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Showing posts with the label majority language

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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Siblings' language: The fight with the killer language continues...

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Just to recap - in our family we speak THREE languages on daily basis. LingoPapa speaks Urdu with kids, LingoMama in Czech and language of the community is English. ( Parents also speak mostly English with each other). We have successfully established communication channels with the children in the desired languages. This means kiddos only speak to me in my minority language and different minority language with their father. But what started to happen as the children grow .... killer language crept in!!! We noticed that when out of earshot, LittleLingo (4 years old at the time of writing) speaks to his little brother in English (majority language). Sometimes, we had a bizarre feeling when we heard two two "English" kids playing in the living room. I mean who are these people? Right. As we live in English speaking country, LingoPapa and I concurred that we might want to encourage minority languages at home. The reasons for this are: 1) We would like the kids to learn...
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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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Majority Language Trap

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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"! ************************************************...
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