Bilingual babies (XPOSTED)

I work as a children's librarian in a very multiculturally enriched area and
I regularly go out to talk to new mums with their gorgeous babies about
books, reading and libraries. It's a terrible job but someone has to do it
;-)

From time to time I get asked about babies growing up in families with more
than one language. Who has experience with this?
Did you do anything to encourage the two languages alongside each other? Or
did you just concentrate on the one over the other? eg English over Greek
Did you notice any drawbacks in your child acquiring the two languages?

Also does anyone happen to have any good online references about bilingual
language acquisition in young children?

Liz

"Staycalm" writes:

From time to time I get asked about babies growing up in families with more
than one language. Who has experience with this?
Did you do anything to encourage the two languages alongside each other? Or
did you just concentrate on the one over the other? eg English over Greek
Did you notice any drawbacks in your child acquiring the two languages?

I live in Finland and the situation you described is not uncommon in
Finnish families. Finland has a minority of Swedish-speaking people and
the official languages of Finland are Finnish and Swedish. There are
thousands of families where one of the parents speaks Finnish and another
speaks Swedish. (You may think that thousands of families is not much,
but you must take into account that the whole population of Finland is about
5 million people.) All experts here say that in those families each parent
should speak systematically his/her own mother tongue to the child. In
that way, the child learns the both languages and do not mix them.
It is important that the parents start using their own language
just after the birth and do not wait until the baby starts to speak.

I know some families using this system and it works fine. The children
really learn perfectly the both languages. During the age of 1-2 years,
the progress in learning to speak may be little slower than among
onelingual children, but this is only temporary and the bilingual
children catch up the others soon.

(Sorry about my language mistakes - English is not my mother tongue)

Kerttu

I live in Finland and the situation you described is not uncommon in
Finnish families. Finland has a minority of Swedish-speaking people and
the official languages of Finland are Finnish and Swedish. There are
thousands of families where one of the parents speaks Finnish and another
speaks Swedish. (You may think that thousands of families is not much,
but you must take into account that the whole population of Finland is
about
5 million people.) All experts here say that in those families each parent
should speak systematically his/her own mother tongue to the child. In
that way, the child learns the both languages and do not mix them.
It is important that the parents start using their own language
just after the birth and do not wait until the baby starts to speak.

I know some families using this system and it works fine. The children
really learn perfectly the both languages. During the age of 1-2 years,
the progress in learning to speak may be little slower than among
onelingual children, but this is only temporary and the bilingual
children catch up the others soon.

(Sorry about my language mistakes - English is not my mother tongue)

Kerttu
Thanks Kerttu! That is what I have been recommending but I thought I should
have some real life experiences as an example. Your English is excellent!

Liz

In message , Staycalm
writes

From time to time I get asked about babies growing up in families with more
than one language. Who has experience with this?
Did you do anything to encourage the two languages alongside each other? Or
did you just concentrate on the one over the other? eg English over Greek
Did you notice any drawbacks in your child acquiring the two languages?

Also does anyone happen to have any good online references about bilingual
language acquisition in young children?


http://www.nethelp.no/cindy/biling-fam.html

is the website for the bilingual families mailing list. You could join
the list and ask there, or the website has quite a bit of information
too.

FWIW I'm British and DH is Finnish and we live in the UK. DH has always
spoken Finnish to the kids and DD (4) understands Finnish but doesn't
speak much. This method is usually referred to as One Parent One
Language. My personal opinion is that this doesn't work too well when
the minority language parent is the one who spends less time with the
kids as there isn't enough minority language input, but this is just
from my own personal experience. We're trying to switch to some kind of
Minority Language at Home system instead as we though it might encourage
DD (and 1 year-old DS once he starts talking) to speak Finnish to Daddy
if I spoke Finnish to him too, but we're finding it quite hard going as
we've spoken English to each other for 10 years and it's quite hard to
switch and while I can manage the couple of hours between him getting
home and them going to bed, I can't keep it up over a whole weekend!

Hope this helps
--
Kate

Kate writes:

FWIW I'm British and DH is Finnish and we live in the UK. DH has
always spoken Finnish to the kids and DD (4) understands Finnish but
doesn't speak much. This method is usually referred to as One Parent
One Language. My personal opinion is that this doesn't work too well
when the minority language parent is the one who spends less time with
the kids as there isn't enough minority language input, but this is
just from my own personal experience.

Actually, I have also heard of this problem in the case the child does
not meet regularly any other person speaking the language except her/his
parent. In Finland, most bilingual (Finnish-Swedish) families send their
children to a Swedish-speaking daycare and school so that the children
have enough practise of the minority language.

However, if this is not possible and it seems that the child understands
but not speaks the other language, the situation may be better than
you think. I know a Finnish-American family living in Finland. The
American mother speaks systematically English to her twin daughters.
The twins understood it, but usually answered to their mother in
Finnish and did not speak much English. When the twins were 4 years
old, the family moved to USA for one year. In a couple of days the twins
realised that no one understood them if they spoke Finnish. They started
to speak English and did it from the beginning almost without any
difficulties.

Kerttu

"Staycalm" wrote in
u:

I work as a children's librarian in a very multiculturally
enriched area and I regularly go out to talk to new mums
with their gorgeous babies about books, reading and
libraries. It's a terrible job but someone has to do it ;-)

oh, you poor thing!

From time to time I get asked about babies growing up in
families with more than one language. Who has experience
with this? Did you do anything to encourage the two
languages alongside each other? Or did you just concentrate
on the one over the other? eg English over Greek Did you
notice any drawbacks in your child acquiring the two
languages?

oh, by all means use both if possible! children in bilingual
households sometimes speak later than kids in homes where one
language is used.
we aren't bilingual really, although Tom & i both know
German, but we do have a friend that speaks to Boo in
Icelandic. it's really important to hear the phonemes of a
language while they are young. it makes learning the language
easier later (different languages use different phonemes).
i had a horrible time with French, despite attending a school
where French was taught starting in Kindergarten. OTOH, i
found German very easy, even though i took it in High School,
because my grandparents had spoken to me in that language (or
Swedish) & i understood the phonemes.
lee
--
war is peace
freedom is slavery
ignorance is strength
1984-George Orwell

snip
"Staycalm"
I work as a children's librarian in a very multiculturally enriched area
and I regularly go out to talk to new mums with their gorgeous babies about
books, reading and libraries. It's a terrible job but someone has to do it
;-)

From time to time I get asked about babies growing up in families with
more than one language. Who has experience with this?
Did you do anything to encourage the two languages alongside each other?
Or did you just concentrate on the one over the other? eg English over
Greek
Did you notice any drawbacks in your child acquiring the two languages?

Also does anyone happen to have any good online references about bilingual
language acquisition in young children?

Liz
Having grown up in a country where there was a lot of bi-lingual language
development, the basic guideline was learning to speak two languages was
good. As Kerttu said it slows them a bit in the beginning but they soon
catch up. The only other thing was that written language should only be in
one language until about the age of 10. Normally the language they would
mainly be educated in first, then the other tongue second.

Also, learning to speak it needs a lot of exposure. It not really any good
only speaking it with the grand parents once a week or month. My two learn
Mandarin at school, and once a week is not enough to give the impetus to
give them confidence in talking in the language, or the vocabulary that
everyday conversation would give them.
Marc

Kerttu Pollari-Malmi wrote in
:

(Sorry about my language mistakes - English is not my
mother tongue)

um, the only mistake was onelingual instead of monolingual.
your written English is better than mine & i'm a native
English speaker
lee

--
war is peace
freedom is slavery
ignorance is strength
1984-George Orwell

In message , Kerttu Pollari-Malmi
writes

Actually, I have also heard of this problem in the case the child does
not meet regularly any other person speaking the language except her/his
parent. In Finland, most bilingual (Finnish-Swedish) families send their
children to a Swedish-speaking daycare and school so that the children
have enough practise of the minority language.

We are lucky in that there seems to have been an explosion in the number
of Finnish-English families with small children here in Bristol and the
Finnish Saturday School where I used to go for adult classes now offers
a children's group. It's only a couple of hours every other weekend in
term time but there are about 10 kids aged from 0 to about 8 and that's
been fantastic for DD. I think before that she thought speaking Finnish
was just something weird that Daddy did.

However, if this is not possible and it seems that the child understands
but not speaks the other language, the situation may be better than
you think. I know a Finnish-American family living in Finland. The
American mother speaks systematically English to her twin daughters.
The twins understood it, but usually answered to their mother in
Finnish and did not speak much English. When the twins were 4 years
old, the family moved to USA for one year. In a couple of days the twins
realised that no one understood them if they spoke Finnish. They started
to speak English and did it from the beginning almost without any
difficulties.

DD does speak more when we go to Finland, but we're slightly hampered by
well-meaning relatives who want to speak English to her. Even if they
try hard not to, they can't help understanding her and have often
automatically passed her the ketchup, say, when she's asked in English
without thinking about it. I guess that's a problem going that way
round, that most people in Finland will understand English.

When we were there in the summer we did think about moving to Finland
for a year maybe when the children are a bit older. As you say, it would
probably work wonders.
--
Kate

"Staycalm" wrote in message
u...
I work as a children's librarian in a very multiculturally enriched area
and
I regularly go out to talk to new mums with their gorgeous babies about
books, reading and libraries. It's a terrible job but someone has to do it
;-)

From time to time I get asked about babies growing up in families with
more
than one language. Who has experience with this?
Did you do anything to encourage the two languages alongside each other?
Or
did you just concentrate on the one over the other? eg English over Greek
Did you notice any drawbacks in your child acquiring the two languages?

Also does anyone happen to have any good online references about bilingual
language acquisition in young children?

Liz

They talked about this in my early education class a few years ago. There
are some excellent books... possibly talk to a teacher? I had a great text
book but I let it go. As Lee said children in bilinguel homes speak later.
They said this is the best time for a child to learn two languages because
the brain is primed for learning and then some. Here it is Spanish and
English.

Anni