Bilingual children

[salinea]

A question for a friend of mine :

She and her husband are Japanese living in Denmark, and they are raising a lovely little girl (1yr old or so). She's also pregnant of another little girl. They're looking for good information and guide about raising a bilingual child.

I trust my cosmopolitain flist to solve this conundrum. Anyone knows of any good books to rec, or of good websites on the subject, or have any general advice?

Comments

[laurus-nobilis.livejournal.com]

I know several kids (and not-really-kids anymore) who were raised bilingual, either Spanish-Italian or Spanish-German. As far as I know, the parents didn't follow books/websites. If both parents are European, they speak their native language at home and Spanish everywhere else (or when Spanish-speaking people visit them, of course). It gets more complicated when only one of the parents speaks the foreign language; in the cases I know, they aren't very organized about it. ^_^U

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Well, one of the question she's wondering was whether they were talking too much Japanese at home. I don't know how much her little girl (Rie) is getting exposed to Danish.

[icemannorth.livejournal.com]

See Harum's post below, but generally as both parents are Japanese they should speak that at home. As long as the girl plays with Danish children, and go to a nursery home like most other Danish children, there shouldn't be any problem.

[rainmage.livejournal.com]

My family kind of did that when my mom moved to Miami five years ago. However, my brothers were six-seven years old already so they were fluent for their age in Spanish -they attended kindergarten in Venezuela before moving in, so not only in the oral part. So it's a different case than raising a baby from scratch.

Nonetheless, your friends should kind of "force" the kids to read/write stuff in Japanese at home (or in kids' courses at academies) so they can also learn the written language, and be sort of frequent on that (at least once a month, I guess). It'll tedious, but it's good for them. My brothers had almost forgotten their written Spanish by the time they moved to Spain, even though mom was doing that a bit, and it was hell.

[(Anonymous)]

I will make my mom send me the reference on this. She reported to me on a paper she heard that showed that children need to have their parents speak their native tongue, in order to have normal language acquisition. Unless the parents are 100% bilingual in Japanese and Danish, they are going to short change their children. It will actually be easier for them to acquire sophisticated vocabulary in Danish if they hear their parents speaking Japanese at home (says this research.) here is a link to a National Public Radio story on this theme, by a first-generation American whose Thai parents didn't speak Thai to her growing up:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6692076

I'll come back with the other ref, unless my mom was exaggerating its persuasiveness.

One thing that everyone who raises bilingual children knows is that it takes longer for children to acquire two languages than one. So if the 12 month old doesn't meet linguistic milestones on time, they shouldn't worry.

[schemingreader.livejournal.com]

Sorry, that was me--logged out. :(

[harumi.livejournal.com]

There is no such thing as speaking too much of your native language at home. The kids will learn the language from their peers, that's the language they will be interacting with most, so before that, I feel it's very important to speak the native language first (in this case it's Japanese).

One thing my parents did for me was not that they forced me to speak only in Chinese at home (that would have caused resentment), but they taught me to be proud of being Chinese, to love my culture and my heritage. This wasn't by forcing it on me either, but by exposing me to all the stories, myths, legends, activities, and holidays. I was, and still am, very glad that I was born to Chinese parents, and actively sought to learn the language myself. Chinese school helped, so if there is a Japanese school, they should send them there. Another thing my parents did for me was take me back to Taiwan every year. I became exposed to it from an early age, so it's always been a part of me, not just "strange people far away".

Today I'm fluent in both English and Chinese. I can read, write, and speak it, which is apparently extremely rare for kids like been, born and raised in the States. My parents never followed a formula. They just taught me to love who I was.

[catiechu.livejournal.com]

That's so excellent to hear. Chinese is such an intimidating language!

[harumi.livejournal.com]

It becomes less intimidating when the only thing holding you back from reading your favorite manga are the mysterious blobs in the speech bubbles. The first time I read that comic it took me four hours, armed with a dictionary and my mother to help me in case it got too hard.

Nowadays I read manga in Chinese at the same speed I read manga in English, approximately half an hour.

That and once I told me mom that I wanted to learn how to write, she was very involved in making me write lines. Lots of lines. If I did wrong handstrokes it was back to the drawing board...and double the lines. Whining got me three. While I resented it at the time, I certainly appreciate it now. You start catching patterns in the characters once you know enough of them. The key parts that hint at meaning and pronunciation become easy to spot and figure out.

[catiechu.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that I'll ever make an attempt to learn Chinese. It's a wonderful dream, but French is the project now (though having such a horrible teacher is definitely creating many a negative association in me, which is probably hindering my progress quite a bit x_x). However I think it's such a beautiful language.

[harumi.livejournal.com]

Heh. Bad teachers were why I don't remember a bit of Spanish, and I took it from first grade through senior year of high school!

[catiechu.livejournal.com]

I'm only in my fourth year and it shows. ^^;

[elihice.livejournal.com]

Well, I was taught italian when I was four so it's not the same. But basically what helped was that I read/heard things in both languages. The point is not trying to force things too much. My aunt tried to add spanish, french and italian to english and... my cousin only speaks english. Too much can be overwhellming.

[mnemosyne-1.livejournal.com]

My previous boss at work has a little girl - she is Chinese and her husband is Dutch and I believe they make an effort when they are one-on-one with the little girl to speak either Chinese or Dutch. She is also picking up English at daycare, which makes for some very interesting and unintelligible sentences, but she is learning all three languages at once by being immersed in it...

I also know another couple who speak only Spanish at home and their daughter speaks mostly Spanish, but has started picking up English as well from other places.

[(Anonymous)]

Yo,

Tiens je passais par là au cas où il y aurait une info sur le Trône de fer et je suis tombé sur cette intervention.

Bon alors du haut de mon expérience personnelle, si les parents lui parlent constamment en japonais chez eux tout en faisant attention à ce qu'elle apprend bien le danois à l'école, il ne devrait pas y avoir de problèmes. Le truc c'est de ne pas forcer l'enfant à apprendre le japonais mais de trouver des moyens de l'amener à prendre lui même cette décision.

Après tu peux aussi avoir la règle de ne parler que japonais à la maison. C'est ce qui se passe dans la famille d'une amie franco-écossaise et qui s'en est très bien sortie.

Je reste à ta disposition si tu as d'autres questions.
A peluche.
TL, le métro a planté sévère juste après ta station.

[miss-sand.livejournal.com]

oh, des cousins un peu éloignés sont bilingues, leur mère est anglaise. Elle ne leur a parlé qu'en anglais, même dans la famille (traduisant après coup pour nous), et ça s'est très bien passé.

Ils ont appris le français avec le reste de la famille, à l'école et à la télé.

Seul truc : ils ont mis un peu plus de temps que la moyenne à parler, d'une façon générale. Il parait que c'est habituel chez les enfants exposés à deux langues en même temps, il leur faut un peu plus de temps que les autres car il y a plus de mots à intégrer.

Je pense qu'il ne faut pas craindre de "parler trop souvent japonais à la maison", au contraire, c'est le seul endroit où les enfants seront exposés au japonais, ils baigneront dans le danois le reste du temps.

Anecdotiquement, j'ai aussi eu pendant 2 ans une camarade de classe de parents gréco-italien, parlant très bien en plus l'allemand et le français, langues apprises "sur le tas" tout simplement parce que ses parents l'ont mise dans les écoles locales à chaque fois (bon, elle avait aussi hélas pour elle un retard phénoménal dans pas mal de matières, parce que débarquer dans un nouveau pays et ne pas parler la langue, ça rend très difficile de suivre un cours, mais ça c'est une autre histoire - l'incurie des parents est parfois incroyable).

[ariss-tenoh.livejournal.com]

There's no handbook that I know of^_^ My mom just made sure she spoke to us in both languages and put us in schools that were strong in both languages. As long as there's a lot of interaction at home, the child will learn.

[c-mantix.livejournal.com]

Based on my experience being a francophone child of francophone parents in a totally anglophone area, they had better speak as much Japanese as possible at home or else the so-called 'second' language will take over. Infants have the capacity to assimilate at least three languages from birth, without any particular method being used.

[azure-empress.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the help everyone. It was good and reassuring reading.

I would certainly like to hear more if you can think up any scources.