Multilingual kids

[peliroja]

I have two "acquired" languages (French and Spanish) which I started learning at the age of 12. Learning them has been, and still is, hard graft.  I do envy people from multilingual households who grew up speaking different languages as second nature.

I recently got chatting to a British colleague who's just had a baby. Her partner is Dutch, but - to my surprise -  they've decided only to speak English to the child, so as not to confuse him.  I think this is a shame.

What are your experiences?

[Phil]

I think that fluency in more than one language is a really good thing, and not just for the convenience of it.  It allows you to read the literature and experience the culture of two different countries, and that's very valuable, especially to a child. 

However, I knew a lot of bi-lingual kids at school who refused to speak their other language with their parents, and it actually became a barrier between them.  They mostly had parents who shared a common first language though, so I don't know whether having parents with different first languages would change things. 

[tiermat]

I know a couple of couples that are multi-lingual themselves (one couple is South African, the other is Czech/South African)

Both of them use both/all three languages in the home environment, sometimes slipping between them without missing a beat.

[MSeries]

I am English and my  parents are English as are their parents. I speak more of any foreign languages than they do and I speak little of any foreign language. I would like to be able to speak other languages but don't enjoy learning them and thus find it hard. My French cow-orker is married to an English person and lives in England and has said he doesn't want to live in France at the moment. He is teaching his young children to speak French, his eldest is four years old. The prime motivation is that his children will be able to converse with their French relatives who don't speak much English.

[Seineseeker]

I have a French friend married to an English woman who live in England. Ever since there kids were babies he has only ever spoken to the kids in French. The elder child who is now 6 I would say is pretty bilingual. English is her first language but she can speak well in French also.

On the other hand, my daughter (he says proudly) has two English parents (me and mrs. seine) but has always attended French school, which now is an international school which includes one day a week of English lessons. She is perfectly bilingual. She can speak without any noticeable accent in both French and English. It's amazing.

[pcolbeck]

My cousins are bi lingual English /  Arabic as my uncle is Egyptian. It's a very good thing and didn't seem to confuse them growing up. I wish I could speak Arabic as it would open up a whole new world of literature and culture.

[Attitudeless Badger]

Mrs Veloist is French, I am English, and our children are bi-lingual.  Mrs V is a language teacher and read up on this early on.  Apparently, the best way is for each parent to speak to the child in their native language.  The child soon picks up the difference and whilst some initial words get confused, they soon settle down into a clear pattern, and can work out what language to use to speak to people.  At the moment, French is their preferred language, as this is what they use at school, but when in England, it soon all comes flooding back.  Young kids are like sponges, and can soak up a large amount of information.  The best way is to start young, before they get any predjudices in language.  Once they get to an age when they question why do they say something in a certain way, ie "Why do the French have 3 words for 'the', thats just stupid" things get harder.  Start them young, I say!

[agagisgroovy]

I have been brought up speaking English only, but started learning French and German at school. I also do Gaelic (which, because I practise everyday is at a better level than my French or German).

There are still quite a few people in the Highlands and Islands who learnt Gaelic first, then learnt English at the age of 5 or so when they went to school. And you can't really tell the difference, they just have a Scottish accent.

One girl in my class was brought up bilingual in German and English in Germany, but they moved back over when she was 4. She therefore is top in all German tests.

Another one of my friend's parents works for the embassy or something. When they were in England for a few months and I met her they had been in Spain before, where they had lived for 4 years. Her and her brother were fluent in Spanish (in fact her brother refused to speak English for the first few weeks). She has kept that up by communicating with her Spanish friends whilst she lives in America.

[Seineseeker]

You get some interesting things, like English sentences in French sentence construction. For example my daughter regularly says, "it's a long time since we haven't been to....." because that is how it would be said in French.

[Mr Larrington]

I used to know a bilingual girl - fluent in English and German.  Improbably, she managed not to get an A grade in A-level German!

[hellymedic]

It is wonderful to have multilingual kids when such an upbringing works. This is not always the case. I am the child of a Flemish father and a Danish mother. Mum had seen some kids for whom a bilingual upbringing had failed and insisted that we only learned English.
I am grateful for this as we became proficient in English early.

As a monitor in the final year of my primary school, I saw some kids in the Reception Class who could hardly speak at all in any language, due to a combination of poor aptitude and bilingual upbringing.

I have seen this repeated as a doctor. My local primary school intake has 81% who have 'English as an additional language' at school entry at 3. The kids then have to learn English before any other education can start.

They seldom get a vocabulary in English for basic bodily functions as these aren't discussed much at school.
If I had kids, I would not wish English speaking kids to be a minority in my child's class, as those needing English support might well get more attention, leaving my child bored and frustrated. I think this explains the popularity of faith and private schools in this area. (IMO this is part of the 'sleepwalking into segregation' issue. This starts off as a linguistic thing but just happens to take on racial tones.)

Two of my sibs live in Jerusalem. One has an American spouse, the other an Israeli. One of the children of the predominantly English-speaking household appears not to be able to follow written instructions in Hebrew. My Mum (a Special Needs teacher) thinks this is due to bilingual upbringing with little linguistic aptitude. The child otherwise appears bright to me. Maybe languages aren't her thing.

I have said much about the down sides. They might not be common but they're a real pain when they happen.

[pcolbeck]

I used to know a bilingual girl - fluent in English and German.  Improbably, she managed not to get an A grade in A-level German!

That's quite understandable, as oral fluency doesn't necessarily translate to written fluency. A girl in my French class at university had grown up in France, and so was utterly fluent in spoken French, but failed her written grammar classes (she didn't know what a subjunctive was, despite using it in every other sentence... (bloody French  ).

She got a 2:2. Where is the fairness in that? 

Most people in the UK who are native English speaker would fail a similar test on English grammar. I certainly would as the last time I looked the mechanics of it twenty years ago.

[CAMRAMan]

I have three kids here in Budapest. I am English and the mother is Hungarian. All three (aged 8, 5 & 2) are bilingual, though verbally, not in written English, yet. My eldest loves reading in Hungarian and can read in English despite not having had formal teaching to do so.

"Proper" school doesn't start here until kids are 7, but they acquire formal language skills pretty quickly once they do start.

One great advantage, for them, is that my Hungarian is dire. They know they can't speak to me in Hungarian, so they don't try. Kids take the path of least resistance linguistically, in my expereince. We get British TV here to reinforce the message and an annual Blighty trip helps too. When on a playground in England, the other kids just assume that my brood are English.

I have ex-pat colleagues who can speak the lingo here much better than me, and their kids tend to be weaker in English, because of the path of least resistance thing.

When I lived in Sweden, my boss & his partner were Scots/Australian and American respectively. They had a child and only spoke Swedish to it. Rather stupid, IMO, but in keeping with his management skills...

[Frenchie]

E researched the subject thoroughly (we acquired a number of books on this!) -- she is a psychologist and a child specialist by training. She came to the conclusion that the best approach was for the native parent to use their native language. I speak French and only French to Baby G; Erica only uses Portuguese; school takes care of the English. Baby G already says "Bye-Bye" when she leaves school but "Tchau" when she leaves home. We feel this is very important for her to understand her background, our cultures and be an open-minded person in the future.

As parents this is normal to us; each of us manages at least 3 languages fluently and it opens many doors to us.

[Valiant]

Multiple languages from birth encourages a faster development of the brain. Or so I've read. Anyways, everyone in my family is multi lingual, we were raised with English and Bengali from birth, my young brother who is almost 4 has a good grasp of both languages. As we've grown up we've picked up other languages pretty easily, most of us can read/write/speak Arabic and Urdu. I'm trying to learn Italian and Chinese atm. The biggest problem being time/people to speak to and my bloody memory lol.

[Tourist Tony]

Sometimes I get very confused.....especially when switching between similar languages like Dutch and German. False friends.
Sometimes, I simply forget vocabulary in one language and my memory insists on pushing Welsh words forward.

[numbnuts]

My mother was born in Gibraltar and my father was British and when my sister and I were born my father told my mother "in this house English is to be spoken" so I had the golden opportunity to learn Spanish and it was take away from me.
My uncle could speak 18 languages, I'm just bloody hopeless

[woollypigs]

I think it a shame if you are multi lingual and do not use it in front of your kids.

I have given up on an other lingo way too hard work now. But I think I got it covered with being able to speak some English, French and Danish and the odd bits of Dutch, German, Scandinavian (Mix of Danish, Swedish and Norwegian) with a heavy dose of woolly'isme as Peli would say

Oh and then I can point and smile too , gets you what you want many times
 

[hellymedic]

I think it a shame if you are multi lingual and do not use it in front of your kids.

I have given up on an other lingo way too hard work now. But I think I got it covered with being able to speak some English, French and Danish and the odd bits of Dutch, German, Scandinavian (Mix of Danish, Swedish and Norwegian) with a heavy dose of woolly'isme as Peli would say

Oh and then I can point and smile too , gets you what you want many times
 

My parents speaking German to conceal things, certainly helped us understand it quickly. 

Between them, my parents have German, French, Flemish, Danish and Swedish, with a smattering of Hebrew. They speak almost flawless English. Mum's English has developed a fair bit since I was born, only 2½ years after she came to London.

I don't really regret not learning any of my parents' languages, having seen things 'go wrong' when I was young. As big Sis, I had to interpret between adults and kids anyway.

I'm happy to make an effort at any language when needed. (Last attempt was a few days ago at the National Maritime Museum.) I think it's sad that my partner's German is not good enough for him to communicate with his late mother's relatives. (My German is *just* good enough for this.)

I think many Brits are scared of speaking Furrin, which is maybe why we do so badly as a nation.

[peliroja]

Oh and then I can point and smile too , gets you what you want many times
 

But your gift is to be able to communicate even when the words you say don't make any sense! Woollyismos - yes, that's about right. 

[hairyhippy]

I read somewhere that children pick up language quickest and easiest in their very early years.

[Tourist Tony]

I think it a shame if you are multi lingual and do not use it in front of your kids.

I have given up on an other lingo way too hard work now. But I think I got it covered with being able to speak some English, French and Danish and the odd bits of Dutch, German, Scandinavian (Mix of Danish, Swedish and Norwegian) with a heavy dose of woolly'isme as Peli would say

Oh and then I can point and smile too , gets you what you want many times
 

Yebbut, remembering the second Pompey beer monster, and your kilt, it's WHAT you point with that is the problem

[Ivo]

I recently got chatting to a British colleague who's just had a baby. Her partner is Dutch, but - to my surprise -  they've decided only to speak English to the child, so as not to confuse him.  I think this is a shame.

In parts of the Netherlands (especially the Holland part) there is a misconception that kids should 'only' speak one language. In complete contrast, the areas of the Netherlands were the local language is predominant (especially Friesland and Limburg) the general belief is that raising a kid multilingual is preferred. I grew up in Limburg and grew up trilingual. As a result I now speak several languages fluently, several others quite decent and have a basic command/understanding of yet another few. That despite I was very bad at languages at school and grammar is still a mystery for me. So if you only judge the command of a language by a full understanding of the theoretical grammar my multilingual youth has caused a failure. If you judge the command of language by the ability to communicate it was a success.
I personally believe that had the school system taught me the grammar of my first mothertongue (the Limburg vernacular) I'd have had a lot less problems with the grammar of other languages. I experienced that schoolsystems do have a problem with the understanding of the needs of multilingual kids.

[Tourist Tony]

One of my essay topics last year was on the pros and cons of using English as a medium of education in countries where it is not the main language. Deep, deep subject.

[Flying_Monkey]

My wife and I have loads of friends bringing up multilingual kinds - our best friends are Catalan-Japanese, and I suppose our kids (if and when...) will be English-Japanese... it doesn't necessarily last though - I was bilingual English-Norwegian until 6, but then we came back from Norway and because my parents never used the language afterwards, I forgot all my Norwegian.