posted
Good Day everybody , I would like to propose a new thread discussing the bilingual family matters , is there anybody who’s raising up a bilingual /multilingual children ? please share your unique experience with other interested and eager to know parents such as myself Posts: 92 | From: cairo | Registered: Feb 2007
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posted
My kiddo is exposed to four languages and to my ultimate amazement he's managing really well.
What exactly would you like to talk about? It's a subject that needs a whole website!
Posts: 8756 | From: Tax-Free Zone | Registered: Jul 2005
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We can just share our experiences and worries , me for example , I feel terribly worried on how my son will absorb two languages at the same time , he is now 2.3 years old and he is listening to two completely different languages , poor baby he knows two names for each object ! Your kid is exposed to four Languages !!!? how old is he and which languages he speaks , I heard that the maximum brain capacity is two languages at a time
posted
Poor baby? He's going to show you his genius soon!
Mine is 2 and he is exposed to English, Arabic, German and Dutch, and he knows the names of the things he knows in at least three languages and sometimes four, and he understands instructions in all four languages easily.
No their capacity is 7 languages, according to an expert in that field Posts: 8756 | From: Tax-Free Zone | Registered: Jul 2005
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I'm trying to have a bilingual child, but he's only 9 weeks old.
Husband speaks to him only in Arabic, and I speak to him only in English. Plus, he'll learn Classical Arabic someday. Isn't that different enough from Egyptian Arabic to almost count as a third, if you learn it well?
A nice byproduct is that I'm learning a lot more Arabic.
The only thing I've heard is that a child exposed fairly equally to two languages might not start speaking as quickly, but once s/he does, there is no stopping her/him. Posts: 8794 | From: 01-20-09 The End of an Error | Registered: Dec 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Snoozin No More: The only thing I've heard is that a child exposed fairly equally to two languages might not start speaking as quickly, but once s/he does, there is no stopping her/him.
Yeah I thought so too but mine has started already.
posted
Mine are bilingual. They both came to a point at around the age of 4 where they rebelled and decided to use one language. I call it the resistance point. They keep it up until they have to....like, we go to Egypt and dump them in a summer club where they HAVE to communicate in Arabic with the other children.
-------------------- Noha Posts: 670 | From: alex living in leeds, UK | Registered: Jun 2005
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quote:Originally posted by homing pigeon: Mine are bilingual. They both came to a point at around the age of 4 where they rebelled and decided to use one language. I call it the resistance point. They keep it up until they have to....like, we go to Egypt and dump them in a summer club where they HAVE to communicate in Arabic with the other children.
That's very interesting. I have some friends of immigrants here in the States who did something similar. Their parents continued to speak to them in Spanish (they were from Chile), but the kids answered in English. They didn't want to deal with Spanish at all, but they couldn't stop their parents from speaking Spanish to them (parents were bilingual Spanish/English, BTW, university professors).
Not ideal, I suppose, but when the kids hit high school, they decided it would be cool to know Spanish well. It wasn't hard for them speak fluently with a little practice, since they'd heard it all their lives.
If they have the exposure early, it really puts them ahead in the game.
Posts: 8794 | From: 01-20-09 The End of an Error | Registered: Dec 2004
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posted
Still so many prejudice over multilingual upbringing here. If you speak some 'thirdworldlanguage' like arabic they tell you you should talk Dutch and at the same time open bilingual schools in English and Dutch. Silly. Kids read and write in Dutch and arabic and have their mouth full of English over all this Harry Potter (son even read one in English since he could not wait for the translation at 9 years old), games and tv-series, some French and the neighbourhood ganglanguage 'wakamantongo'. We do one parent one language and they just laugh at me if I try some arabic too!:-)
Posts: 1419 | From: Amsterdam, Netherlands | Registered: Aug 2003
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As parents we are multilingual too. Dad has an Italian grandfather and speaks some Italian too, next to Dutch of course and Arabic (as an Egyptian), even some Turkish and French. I speak my native tongue as my mother's language (Fries), English, French, German and the civilized form of my children's streetlanguage sranantongo, so I correct them!:-) Most people in the world are multilingual.
Of course, I forgot, Coptic, but that is only spoken in church, mostly in rituals, prayers and hymn's.
Posts: 1419 | From: Amsterdam, Netherlands | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
I'm curious, are you children able, or will they be able to read and write in all the languages they learn or only speak them?
Posts: 333 | From: USA | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:Originally posted by MK the Most Interlectual: Hey Demiana I know Frysk! I lived up north for 5 years!
Bûter, brea, en griene tsiis!
I guess its a hoax that they tell you that all newcomers live in the city!:-) When I was in the Dutch Guyanas I met this Hindustani family, they all did speak 'Fries'. At least indeed Bûter, brea, en griene tsiis! 'Wotr net saizen kin is net an oprjochte Fries'. Frieslan boppe, Holland ien a groppe!:-)
Posts: 1419 | From: Amsterdam, Netherlands | Registered: Aug 2003
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quote:Originally posted by FairyDust: I'm curious, are you children able, or will they be able to read and write in all the languages they learn or only speak them?
Kids have their regular schoolcareer in Dutch and the church is providing them with reading and writing in arabic. They have managed to do this for several years now. Although it is their 'second' language, since the environment is mainly Dutch, they are doing allright. I hope they will take some year in Alex or Cairo later after highschool since none of the schools in my neighbourhood teach arabic, where they do in some parts of Amsterdam. I can read in 'Fries' it is a bit difficult but it helps when you pronounce out loud and hear yourself talking. And if I, with some help of dictionary's and sometimes friends can read and write in French, English and German, why should kids not be able to do so in the languages they learn? The more kids are exposed to languages in infancy the better they will manage to pick up later when they need it. But it is fairly misunderstood. Son had some time in 4th grade when he would not only write his name in Dutch on his work but also in arabic!:-) One teacher would not recognize it and had a red pen go over his 'scratching'!:-) Kids make christmascards with text in arabic for fun. They can write lines on postings to their Egyptian family and of course talk to them on the phone on school and familyissues.
Posts: 1419 | From: Amsterdam, Netherlands | Registered: Aug 2003
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Kids like to sing in chinese even. There are many nice arabic songs for children.And over here my kids learn some sranantongo songs too, or a birthdaysong to a kid in several languages, or a christmassong for that matter. Language is a joy to a kid not a difficulty.
Our royalty is multilingual. They don't have this prejudices going around. Although I was a bit dissapointed on the spanish of our crownprins over the birth of his new daughter!:-) But he did try!
Posts: 1419 | From: Amsterdam, Netherlands | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
I noticed that almost all of you are having Arabic as one of the two or more languages you’d use with your kids , is there anybody living here who doesn’t use Arabic at home ?
I don’t know about that , but I believe that having an Egyptian spouse who speaks all the time to his children in Egyptian in a family that lives in Egypt will no doubt make Arabic the first language and the strongest of the two or more languages used inside home and the most favorable for the kids as well , is this true ?
quote:Originally posted by spasm: but I believe that having an Egyptian spouse who speaks all the time to his children in Egyptian in a family that lives in Egypt will no doubt make Arabic the first language and the strongest of the two or more languages used inside home and the most favorable for the kids as well , is this true ?
There's dive shop in Dahab owned by a Canadian woman and her Egyptian/Bedouin husband and they have the cutest little daughter. Her name is Sina (Arabic for Sinai)and she around 6. I saw her many times at the dive shop playing with the employees and the customers and always speaking English. So after a few days I asked her mother how could she be living in Egypt and not learn Arabic? She told me she speaks Arabic and her dialect is more Bedouin than her father's. As it turned out she spoke English in the dive shop because everyone else was speaking English but with her dad or at home, she spoke Arabic with a beautiful Bedouin accent.
Posts: 465 | Registered: Dec 2006
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I think it depends on how much time both parents interact and talk to their kids each in their own native , however, I have a friend who lives in Cairo she is form the former soviet block , she’s married to an Egyptian flight attendant who spends most of the week flying , so the mother with her native Russian is the main source of language to her 3 years old Kid , ironically , the kid’s Egyptian is stronger than his Russian !! she even decided to take him for several months to her homeland just to enhance his Russian , he returned back with a few more words in Russian but still , his father’s influence is overwhelming
posted
Ive read this great ethnography about a people on a pacific island. The parents were complaining that the children, nowadays, were refusing to speak their tribal language and preferred the mainstream language (used in government and schools, etc..). The kids were saying that the tribal language was too difficult to learn.
However, the study showed that children were not learning the tribal language because adults only used it between themselves but when they talked directly to their children, they would use the mainstream language.
In other words, the children were not learning it because they were not actively engaged in speaking the language; they would understand it but could not speak it.
-------------------- "Whashing One's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral" -Freire- Posts: 370 | From: Montreal, Canada + World expat | Registered: Apr 2004
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