Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
We want our son to speak English and Spanish, but really don't know how to start. My husband's brushing up on Spanish (hasn't used it regularly since he was a child), but I only know words and can't form sentences.
How did you teach your kids two languages? Was there a time when they refused to speak one or the other?
I don't have kids but I am American and my wife is Japanese. Most of our friends are people in the same situation as my wife likes to converse with Japanese women and I usually get along with their husbands.
Anyway, some of our friends have children of young ages and typically the way they have done it is having one parent speak in Japanese and the other in English. Typically, the child takes a little longer to develop and recognize speech patterns than most children do. I think this can be attributed to hearing two words for the same thing. However, at about the age of 3 the children excel very quickly and at about 6 or 7 years of age they can typically speak both languages flawlessly (for that age). I think it is of evergrowing importance for children to speak two languages because I think it helps stimulate the brain at a young age and, in my opinion, makes your children smarter.
The "Teach Me _____" and/or "Teach Me More _____" series is great
I'm studying to be a foreign language teacher: mostly Spanish, but also Italian & French. I also know some American Sign Language. I taught myself ASL using ASL Browser to translate favorite stories & songs.
My daughter's father is pretty fluent in French & Spanish (I think Creole, too?) + he knows some German, Russian & Arabic....
I use ASL to help my daughter bridge between various languages & just use dictionaries for those languages I don't know well enough so as to translate her favorite stories/songs. Libraries also have lots of bilingual books for kids.
My town has some bilingual gatherings/cooperatives, too. So far as I can tell, these started when people simply hung flyers asking for others to meet up!
I grew up speaking English and Italian, as within my family, we didn't speak a whole lot of English. Both my parents were fluent and without accent, we just had many family members who were just immigrating from Italy. Now I know English, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish. I think in the US today, it is important to be bilingual. Obviously depending on where you live, a language such as Japanese may not be so important, but I feel that as time goes by, Spanish will become more and more important whether we like it or not. I know that preparing your children for a career is probably a long ways off, but for examples sake, a career in healthcare will be much more lucrative if you are fluent in Spanish, the same way Japanese and Chinese will continue to become important to those in business-related careers.
To segway, when I was growing up in Avon, CT everyone spoke English, however twenty minutes away in New Britain, Polish and Russian weren't uncommon. In fact, I learned in high school that to be a bank teller in New Britain, you needed to have elementary knowledge of English, Spanish, Polish, and Russian.
My daughter is bi-lingual, though technically she can be tri-lingual. I am Filipino, my husband is Colombian, and of course we speak English. My mother-in-law's inability to speak English is actually how my daughter came to be bi-lingual. She is only 4 y.o. but she knows that at grandma's house she speaks Spanish only, and at home she speaks English. My daughter is so fluent in Spanish that she can converse with her cousins in Colombia over the phone without hesitation.
If a member of my family spoke 100% Tagalog, I'm sure my daughter would be tri-lingual (English, Spanish, Tagalog), but I never had any opportunities to immerse her in my native language. At her grandma's, not only must she speak to grandma in Spanish, but the television and radio and grandma's friends all reinforce the use of the language.
My son, from a previous relationship, is not bi-lingual, but he understands Tagalog better than any of my Filipino-American friends. Although he cannot speak it back, you can speak to him in Tagalog only and he'll understand every word. This is because he grew up with my family because I was a single mom.
On a different note, I think the best language education is from practice, practice, practice with fluent speakers. I would love to be fluent in Spanish because as a social work student, I foresee it would be an asset. I don't think I can properly counsel a Spanish client with Spanish learned from school-- I need to be able to distiniguish the different nuances of language that can't be learned from a book.
And yes, bi-lingual kids do have an advantage. It's not just about being able to juggle different languages, but it's also about having a larger vocabulary for communication. Later in life, it comes in handy when you want to gossip about the mono-lingual person sitting next to you!
Location: Ohio, but moving to El Paso, TX August/September
434 posts, read 1,653,391 times
Reputation: 310
Quote:
Originally Posted by jco
We want our son to speak English and Spanish, but really don't know how to start. My husband's brushing up on Spanish (hasn't used it regularly since he was a child), but I only know words and can't form sentences.
How did you teach your kids two languages? Was there a time when they refused to speak one or the other?
Since we are moving to El Paso, I assume the kids will pick up a whole bunch of Spanish.
They know a few words in Dutch and use those, but at the age they are now (3), sometimes they'll turn to me and speak a few words in Dutch not realizing that I can't speak it back. I figure when they're older they'll also pick up more on each trip subsequent trip we'll take to Holland. I hope they pick up some more Dutch considering they are also Dutch citizens.
I come from a spanish background and I speak it but I'm not as fluent as I used to be because I don't have anyone to speak with on a regular basis and that's the crux of fluency.
If your son is not continuosly reminded to speak the language, he will forget.
I've always hired nannies/babysitters who spoke spanish and asked them to only speak in spanish to my children. Although it is difficult for my older daughter, my younger two fluently understood. Fast forward 1 year (we haven't had any outside help and we've moved twice) and I've met a friend who's fluent in spanish and we've been talking a little in front of my kids--they look at me like I'm crazy and they don't understand.
All it takes is a little time without the language and it's gone.
Good Luck. Fluency can be difficult if you and your husband don't speak a second language. You might want to look into an immersion school.
I've been trying to raise our daughter bilingual (English and Spanish). She speaks in both with a preference towards English. She definitely understands both languages just as well. I also introduced her to ASL before she could speak and she learned a lot of signs for everyday things.
The best way to teach a child a second language is to have a parent or caretaker speak it exclusively to the child. Since my husband doesn't speak Spanish, I must admit that I often reverse to English when the three of us are together. Otherwise, she associates Spanish with me.
If you want to introduce Spanish to your child, I would take advantage of bilingual shows (Dora the Explorer, Diego, Handy Manny and even Sesame Street). There are also bilingual toys (Leap Frog has several), music (Fisher Price Cantemos en Espanol is my daughter's favorite), books (we have many traditional children's books in both languages) and DVDs (Brainy Baby Spanish and others). While she won't learn fluency this way, she will be exposed to numbers, colors and everyday words in both languages. Also, our county offers an "immersion program for toddlers: Hola Baby." These are all options before your child enters school.
I think it's a valuable skill to have. Good luck with your efforts.
My daughter is only 16 mths old, but I have started speaking to her in my native language (korean) since the day she was born. My husband is caucasian and I am korean and we're determined to raise our daughter bilingual. I try to speak to her exclusively in korean and my husband speaks to her in english. I think she understands korean more than english right now since I'm a work-at-home mom and spend my entire day with her. Sometimes I wonder if the korean/english will add confusion, but I think she'll be fine once she's in preschool where she'll be exposed to english more.
mlv311 has good suggestions with the bilingual programs for kids. Good luck!
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
