I still regularly meet expats living in a foreign country who believe that it's better for their kid not to learn both their father tongue and mother tongue together with the language from the country they live in so that they don't get confused. It's sad because it's a richness they could give their kids but don't because of fear or bad advice.
I don't get this. I'm trilingual, and I think in English, but I'm fluent in the other 2 languages as well. My parents converse in the mother tongue at home, but with friends they would switch to another language. I think parents are vastly underestimating the cognitive powers of young children.
I think for a lot of them, it comes from fear - if you don't speak the language as fluently as natives, or with a noticeable accent, you are very often aware of it, and sometimes reminded explicitly.
Some parents are probably just trying to shield their children from what they see as a handicap, or a source of embarrassment. They're wrong, but their motivations are understandable.
It ends up doing kids a lot more social harm than good if their non-native speaking parents speak to them in their non-native language poorly -- you end up with a child who speaks their parents non-native language badly, and who doesn't even know their mother tongue.
Unless they're in a very cloistered community, kids are exposed to the, uh, "host language" very, very frequently. Our toddler has been in daycare since she was fairly young, and started picking up both English and Spanish words. (Her word for "water" remains "agua", in fact; she only recently switched from "abre" to "open".)
(And if they're in a very cloistered community, their parents are probably more focused on the native language instead of the host language anyway.)
Is that really a thing? My father is japanese and I grew up in Brazil. I don't think my lack of fluency in japanese was due to any fear from my parents - my parents spoke japanese at home and even had me attend nihongakkou (japanese classes). But it's very hard to develop real fluency without a community. My cousins had always been more fluent due to being involved in a karaoke community - something my family wasn't. My mother was born in Brazil too, and spoke japanese fluently as a child because she was raised in a isolated japanese farming community where many people couldn't speak portuguese.
Even now, with my kids, it's been far easier for them to pick up mandarin (my wife's mother tongue), since until a few months ago, their grandparents lived with us and spoke mandarin exclusively, and since the community where we lived was predominantly chinese (read: there are chinese supermarkets, there are chinese books in the library, and most classmates in their school are 1st/2nd-gen chinese). Compared to that, it's been a lot harder to get them to learn portuguese, since I'm literally the only person around them who speaks it.
Wow, you have a truly unique mix of languages in your family! :)
I thought about this a little more, and yes, community did help me develop my mother tongue a lot. There were the parents who exclusively spoke the language, but I would frequently visit my grandparents, who would also speak it. And they would take me to visit other members of the clan, who would also speak that. Perhaps it is a diversity of people speaking the language that gives one a certain amount of fluency?
I learned Hindi because it is the national language and my peers in school usually conversed in it. English was what most books were written in and it was the language of instruction. So it seemed very natural to be fluent in multiple languages.
You're lucky. I wish I could speak with my 3yo in my native language but my wife can't speak a word of it. My son refuses to speak my language because his mind refuses the idea that things can have two names. Maybe when he grows up he'll want to learn but right now there's just now way, I tried and failed.
I'm the only person that speaks my mother tongue at home too.
Something that worked well for me was making it a game when the kid wasn't expecting it. The first time was over breakfast. I brought a boogie board and told him we were gonna learn some portuguese. I drew a happy chubby boy and asked him who it was. He shrugged. I told it was him. Now I had his attention, so I drew a strawberry and asked him what that was. Once he answered, I told him "yes, morango". Then, I drew him eating it and said "Calvin come morango" (pointing to him and the strawberry as I said the respective words). Then, I said "Calvin come..." and picked up a real strawberry. Now, the exercise was kind of a guessing/memory game for him. I only covered a few words and it involved a lot of repetition and high fives, but he became a lot more open to the idea of learning portuguese after that.
When my kid was learning to read, making some flash cards also worked really well - drawing on one side, word on the other. The trick is in making a few verb ones, and nouns that can complement, plus one with a drawing of the kid, then do permutations, e.g. "Calvin come bolo" (cake), "Bolo de morango", "Calvin come bolo de chocolate", etc. "Eat" is a good starting verb, "go" is also very versatile in combination with types of vehicles and places, then you can try expanding to other daily things.
I'll test this out, sounds like a good strategy. I have also done something slightly different which is giving him a word without telling him the meaning, just playing with the sound. After a while once he can repeat it and say it fluently, I would explain what it means. By the time I do that, he's already said the word a bunch of times so I tricked him into "knowing" the word and there's nothing he can do to go back in time :)
When he grows it'll be very difficult to learn, now is the time when a child can learn many languages very easily. Take the opportunity now! I speak to our toddler in a language my wife doesn't (Finnish) and she speaks to him in a language I don't understand (French). He is fully fluent in both, in addition to English (from daycare/friends).
We're trying to do the bi-lingual thing here, with a 13 month old child. My wife speaks Finnish exclusively, I speak English.
As we're in Finland I assume that he'll have a Finnish accent when he gets a bit more proficient, but so far things seem to be working out. I expect he'll learn English pretty well, partly via me, but also via random conversations, TV, etc.
One of the pleasant surprises were that his first two words were "Daddy" and "Äiti", respectively.
It varies. Sometime saying twice, but most often he (son) will do the translating for us which is great practice. But we also have another shared language we can use (which our son also mostly understands).
,>vastly underestimating the cognitive powers of young children.
I have been wondering if education in a single language is not a inhibitor of development much beyond anything that we can presently suspect. My pathetic reading of history places human development where either languages are daily flux, along trade routes, else in close proximity and contact even as created in wartime alliances. How easily do we attribute to the national character our perception of intellectual capacity and style. The joke about Hungarians being perforce genii the complexity of their language demanding that agility. So should I expose my infant son to as many spoken languages as possible for the longest time?
I'm not a behavioral psychologist so I don't think I can offer a professional opinion about this. My point was only that if parents are proficient in another language, they shouldn't hesitate in teaching/talking to their children in it. Seems like a wasted opportunity.
My brother and I lived this, to a degree... My dad’s native language is Arabic, my mom’s is English (all of us kids and her were born in the US). We moved to Libya for a few years when I was almost two and my brother was about two months old.
When we came back my brother pretty much only spoke Arabic and I would flip between English and Arabic depending on who I was speaking to and what I was trying to say. Certainly my more advanced language skills were in Arabic.
Problem is, when we got back to the states all my family wanted us to speak in Arabic like a pet monkey doing tricks so we just flat refused to speak to anyone but my mom and dad in Arabic. The only time my dad ever spoke to us in Arabic was when he was super pissed and we were in trouble or grandma was on the phone from Libya, in which case it was past our bed time, the line sounded like static through a tin can, and we wanted nothing to do with the strained conversation. Have you tried putting your three year old on an audio only call? My kids don’t want to take part either.
My Arabic is at about the level of a four year old now (I’m 35) and my brother has no Arabic at all. Sadly, I’m conversant in Spanish to a degree I never got to in my father’s native tongue.
I don’t have the skills to teach my kids Arabic and use it around the house, but since I can for Spanish, my oldest that is entering Kindergarten in the fall has been enrolled in half-day Spanish immersion to go along with the other half in English.
I think my multi-language origin helped me excel in Spanish in school, I’ve read it could’ve been a help when I was learning to read and play music– and even if it is all placebo, I cannot fathom a harm in learning other cultures and languages.
It’s easily one of the bigger laments of my childhood that I lost the ability to converse in dad’s native language. Facebook and Google translate have helped me keep in touch, and a lot of my cousins know English better than I do Arabic- but still.
My Spanish has even helped me be able to guess at Italian and Portuguese during travels, where I otherwise would’ve been somewhat lost. Obviously there’s massive differences, but the ability to pick out a word or two on a sign goes a LONG way when you’re otherwise unable to communicate with those around you.
EDIT: I assume there might be a reply to the tune of “why not go try to learn it now”. I’d like to, but I’ve got higher priorities with three kids under 5 and things I’d rather do with my free time. I’ve almost enrolled in a class or two at the communality college and then bailed. I think its fair to say that I lament it more than I really want it back, else I would’ve done it, so I should quit whining about it.
>> My Spanish has even helped me be able to guess at Italian and Portuguese during travels, where I otherwise would’ve been somewhat lost.
I've witnessed my friend's grandmothers, one who only speaks Italian and the other only Spanish, have full on conversations in their native tongues. I wonder if having conversations in different languages is common in other language families (e.g. indu-aryan languages)?
We've worked with talking in different languages altogether. They understand German but speak it badly, for me it's the same with French. So I speak German at them and they speak French at me. It works pretty well interestingly.
Apparently Slavic languages can be mutually intelligible. My friend who is Russian had a Serbian boyfriend -- both spoke their native languages to each other and were able to more or less understand.
>>I’d like to, but I’ve got higher priorities with three kids under 5 and things I’d rather do with my free time. *
Learning the languages that I had opportunities to learn throughout my childhood (but squandered) is on my bucket list. We can all hope to find the time when the kids are older and we're hopefully able to retire while our mental faculties are still intact.
I feel very bad because I'm having a hard time getting enough Russian in with my kid. We live in America, and I'm the only Russian speaker at home - I think once she's a little older, I'm going to have to find a Russian kid-friendly meetup group.
I commented up above. I was in your daughter’s position. She may not know what’s she’s missing now, but please use it as often as you can!
Even little stuff like “grab the ketchup from the fridge” is enormous. I can’t do it with my dad’s language, but I can with Spanish and I do things like pointing at the light:
Me: What’s that
Kid: Light
Me: What’s that in Spanish?
Kid: -shrug-
Me: La luz
It doesn’t have to be a dedicated lesson, just sneak it in. I’ve got three kids under five, I know there’s 50 billion things going on, but man I wish my dad would’ve kept it up with us.
Congratulations and condolences - my single one is pushing me to my limit as a parent and a person :P
It's a good suggestion. She knew a few words for common, frequent words - like "give me", and "here, take this". I'm trying to work it back into her vocabulary again; I need to get my wife to start using those terms as well.
One thing that I've found with my kids is that TV (yes, the dreaded TV) is the best way for kids to pickup a language.
Mom/Dad speaking French? Boooring. PJ Masks or Paw Patrol en français? Oui c'est super!
Netflix recently made available lots of voice-over / subtitle options for most of their original content, and even some non-original stuff. It's super exciting time to be a multi-lingual parent.
This was a supplement to their French-langauge preschool (2d/wk,immersion) and the corresponding playdates and such with their French-speaking friends.
My parents had a rule where we'd only speak Spanish at home and English everywhere else, and now I'm fluent in both languages. It might be a bit difficult for you to implement since you're the only Russian speaker, but it's something to consider.
That rule is more realistically enforced when both parents speak the language fluently. Even with families that try to enforce this rule, much depends on the aptitude and character of the children, as we know many that can listen but never bothered to expand their fluency beyond a narrow set of home topics which unfortunately in many cases never extended to conversations dealing with emotions.
Don't forget about the aptitude of the parents! My Russian is so rusty it's liable to give people tetanus. My mom laments my loss of language, and I can feel myself stumbling every time I speak it.
>>[...] I can feel myself stumbling every time I speak it.
I'm in the same boat, and the kids pick up on our hesitation and lack of confidence in the language. Since so much of language acquisition is being able to speak confidently so that children aren't confused by the implicit context within which phrases and vocabulary are used, our impaired fluency adds more friction (and detracts from the implicit enjoyment) to the process.
We did look for a Russian daycare, but there wasn't one close enough to where we live. A Russian nanny was also a bit hard to find. Our daycare staff is fluent in Spanish, and our regular babysitter speaks Spanish as well, so hopefully she'll pick up at least enough of that to be able to speak without an accent.
I learned English easily and fluently at 10 years of age, so at least I'm telling myself that I've got about a decade before she's linguistically crippled as we all are :P
Have you looked into getting an "au pair"? Even better option than a nanny for language immersion because an au pair lives in your home. Also more cost effective!
My father spoke German and French, but it was the ability to receive French FM broadcasts on our southern coastal hilltop in England, which I think is the difference between my ability to understand the spoken languages. I was later, from high school on, exposed to far more German and Russian than French. As anecdotal as my experience is, possibly having Russian radio stations playing around the house might be helpful.
I think some of it might be the convenience of being able to speak to one another without the children knowing what is being said as well. My father's parents knew German and he wasn't taught, but recalled many times where his parents would speak German to each other in front of him, ostensibly so the children couldn't understand.
But I think a lot of the reason it is lost is just how it is unnecessary. If everyone understands English and primarily speaks it, there is no real need, or opportunity, to learn/use a second language.
>>If everyone understands English and primarily speaks it, there is no real need, or opportunity, to learn/use a second language.
This hits upon the key motivating driver (or lack thereof) of language acquisition: multiple languages generally act as a force multipler[1], but aren't as "useful" when considered in isolation.
The other problem with language acquisition from a purely utilitarian aspect is the fairly large time commitment which might be better spent elsewhere (e.g. studying core subjects in the resident language). But the paradox of the force multiplier factor is that you ideally want a fairly strong base to amplify in the first case (e.g. Math/Science). Even though people may not break it down this way, this seems to be the intuitive reasoning use by [semi-]multilingual parents, and is often another reason why the "culture/tradition" or "fun" aspects of language learning are emphasized as compensating factors.
Wouldn't they only be a force multiplier in the right network? I suppose that's what you mean by "aren't as useful when considered in isolation", though it almost sounds like you are referring to a specific language.
You're exactly right - additional languages are only force multipliers within a certain range of circumstances which one would need to actively manage to their advantage. This lends itself to parents heavily considering which languages their children should learn (e.g. Spanish, Mandarin, English) based on number of L1 or L2 speakers.
> But I think a lot of the reason it is lost is just how it is unnecessary. If everyone understands English and primarily speaks it, there is no real need, or opportunity, to learn/use a second language.
Maybe "everyone" understands where the kid lives now, but if they ever decide they want to explore their parents' country or culture, it will likely be much easier if they know the language.
Although you don't need to know anything but English in the US, knowing Spanish is extremely valuable and gives you many opportunities to connect with people different from you. There are other ways to get this too, but I'd argue knowing a foreign language that you can use at least sometimes in your area is a huge benefit.
(I'm learning Spanish - a bit rough but I know enough to carry a conversation. Talking to others in their native language been one of the more culturally-enlightening experiences I've had in a while!)
> I think some of it might be the convenience of being able to speak to one another without the children knowing what is being said as well. My father's parents knew German and he wasn't taught, but recalled many times where his parents would speak German to each other in front of him, ostensibly so the children couldn't understand.
It was the same with my parents but more out of necessity than a deliberate act. I grew up with 4 languages but my parents spoke another 2. It would be difficult to understand those extra 2 languages as they had different scripts and were really different in nature. The result was that my parents used it as an encryption framework to have a private conversation while I was around. I understood zilch.
While I basically agree, parents who fear to confuse their kids do have a point: I have heard preschoolers use portmanteaus like "bivor" for "please" (german "bitte" + spanish "por favor") and having a jard time being understood outside of their immediate circle. OTOH, this is only anecdotal evidence and I guess it is safe to assume that kids will grow out of this quickly once exposed to a single "main" language in daycare or school.
When kids have to juggle with more than one language, their initial learning is slower than kids who learn only one. Eventually that difference disappears, but that could explain the fear of the parents when they initially see their kids developing in the local language slower than their age-peers.
For me it's a different angle: it's so I can understand what my toddler wants!
We've been teaching ASL (and thus English) since she was 6 months old. This is not our native tongue. But even at 2 now, it's very difficult to understand a lot of what she's saying. Having her sign along makes it somewhat easier, but it's still a guessing game. At this age, her speech and signs aren't always very clear.
Having an even larger vocabulary in another language would make it even harder to guess what she wants! We'll start teaching her our native tongue as she gets a little bit older.
> who believe that it's better for their kid not to learn both their father tongue and mother tongue together with the language from the country they live in so that they don't get confused.
I grew up with 4 languages. It only helped me seamlessly "understand" most other foreign languages I listen to.
As someone who grew up bilingual, I don’t get this either. (Technically, since I grew up in Ireland, we also learned Irish in school, so three language, except we never spoke Irish outside of school) We never got confused!
Having said that, you do need to use all languages enough to get proficient at each of them.
I view it in terms of opportunity cost. Let's say your kid has 1 hour of productive attention span per week, time of focused learning. You can either teach them your native tongue or something else, like math and science, or better English.
Kids still pick up some vocabulary from speaking to their parents/grandparents. And even if they spoke it toddler-fluently before getting into preschooler, they won't be able to read a newspaper by the time they're teenagers. Without constant immersion, kids just don't have the discipline to keep going at it. This isn't necessarily a bad thing.
But not if they're not exposed to it frequently enough to practice hearing and speaking it. They can pick up bits and pieces - which is good - but even for kids, it's not easy to pick up a language without having to play with speaking or writing it, which is hard to do without reinforcement.
