One day - One language

-
Image
How to increase a minority language exposure It is inevitable that in any multi-lingual family setting one or more languages get more time and focus than the others. Naturally one of the parents or any other adult speaking minority language just gets to spend more time with the kids. Whether a stay at home parent, caregiver or maybe the one that spends a long morning commute with the child. Or there is more relatives around speaking the language. Or simply the adult responsible for passing on the minority language is just not as comfortable with it, gets limited time, cannot naturally hold conversation with a young child or simply gets frustrated to be in it alone.  As the time progresses and LingoPapa works hard away from home to support us, he gets limited time to speak and actively teach children Urdu. It a language that needs more attention in our household. Not only we get the least exposure to it but it also needs more attention due to its Persian script and bad ha
1 comment

So what we cooking? Here is our recipe..

-


Albanian bean soup ...
We have a pretty interesting mix in our household. We currently live in an English speaking country so English is the majority language all around us. And for this reason we don't teach it to our children....well ...more on this later...

Next ingredient - a delightful Slavic language - CZECH. Czech is my mother tongue and as a mother I am keen to pass it to my kids. For many reasons...more on this later

Next ingredient - one of the most poetic indo-european languages - URDU. The children's father is native Urdu speaker and is actively making sure he does his best to teach this language to our children. For many reasons...more on that later. 

Next ingredient - Arabic ...more on that later.

So this is the basic layout of our language collage.

What is your mix? 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Child refuses to speak in minority/native language

-
Image
I often hear that child refuses to speak minority or parent's/grandparent's native language in public (more on this later).  However, I also came across instances when the child refuses to speak the minority language altogether. I get many people praising how our oldest is capable to switch into three different languages. His younger brother is too young for actual speaking ( for a multilingual child - yes mine do speak late...more on this later) but even him now switches the limited words he has three-way depending to whom he is speaking to. Yes, kids are individuals and we have been very lucky but also there are some approaches that we have tried and tested. Well, this is what has worked for us:  We made it a need for both LingoBabas to speak in the minority languages. This means I make it obvious that it is an absolute necessity to speak to their parents in a respective language. With a toddler that is about to start speaking, we affirm the new word (said in the major
Read more

Majority Language Trap

-
Image
In the context of  multilingual setting the "majority language" is usually the language spoken by great majority of people around us. Sometimes such language can be described as a "dominant language" .  Having worked with LittleLingo for past 4 years and MiniLingo for 2 years, I can understand why a majority language is also referred to as the "killer language" . I can confirm that even if you put a maximum effort into speaking to a child from birth in non-majority language, the killer one will creep in. Especially, if you live a well adjusted life in the majority language community such as visiting playgroups, children activities, sports clubs, watch TV and interact with other majority language speakers. In our case, what is even worse is the fact that  PapaLingo and I speak "the killer" to each other at home. But not to worry, there are tried and tested ways to beat the "killer"! ************************************************
Read more

One day - One language

-
Image
How to increase a minority language exposure It is inevitable that in any multi-lingual family setting one or more languages get more time and focus than the others. Naturally one of the parents or any other adult speaking minority language just gets to spend more time with the kids. Whether a stay at home parent, caregiver or maybe the one that spends a long morning commute with the child. Or there is more relatives around speaking the language. Or simply the adult responsible for passing on the minority language is just not as comfortable with it, gets limited time, cannot naturally hold conversation with a young child or simply gets frustrated to be in it alone.  As the time progresses and LingoPapa works hard away from home to support us, he gets limited time to speak and actively teach children Urdu. It a language that needs more attention in our household. Not only we get the least exposure to it but it also needs more attention due to its Persian script and bad ha
Read more