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Showing posts with the label language learning

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 ba...
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Sport a new language

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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 chi...
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AMBUSH! A language acquisition anecdote

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All children do this! Multilingual or not. It keeps us entertained...and it also turns us into detectives. It can be a totally new level in a multilingual family...yes, I am talking about made up words or first words that sound very unique. I would like to share our recent experience that really baffled us. MiniLingo is just 2 years old. He has vocab in 3 languages and forms a maximum 2 words "sentences. ( Post of speech delay in multilingual kids coming soon.) We spend lots of time in the nature and MiniLingo is obsessed about animals. We love greenery even though we are currently an urban dwelling family. Recently on every occasion when we drove into countryside, our train carriage approached a forest or we came to a farm, MiniLingo got all prepared, stands straight and shouts: "Ambush, ambush!" When he did it first time, LingoPapa was convinced that our second born must be carrying some kind of SSG gene and it automatically kicks in to warn us about p...
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Be a proud oddball! The biggest and most common block to multilingual upbringing

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I already wrote about the "killer language" and the need to get the right ammunition to fight it. However, before we start speaking the "ammo and conquest", there is a really important aspect of multilingual parenting/upbringing that needs to be discussed. Hand on heart, I can say that this aspect has been coming up time and time again when I have met other people attempting the whole multilingual family business. So I feel this needs to be highlighted. Most of the time the parents and carers who plan or already do try to bring up the kids with another language(s) admit that they are: a) not confident, b) shy, or c) feeling that they stick out/draw attention to themselves, or d) ashamed  ...to speak to the child in minority language in public. Well, let me tell you, if you feel any of the emotions listed above when speaking in public in your language (most of the time minority one), YOU do have a problem.  This is because, your child will fee...
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It's a state of mind

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I get asked this a lot : "When have you started to teach languages to your children?" "What is the right time to start?" In my humble opinion, one has to make the intention to raise kids with more than one language way before they arrive. It is really helpful if you consider how you going to raise your children and whether passing on another language is important not only to you but also the other co-parent.  Switching languages on daily basis, potentially learning a new one as an adult and coping with the stress of arrival or a baby, toddler tantrums and tween drama...and beyond...is NOT EASY !  I moved abroad to improve my English after high school and around that time I started to ponder on how I will teach languages to my future kids. As years went by I never went back to settle in my home country. What is more, I move to another country and picked up another language. In France I worked in multilingual family where kids spoke Spanish with th...
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Welcome to our "lingoliving" life

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This blog is dedicated to multilingual parenting, languages study, language teaching and all things related. It will not be just about our experience from attempting to teach our kids languages but also about adult and continuous language learning.  Why? Well, finally I gathered the courage to speak about our results and battles and discoveries when it comes to multilingual and multicultural parenting and having third (or perhaps fourth :) ) culture children.  I would like to also supplement this blog by videos and other interactive content and also connect with others on similar path!  Thanks for stopping by ....more content soon :)
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