Okay, so before Tommy was born I granted the wife permission to speak to him in Spanish. We've been scrounging for info on the best way to go about bringing him up learning both languages. Maybe there's no right or wrong way to do it, but I figured I'd ask here & other places for some insight.
Tom is just over 14 months old now & has been developing pretty normally. His motor skills are normal & seems to be on target with everything else. He's been picking up miscellaneous words, and can understand many more words/phrases in both English and Spanish. He sort of shocked us yesterday when the wife asked if he wanted to watch another episode of Pocoyo & he promptly responded, "Si".
We started using flash cards (letters, numbers, pictures) with him almost as a joke a few weeks ago (seemed too early), and he likes them so much now that he'll bring them to us, like he would a book he wants us to read.
What feels weird to me is that the wife does the flash cards in Spanish, and I do them in English. I wonder if we should just do one language to start with so he doesn't get too confused, or if we should just continue throwing them at him in both languages and let him sort it all out. Any thoughts from anyone who is either raising kids in 2 languages or came from a multilingual household?
Maybe the wife & I are overthinking things (e.g., she's already freaking out on what his 3rd language should be :D )
I have friends who are raising their kid to speak English and French and he seemed to have no problem understanding Dad and his family speak French while Mom and her family speak English. Fortunately there is a bilingual (well trilingual actually) school in Austin he can go to so he can meet other French speaking kids.
By the way I think you are doing an enormous service to your kid. Knowing Spanish is a nice asset to have.
I spoke mainly portuguese until the age of 4 or so until i went to preschool. There was a bit of difficulty when i entered school becasue i was behind the other kids in english language ability. But it didn't take long. Kids have an amazing ability to absorb languages.
Quote from: HVC on April 10, 2009, 10:19:22 AM
I spoke mainly portuguese until the age of 4 or so until i went to preschool. There was a bit of difficulty when i entered school becasue i was behind the other kids in english language ability. But it didn't take long. Kids have an amazing ability to absorb languages.
Do you still speak Portuguese?
This "multilingual" stuff sounds dangerously European and fruity.
Quote from: Valmy on April 10, 2009, 10:20:08 AM
Quote from: HVC on April 10, 2009, 10:19:22 AM
I spoke mainly portuguese until the age of 4 or so until i went to preschool. There was a bit of difficulty when i entered school becasue i was behind the other kids in english language ability. But it didn't take long. Kids have an amazing ability to absorb languages.
Do you still speak Portuguese?
Yup. Taught myself to read at around 16. still can't write it though.
Kind of a useless skill, truth be told. i only use it with family, and even then english is interchangable.
Quote from: Ed Anger on April 10, 2009, 10:22:16 AM
This "multilingual" stuff sounds dangerously European and fruity.
you should teach you multitudinous broad spanish. If conservative news networks have to right, you'll soon be over run by mexicans :p
Multilingual's good and your wife's right to think about the third language. Children learn language really easily until puberty, if they already know more than one then their brain's wired to make learning ones in the future far easeir.
My little brother went to a Gaelic medium primary school and nursery. But Gaelic wasn't really used at home because only my dad spoke it a bit.
Quote from: derspiess on April 10, 2009, 10:07:41 AMHe sort of shocked us yesterday when the wife asked if he wanted to watch another episode of Pocoyo & he promptly responded, "Si".
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Flamima.blogia.com%2Fupload%2F20071129090337-pocoyo1.jpg&hash=90b2f0b6a4fa39faba52f3e521c4d3434f66455c)
In Spanish or in English? ;)
And, AFAIK, you can't understimate the ability of small children to absorb knowledge. :)
Quote from: HVC on April 10, 2009, 10:22:59 AM
Yup. Taught myself to read at around 16. still can't write it though.
Kind of a useless skill, truth be told. i only use it with family, and even then english is interchangable.
Take vacations to Brazil :P
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 10, 2009, 10:24:32 AM
Children learn language really easily until puberty, if they already know more than one then their brain's wired to make learning ones in the future far easeir.
Yeah I learned to speak and read and write French as an adult. Once outside of France I quickly forgot most of it and have not really had much facility to learn anything else. My brain just does not retain the information very well. Sometimes I wonder if I moved to a French speaking place if it would all come back to me...
Quote from: Valmy on April 10, 2009, 10:28:22 AM
Quote from: HVC on April 10, 2009, 10:22:59 AM
Yup. Taught myself to read at around 16. still can't write it though.
Kind of a useless skill, truth be told. i only use it with family, and even then english is interchangable.
Take vacations to Brazil :P
South America is highly over rated... and dangerous :p
Quote from: Ed Anger on April 10, 2009, 10:22:16 AM
This "multilingual" stuff sounds dangerously European and fruity.
I know-- I came close to putting up "English Only" signs all through the house.
FWIW, I've got the wife on-board with making German his 3rd language. She had wanted it to be Italian :huh:. Thankfully she wasn't pushing for French :D
Quote from: Valmy on April 10, 2009, 10:30:03 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 10, 2009, 10:24:32 AM
Children learn language really easily until puberty, if they already know more than one then their brain's wired to make learning ones in the future far easeir.
Yeah I learned to speak and read and write French as an adult. Once outside of France I quickly forgot most of it and have not really had much facility to learn anything else. My brain just does not retain the information very well. Sometimes I wonder if I moved to a French speaking place if it would all come back to me...
My dad used to be fluent in French because they had to learn it in school when he was little. He even lived in quebec when he first came over to canada. 7 years after leaving quebec he forgot it all lol. so i don't think how old you were when you learned a language matters as much as perpetual use of a language.
Quote from: derspiess on April 10, 2009, 10:33:35 AM
Thankfully she wasn't pushing for French :D
Why? Then he could spy on our French and Canadian enemies.
Quote from: The Larch on April 10, 2009, 10:27:44 AM
In Spanish or in English? ;)
And, AFAIK, you can't understimate the ability of small children to absorb knowledge. :)
He watches most of the episodes streaming via Netflix, so those are English. I did find some Spanish episodes on Youtube, which I'm trying to play more often because the English episodes are getting quite repetitive (edit: not competitive :blush: ).
The dude who does the voice for the Spanish episodes sounds like Antonio Banderas, but I guess a lot of Spanish guys sound that way to me.
Friends raise their kids (3+5 yo) with Arabic and German, both parents speaking their native tongue, and it works out just fine. Looks like they started speaking a little later than their monolingual buddies but the kindergarten scenes are completely in German and after a few days in Sudan they started babbling in Arabic like they always spoke it.
Quote from: Valmy on April 10, 2009, 10:39:48 AM
Why? Then he could spy on our French and Canadian enemies.
Although I currently love the French, the thought of my kid speaking French weirds me out.
Good jop derspiess. :cool:
I wish my Dad had taught me Spanish when I was a kid.
I've a friend here in Sweden whose mam is Australian and she (the friend. Never met the mam. Presumably her too though) speaks utterly perfect Australian English. The way her parents did it she says is that they mostly spoke English around the home as the Swedish came to her naturally in hanging out with other kids, watching TV, being in the world at large, etc...
This way sort of makes sense to me; you see loads of immigrant families with parents who don't speak a word of English but kids who speak just like the area they gew up in.
You should be careful to try and keep Spanish relevant to your kid here derspiess or else it'll just be relegated to being the 'silly mommy language' and he'll figure out he can get by just fine with English all the time and get nowhere with Spanish.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on April 10, 2009, 11:10:29 AM
Good jop derspiess. :cool:
I wish my Dad had taught me Spanish when I was a kid.
Same, except German in my case. I am from the first generation of my father's family to not speak a mix of English and German in the home (though in my case we're talking Pennsylvania Dutch, not modern European German). My grandfather spoke German exclusively as a child.
Quote from: Tyr on April 10, 2009, 11:14:21 AM
You should be careful to try and keep Spanish relevant to your kid here derspiess or else it'll just be relegated to being the 'silly mommy language' and he'll figure out he can get by just fine with English all the time and get nowhere with Spanish.
We'll probably ship him down to Argentina a few times, where he'll have no choice but to use it. And he will likely have friends around here in similar situations. German would be a bit trickier.
Quote from: derspiess on April 10, 2009, 10:33:35 AM
Quote from: Ed Anger on April 10, 2009, 10:22:16 AM
This "multilingual" stuff sounds dangerously European and fruity.
I know-- I came close to putting up "English Only" signs all through the house.
FWIW, I've got the wife on-board with making German his 3rd language. She had wanted it to be Italian :huh:. Thankfully she wasn't pushing for French :D
Italian would be about as useful as a 2nd appendix.
Quote from: derspiess on April 10, 2009, 11:39:01 AM
Quote from: Tyr on April 10, 2009, 11:14:21 AM
You should be careful to try and keep Spanish relevant to your kid here derspiess or else it'll just be relegated to being the 'silly mommy language' and he'll figure out he can get by just fine with English all the time and get nowhere with Spanish.
We'll probably ship him down to Argentina a few times, where he'll have no choice but to use it. And he will likely have friends around here in similar situations. German would be a bit trickier.
Teach him to talk the American Way...loud.
I SAY PABLO, I WANT MY STEAK WELL DONE.
Quote from: derspiess on April 10, 2009, 10:33:35 AM
She had wanted it to be Italian :huh:.
Isn't your wife Argentine? If so, it makes quite a bit of sense that she wanted the third to be Italian--Argentina has one of the largest segments of Italian-descent citizens in the world, outside of Italy. :wopancestry: :smarty:
Quote from: Habbaku on April 10, 2009, 12:31:33 PM
Isn't your wife Argentine? If so, it makes quite a bit of sense that she wanted the third to be Italian--Argentina has one of the largest segments of Italian-descent citizens in the world, outside of Italy. :wopancestry: :smarty:
Yeah-- Argentine culture is probably influenced at least as much by Italian as by Spanish culture. Not sure if that's the reason or not, though. Hard to tell with her.
Why German? I assume, with your name here, there's some family connection or just a very strong interest?
We're teaching our daughter english and japanese. Don't see any need to teach her german, they all speak english or turkish anyway.
We're bringing up our 2 sons bilingually, they'll be able to speak both Icelandic and Norwegian. The oldest one is two and a half years old and already he speaks Icelandic to me and Norwegian to his mom. Plus, he has access to other kids his age who are bilingual in those languages as well.
Quote from: derspiess on April 10, 2009, 12:37:08 PMHard to tell with her.
Are you not able to understand her when she talks? :lol:
From what I have seen personally learning two or three languages simultaneosuly is no problem for kids. It's worse for their older relatives who feel stupid when a 4 year old is fluent in three languages.
Quote from: derspiess on April 10, 2009, 10:33:35 AM
I know-- I came close to putting up "English Only" signs all through the house.
FWIW, I've got the wife on-board with making German his 3rd language. She had wanted it to be Italian :huh:. Thankfully she wasn't pushing for French :D
Deutsch über Alles. Es ist gut genug für mich. :cheers:
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 10, 2009, 12:42:07 PM
Why German? I assume, with your name here, there's some family connection or just a very strong interest?
I think it would be useful for him for academic or business purposes. I guess my family heritage is a small part of it.
Plus it would give me the opportunity to scold him in 3 different languages when he gets older :)
Quote from: Caliga on April 10, 2009, 01:26:15 PM
Are you not able to understand her when she talks? :lol:
Sometimes :(
Espec. when she chooses to use the wrong words for some things & then refuses to stop doing it-- e.g., one birthday she asked for "weights" so I got her a set of weights to use for working out. She got mad at me when she opened them up, because she actually wanted bathroom scales. She even said "no, I wanted
weights, not.... weights."
Quote from: derspiess on April 10, 2009, 10:07:41 AM
Okay, so before Tommy was born I granted the wife permission to speak to him in Spanish. We've been scrounging for info on the best way to go about bringing him up learning both languages. Maybe there's no right or wrong way to do it, but I figured I'd ask here & other places for some insight.
Tom is just over 14 months old now & has been developing pretty normally. His motor skills are normal & seems to be on target with everything else. He's been picking up miscellaneous words, and can understand many more words/phrases in both English and Spanish. He sort of shocked us yesterday when the wife asked if he wanted to watch another episode of Pocoyo & he promptly responded, "Si".
We started using flash cards (letters, numbers, pictures) with him almost as a joke a few weeks ago (seemed too early), and he likes them so much now that he'll bring them to us, like he would a book he wants us to read.
What feels weird to me is that the wife does the flash cards in Spanish, and I do them in English. I wonder if we should just do one language to start with so he doesn't get too confused, or if we should just continue throwing them at him in both languages and let him sort it all out. Any thoughts from anyone who is either raising kids in 2 languages or came from a multilingual household?
Maybe the wife & I are overthinking things (e.g., she's already freaking out on what his 3rd language should be :D )
that's a common misconception that teaching kids more than one thing ends up confusing them. Most studies have determined that kids of this age are real sponges and learn just about everything you throw at them.
Yes, if he's young, he may get a little confused and sometimes say dog, some other times perro, but as he grows up, it will settle in place, usually by the time he reach school.
Many parents here have some fear that if their kids learn english at a young age, they won't be able to speak/write french correctly, but it has been proven to be quite the opposite.
In fact, I remember posting an article on the old Languish about bilingual and multilingual children becoming more intelligent than others.
I already feel superior to a whole bunch of languishites :P