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Showing posts from August, 2018

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

Church and white slippers - how a 4 year old decodes his languages

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What does a church and a pair of white slippers have in common? Hmmm, let me see... I did not know that they do but they actually do :) Today Little Lingo while riding his bike asked - 'Mami??? What is a chapel?' We just walked past the Salvation Army building so I turned to him and said: "Well, in English chapel is a part of a church building... and in Urdu "chapl" چپل  means a slipper". Little Lingo seemed satisfied with the answer and cycled on. After a while he rode back to me and said: 'So mami, it means that I was born in White Slipper?' ( He actually said it in his 3rd language which is Czech - "Bílý pantofel") And I had to agree; 'Yes indeed, Little Lingo, you were born in White Slipper/ Bílý Pantofel...yes, because you were born in Whitechapel hospital in East London.' And this is actually only one example. I have noticed that our children that we try to raise with more languages actually show the ability to d