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Post by catgirl on Jun 4, 2007 17:09:47 GMT -5
I would like to know if you people in here are billinigual and if you teach/ or will consider teaching your kids more than one language? And which language would it be?
My maternal languages are english and Norwegian, but since both my boyfriend and I speak mostly Norwegian together, I think it might be hard to teach them english from an early age...
I speak english with my mum and dad and grandmother, but still Im not sure how it will be when I have kids.
Does anyone have any suggestions or experience? Stories to tell?
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Post by TeeHee on Jun 5, 2007 1:14:12 GMT -5
My bf is someone I can see myself settling down having kids with. Obviously this is all still a hypothetical scenario at this point. But when/if I have kids with him, I'll be teaching them to be bi-/multi-lingual. I'm thinking ASL(American Sign Language) will be their first. With a deaf father who uses sign, it'll be a must for communication with him. I'll speak in Vietnamese to them as I sign so that they'll get both those 2 languages in one go. Either way, they'll pick up regular spoken English when they begin school. Well, all this is assuming if our kids are hearing. with a deaf white father and a mixed/EA mother, they'll be EA CoDAs( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_of_Deaf_Adult ). If they're deaf, ASL will be a given, and written English later on.
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Post by lo1337a on Jun 5, 2007 1:39:26 GMT -5
^ mixing ASL with Vietnamese is going to be tough but good luck. Sounds like you've got it planned out.
I can sign a little (I used to take classes) but I only learned it as a "just in case I need it" thing. I don't know anyone in the deaf community aside from my professer and my old classmates, but if I ever have kids I will definitely be teaching them the little I know, even if it's just so I have some way of communicating with them in public that no one else with understand.
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Post by TeeHee on Jun 5, 2007 1:55:00 GMT -5
^ mixing ASL with Vietnamese is going to be tough but good luck. Sounds like you've got it planned out. well, i already do that, for when i'm talking with both my dad(with whom i only speak vietnamese) and my bf present at the same time for example. ^hehe about that last bit. aside from that though, teaching babies/children sign at an early age not only leads to better communication between the parent and child, but also stimulates intellectual development etc.(as research has shown, babies who learned sign have a better bond of communication with their parents earlier than babies who didn't and just do speech alone at a later stage). this woman i knew of(mother of 2 hard-of-hearing sons) was telling us about how she'd adopted a [hearing] child with down syndrome who initially didn't have much communication with anyone. she taught that child sign and saw great improvement with the bond that child was having with the rest of her family with the help of signing. i encourage any parent to check out [baby] sign books like these anyhow, i use to have very little to no personal contact with anyone in the deaf community when i first started learning it(in highschool), but since sometime last fall, majority of the people i hang out with regularly are associated with the deaf community(be it actual deaf people, CoDAs, interpreters, or ASL students/aspiring to become interpreters like myself).
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Post by mishkin on Jun 5, 2007 19:31:33 GMT -5
My kids gone learn spanish - russian- german- and english of course... and asian language i dont know any so if they learn one is not from me . I want to have 3 children.
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Post by lo1337a on Jun 5, 2007 23:14:08 GMT -5
I want to have three children and teach them all different languages so they can't communicate with each other and just fight. We'll live smack in the middle of Switzerland and it will be like each child has their own separate section of country. And I, I will be incredibly amused as they fight over whether something is a biscuit, biscotto or plätzchen.
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Post by ladystacey on Jun 6, 2007 0:25:44 GMT -5
My husband speaks french most of the time with our son, I speak probably 70% in english and the rest in mandarin. He has easily picked up all 3 languages, he might not be fluent yet but he does use a lot of everyday words in all 3. It's really nice to that he can communicate with my in laws because they know very little english. I will probably have him continue learning mandarin more when he is older by after school program since my writing skills are bad I haven't written in characters in years. My husband is pretty good at teaching him french so we just go with the flow. He's also learned some Spanish from his pre-school which I had no idea they were teaching, he just started to count in Spanish and I was like, what the???
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Post by catgirl on Jun 6, 2007 5:13:20 GMT -5
Why don't you speak English to your kids, Catgirl? I knew a snobby Russian woman whose 2nd or 3rd language was French but she spoke French to her daughter while the father spoke English. Unfortunately the child doesn't speak Russian but hey, at least she's bilingual. I'd like my kids to go to a bilingual school learning English and Spanish. I'd hope they'd learn more languages but I really don't care if it's Manadarin, Russian, or even kind of useless like "Catalan" or "Quechua. " I'll probably have to force it on them. Kids are stubborn about learning languages and don't appreciate it until later in life. Yes, I'll force my kids to go to Chinese or Arabic school or whatever is offered in my city. ;D I think it might be hard cause my boyfriend and I only speak Norwegian together. But we have discussed living abroad for some years when we start working, so that might make it easier to teach our future kids a foreign language.
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Post by Ajeno on Jun 6, 2007 8:05:41 GMT -5
Spanish.It would also be nice to teach them their native language too.
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Post by avax on Jun 6, 2007 8:24:14 GMT -5
I am more concerned with their quality and mastery over one single language rather than being a jack of all trades.
That said, of course a bi/tri or multilingual ability would give them a competitive edge and who wouldn't want that for their children?
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Post by catgirl on Jun 6, 2007 10:42:35 GMT -5
I doubt my kids will know more than 2 or 3 languages. If they learn more it would probably be basic or intermediate, if lucky. In my fantasy world I would like my kids to speak English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Turkish, Russian, Arabic, Mandarin or Cantonese, any Malay language, any Polynesian language, any Native American language, Irish, Romansch, any indigenous South American language, and an endangered language of their choice. 16 languages total. Really this is my dream but don't parents want to live their dreams throught their kids? ;D oi, thats alot of languages, hehe. But kids pick up on languages very easily, so if you expose them to the right environments they might be able to learn way more than an adult could dream about learning.
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Post by catgirl on Jun 6, 2007 10:45:27 GMT -5
Well, it is also said that bilingual kids have a better starting point for learning other foreign languages in the future. The more languages you speak, the easier it will be to learn the next language. So tecnically it would be a good idea...
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Post by Freecia on Jun 6, 2007 10:53:35 GMT -5
I am more concerned with their quality and mastery over one single language rather than being a jack of all trades. That said, of course a bi/tri or multilingual ability would give them a competitive edge and who wouldn't want that for their children? You've definetely nailed it. For me, growing up in two different countries sure gave me the advantage to know two different languages. Looking at myself now though, I have neither perfected English or Chinese. I have decent listening, speaking, and writing skills for both, but none of em is good enough on a professional level. Reading books and mimicking senetence structures is one thing, but when it comes to expressing my opinions in a professional manner, that's where it hurts. Like you haven't noticed my terrible English grammar already, I'm sure this is a disadvantage to me in the work field.... With that said, I plan on sticking with my plan to let my future children master English as their primary language, while being able to speak Chinese on the side. As long as my children can understand and Chinese, they can learn how to write it if they want in the future. My husband doesn't speak a word of Chinese, so I will just need to do my part and speak to my children in full on Chinese when they grow up. I really want them to at least be able to speak two languages, not just for the sake of their future career advantage, but also to let them remember and respect their ancestry. With Spanish, it'll be a little hard to learn, since the only person that I know who speaks Spanish is my grandma, and she's in Taiwan. It'll be harder for my children to learn Spanish, but taking them to school to learn it will have to do....
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naia
Junior Member
Posts: 165
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Post by naia on Jun 6, 2007 11:02:25 GMT -5
I want my kids to learn as many as possible esp Malay,Arabic or any European language.Mandarin would be good too if they wer 2 venture into the business world.I don't want my kids to mix the languages up whenever they speak like "I like to 'baca buku' ".baca buku-read books in malay.I use to have that habit when i was little.I still do,but not as worse as before.I have to actually,just to make some asian workers understand :s Sad to say my younger siblings does it.They don't understand/know either the malay/english words so they habitually do what i did.
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Post by catgirl on Jun 6, 2007 11:16:02 GMT -5
I am more concerned with their quality and mastery over one single language rather than being a jack of all trades. That said, of course a bi/tri or multilingual ability would give them a competitive edge and who wouldn't want that for their children? You've definetely nailed it. For me, growing up in two different countries sure gave me the advantage to know two different languages. Looking at myself now though, I have neither perfected English or Chinese. I have decent listening, speaking, and writing skills for both, but none of em is good enough on a professional level. Reading books and mimicking senetence structures is one thing, but when it comes to expressing my opinions in a professional matter, that's where it hurts. Like you haven't noticed my terrible English grammar already, I'm sure this is a disadvantage to me in the work field.... With that said, I plan on sticking with my plan to let my future children master English as their primary language, while being able to speak Chinese on the side. As long as my children can understand and Chinese, they can learn how to write it if they want in the future. My husband doesn't speak a word of Chinese, so I will just need to do my part and speak to my children in full on Chinese when they grow up. I really want them to at least be able to speak two languages, not just for the sake of their future career advantage, but also to let them remember and respect their ancestry. With Spanish, it'll be a little hard to learn, since the only person that I know who speaks Spanish is my grandma, and she's in Taiwan. It'll be harder for my children to learn Spanish, but taking them to school to learn it will have to do.... I believe that TOO MANY languages can make it difficult for the child to learn the languages perfectly, so maybe it would be wise to focus on maybe 2 langauges at the time. I also think the children will learn correct grammar and advanced words at school in any given language, cause there is a difference between oral and written language (academic language etc). I learnt english as a first language and I eventually learnt Norwegian in kindergarden when I was around 5 years old. But still my Norwegian language is slightly better than my english, and I know more Norwegian words than I know english ones, and Im still learing new english words at school. But I think when you have the basic language, you have a great chance of developping the language better if you are in the right environment (living in a certain country, going to a school that uses the language etc)
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