GF's Dad speaks not ONE WORD of English!

[Jack_Dawson]

He's visiting from a tiny country in Eastern Europe. He's the coolest / warmest person ever. We just can't communicate verbally. GF translates everything.

Such a weird and powerless position to be in. My kids are going to learn 5 languages simultaneously.

:beer:

[ThomasQED]

1. Your kids

are very lucky! Enjoy the visit.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. If you marry your girlfriend, the best way to raise bilingual kids is to have

you speak only English to them and their mother to speak only her heritage language to them.

Bilingualism is easier for small children if they associate the languages with different people or different environments.

The other approach is for both of you to speak only the heritage language at home. That's harder, but I know of a case in which one parent was Hungarian and the other parent learned Hungarian so that the children would grow up with Hungarian as the home language. That's unusual.

[HEyHEY]

3. What about tri-lingual?

My GF is Chinese and we're talking marriage and kids now. I speak French, English and functional Chinese (still studying it). I want the kids to speak all three perfectly as, in Canada, it will ensure a bright future no matter what.

But, I have no idea where to stick in the third language!

[Lydia Leftcoast]

4. Immersion school?

Canada has been doing French immersion schools since the 1970s, and they apparently have the bugs ironed out.

You speak English, your girlfriend speaks Chinese, and the kids go to immersion school. Problem solved!

[HEyHEY]

5. I have thought of that. BUt I'm worried the kid will get confused and start

MIxing all three.

Sigh! Oh well, at least it'll have an understaning!

[struggle4progress]

6. I think the kids generally sort it out pretty quickly

A friend once told me about a kid raised bilingual she once knew: father spoke Am, mother spoke B, kid started with some unintelligible AB mishmash and then suddenly one day could speak complete sentences in either A or B

I knew a couple where father spoke English, mother spoke Spanish. I visited when the kid was around 2 and tried asking horrid questions where I switched language halfway through: I got coherent answers from the kid

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. They tend not to mix languages up if they use them with different people or

in different environments. Confusion arises when the same person speaks different languages to them.

[Jack_Dawson]

18. HEyHEY where'd the polar bears go?

:cry:

[XemaSab]

8. Move to Quebec?

:P

[JCMach1]

7. I know mixed Arab kids here in UAE who are only fluent in English

... so you just don't know.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

10. On the other hand, I once had an Egyptian teaching colleague who

enforced an Arabic-only rule at home, because the family went on month-long trips back to Egypt every year.

He said that some of his Egyptian friends had American-born children who spoke only English, which wasn't a problem until they visited the Egyptian relatives and the children were bored out of their minds because they couldn't understand what anyone was saying.

His children could talk to all their relatives and spent a lot of time playing with their cousins.

[JCMach1]

12. Seriously, you never know... I find it rather sad that the kids are not literate in their mother

tongue

Also, we have lived here 7 years and have given-up on our daughters learning Arabic. It doesn't click and they hate it. They have also had horrible teachers.

Instead, they have done very well with French so far.

You just never know.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

14. You find it among Japanese people, too

Many years ago, when I was a graduate student, some friends who worked in a preschool in New Haven, Connecticut, phoned and said that a Japanese couple whose son attended their school needed a babysitter for Saturday night. My friends said that the child spoke only Japanese. Would I be interested?

I agreed and went to their apartment at the appointed time. Little Ken was playing quietly with his trucks, so I just settled in to do some reading. I occasionally made comments about what he was doing, but he just gave me funny looks. Then he got tired of the trucks, and started whining something incomprehensible.

I asked him in Japanese if he wanted to look at picture books. He stared at me blankly, but he seemed to understand when I opened the first book, which was an English-language alphabet book.

Sitting down beside me, he pointed to the first page of the book, a standard "A is for apple" page, and said, "Appuru!"

I pointed to the next page, and he said, "Bukku." "C" was "kyandii." "D" was "doggu."

Contrary to what my friends thought, Ken was not speaking Japanese. He was speaking English with a thick Japanese accent.

When the parents came home, I commented on the fact that he didn't understand my Japanese.

"He doesn't speak Japanese," his father said proudly. "We always speak English to him."

I was stunned at the idiocy of it. The parents' English was, to put it kindly, awful. Furthermore, I knew from having talked to the parents that they would be going back to Japan the following year. Ken would a) go back to Japan as a Japanese child who couldn't speak Japanese, and b) forget whatever English he knew anyway. (Small children learn languages rapidly, but they can forget even their native language if they aren't exposed to it, a fact that the directors of the Native American boarding schools cruelly used to their advantage.)

I tried to explain that Ken would be better off if he learned Japanese from his parents and if English was confined to pre-school, but the parents were adamant. They loved the idea of going back to Japan with a son who spoke only English, or more accurately, Engrish.

As if to underline the inadequacy of their English, the father asked me, "What should we say when we want him to stop doing something?"

"Ikenai," I suggested, "or yamero."

But the father wanted to know how to admonish his son in English. "Should I say 'Quit carrying on that way?'"

I gave up. "Just say, 'Stop it.'"

The next day, I told my friends what had happened, and they said that it explained a lot. Ken mostly did not talk at preschool, but every so often, he would babble incomprehensibly, getting louder and louder, and then have a temper tantrum. Now they understood why. He was a five-year-old without a real language.

I sometimes wonder what happened to Ken. He would be in his thirties now.

[Jack_Dawson]

20. Bukku is two. Kyandii is three. Are you sure these were English words they were trying to say?

:beer:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

21. Whaaat?

Not in the Japanese language I know.

[kimi]

11. I think it's kind of cool

that kids know several different languages simultaneously. It shows that that their minds can switch between things quickly, they can adapt instantly, it's a good thing to know how to do, in this culture, well, in any culture. I envy that ability, in a way. Nurture it, if you can. Your kids - if you have them - will eventually be grateful.

[NewJeffCT]

13. My in-laws were like that when they came over here

They didn't speak English at all, and didn't drive, so were stuck in a suburban subdivision here in the US while my wife & I went to work during the day. When they're in China, they can just walk out of their apartment and go to a restaurant or take a cab, subway or bus where they want to go.

So, they could watch Chinese language TV on dish network and go for walks around the neighborhood, and that was about it during the day. There are several Chinese families in the subdivision (often with the grandparents visiting), but for some reason, they never really did anything with them - I think it's a cultural thing.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

15. It's a common problem in the western suburbs of Portland,

where a lot of Korean immigrants live. The old people are home alone all day with nothing to do while the adults are at work and the children are at school.

One community group set up weekday lunches for these immigrants. They pick them up in school buses and take them to a community center where they can eat Korean food and socialize with people who speak their language. I'm sure it's saved the sanity of a lot of people.

[NewJeffCT]

16. That's a great idea

but, I do think some of it is cultural. Our subdivision is big for our area in CT - 150 homes. There are about 15 Chinese/Chinese descent families and about 25 Indian/Indian descent families. The grandparents of the Indian families generally socialize with each other a lot more than the grandparents of the Chinese families. The Chinese families (parents, grandparents, kids) have a few gatherings on holidays (i.e, Chinese New Year), but that's about it. It seems like the Indian families have things going on just about every week.

[Taverner]

17. Everyone speaks the language of BEER

Sit down with a bomber (22ozer) of something local and good and share it with him

[DFW]

19. I'm in the same boat

My wife's parents speak/spoke (her dad passed away) no English at all.

They are/were from the flat farm country of northwestern Germany.

Luckily, I speak German, and we raised our kids bilingually. If it had been up to me, we would have raised them
like the fictional Nicholai Hel, whose mother raised him speaking a different language every day of the week.