One day - One language

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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

Sport a new language

Many people want to introduce their children to another language. 

You can of course pass on a language that you already speak and you can also start to learn a language with your child. I would like to share how we managed to get our 4 year old interested in Japanese language.

In actual fact, it was LittleLingo who initiated this Japanese adventure. He became fascinated with Ninja Turtles after I showed him some 80s cartoons dubbed into Czech. The fascination with karate grew and the questions started to flow...

I went to Japan myself many many years ago and I was lucky to explore the country with a friend that lived in Japan at the time and spoke Japanese. So I was delighted by LittleLingo's interest. Apart form odd vocab and ability to recognise the script, I am in noway a person that could teach Japanese to our child.  


We found a karate club that was teaching karate in Japanese. Bingo! LittleLingo now attends once to twice a week. It is bizarre how quick children absorb language as he is able to do basic counting, greets and thanks the master in Japanese. We would be ecstatic if he follows thought but he i snot expected to. At the moment we are over the moon that LittleLingo found a passion for sport of his choice and he is pick up a language along as a bonus.

If you come to think of it there are many sports that allow for a new language introduction. Here are some that I came up with:

- Karate for Japanese
- Ballet for French
- Capoeira and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for Portuguese
- Kung fu and Tai Chi for Chinese
- Cricket,Tennis and Golf for English
- Latin dances and Tango for Spanish

Would you consider a sport in order to introduce another language to a child or yourself?



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