show her books with the words showing that I ctually pronounce!

thank you very much.

Good luck.

In terms of CDs, perhaps your relatives (if they're not shy) could sing some songs for you and put them on tape or CD? Not essential but it would provide variety of both songs and voice if that's what you're worried about.

with really simple picture books, you don't even need to worry about writing in the owrds, of course - your child will only see them as black squiggles, whatever language they're in! Just point ot a picture of a duck and say the word for "duck" in RR.

Something else you can do is watch ordinary children's programmes with the sound off(things like "La petite taupe" is good because it's got no dialogue, just music) and just talk to your child about what's happening on screen in your own language ("look, the mole's digging - she's going underground - she's hiding from the man ...")

jaabaar - I made quite a lot of books for my DSs. Sometimes I found stories on the web and translate them and found pictures and just GIMP (photoshop-ish software for linux) them and print them. I did the same with poems etc. They don't seem to mind that the pictures are not, er, top-quality ... And you can make special DD books too with her photos in. It's quite fun, really.

I would speak your own language right from the start. Although I have always spoken both Welsh and English (depending on who we are with) to my three and it didn't seem to confuse them!

Remember that it doesn't really matter aboit books etc not being in a language, as long as you can "read" it (ie translate it as you go along) then the words on teh page won't matter for a good while yet until they are starting to read themselves.

I work in a Welsh medium nursery school, and if I can't find the story that I want in Welsh I often read them an English book in Welsh. They are all pre-school age so as far as they are concerned it could say anything on the page!

I wouldn't worry too much about her getting confused; children seem to sort the languages out more easily than we expect.

My husband is French and we both speak English to the children. The two older ones go to a French school and we have lots of French friends, but we live abroad, so there is a third language to contend with at school, in the street etc.

When they or we have French friends round I speak French with everyone; some of our friends are bilingual with other languages as well, so the children are used to hearing Spanish, German etc as well.

Our children are now 5, 3 and 1 and they seem to manage to distinguish the languages fine, even the ones they can't understand. I suppose there's a question of intonation as well which makes it easier.

DD1 makes me laugh because she has learnt to sing happy birthday in French and English at school, and so if she's singing at school or with friends she sings with a french accent, "happy birssday tooo yooo...", but if we're all at home together she sings it with an English accent.

Good luck!

And here comes Cory! Not saying my way is the right way, but I did read and sing to mine in both Swedish and English, and it doesn't seem to have confused them at all. By the time dd was 2, you could give her a word in English and ask "what is that in Swedish" and she would know.

The only thing I would say in your situation is that I would probably feel inclined to push Rhaeto-Romanic harder because it is such a small language and you have less support from elsewhere. I did get a lot of support from books and DVDs, Swedish being a language that is very rich in children's material. If that had been not been available, I might have spent less time on English iyswim.

MIFLAW:
THanks for the good idea with the children's programs! Will definately try this!

UPTOAPOINTLORDCOPPER:
Another fab idea! Photobox offers minibooks. I can just upload the pics and write the words and it cost 5.99. As much as any other book! Fab Idea!!

PEASANDBEANS:
Lol @ Happy Birthday! Clever girl!

CORY:
THank you as well for having had the time to reply. Did you yourself speak both languages to them (or you swedish only and someone else english?).
Regarding books I will now make my own and CDs I will search again high and low. I am only worried because the ONLY person she will speak to and hear from the RR is me.
Do you think it could work and she could pick up both?
RR is very very important to me as it is my heritage and a language in danger of dying out. So I really want to make sure I do my very best but also correctly. I was just unclear how to go about it as there is not one person in this country who speaks it (e.g. not like german playgroups, schools etc).

Thanks again to all of you for having given me very good ideas which makes me feel more encouraged!