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Showing posts with the label multilingual

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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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...
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Dip in & keep it fresh - siblings' language strategy

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Very often siblings end up speaking with each other in the majority language. We have had that issue too. And yes it may come back in the future but at the moment our children don't speak in majority language together. Yay! ( Albeit might be temporary.) In previous post I described how we managed to set one of the minority languages spoken (Czech) in our home as a language of communication between our children. Well, now we work on the second minority language spoken at home to become a more spoken language between them. Ideally, when LingoPapa is at home, they should be able to switch from mother minority language to father minority language.  So what helped us at this stage? LittleLingo (4 years) went to Pakistan for nearly 2 weeks just with LingoPapa ( Urdu speaker). Luckily family situation back in the fatherland required LingoPapa's presence and he and the kid could travel.  While there -  no English was allowed and LittleLingo spent all time with the fam...
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TRIP TIP - Nordic Design Exhibition - LONDON,UK

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LingoLiving recommends Discover a new language through design. If you are in London, get your kids to discover Scandinavia not just in IKEA. V&A Museum Of Childhood is currently holding   Nordic design exhibition . This has been a fantastic way for our children to explore that "funny" shape on the map of Europe and what comes from there. You may even try to learn few words in Swedish, Norwegian, Finish or Danish yourself There is amazing play area, small cinema room showing Pippi Longstocking ,  Moonins and other Nordic cartoons. Great way to discover a language!  Apart from amazing design there are books on display - in original languages - great  prompts to start conversation about languages. We had a great fun. And if nothing we will now try to find all the Scandi and Nordic authors in our library - Astrid Lindgren, Hans Christian Andersen, Tove Jansson,Soren Olsson...
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Child refuses to speak in minority/native language

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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 majo...
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GUEST POST: "My struggle to use the minority language in public"

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💥 GUEST POST 💥 GUEST POST 💥   LingoLiving is delighted to publish our first GUEST POST from one of our readers. This mum shares her candid story and personal reasons for having difficulty to speak in the minority(i.e. foreign) language with her child in public. She includes a brilliant tip on how to overcome this inhibition.  ****************************************************************************** I’m a Czech mum of a 2 year old M., married to an Englishman, living in England. Before M. was born I KNEW I wanted her to talk both languages, have the ability to communicate both Czech and English, I KNEW I wanted her to be able to have a chat with her Czech relatives but what I didn’t know how hard it was! I find it difficult to learn new languages and after living in England for almost 2 decades I still make basic mistakes, I don’t like my accent and I get frustrated when people don’t understand me. So that doesn’t help my confidence. M. and her Cz...
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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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The "WHY" volume II. - Teaching kids a foreign language that is not your mother tongue

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In the previous post I spoke about passing on a mother tongue. But what about teaching another foreign language to a child? I say: ""Why not"? 💪. From own experience I can say that  children are very receptive if they are spoken to by an adult ( be it a parent, educator ...) in a foreign language and make a remarkable progress. I can give an example - our son has been treated by a Chinese doctor who has limited command of English. Once LittleLingo learnt how to greet the doctor in Chinese and saw the positive reaction, he was hooked. LittleLingo anf MiniLingo really enjoy a good foreign language read :)  As per the reasons why parents should consider teaching a foreign language to a child, here are some of ours: 1) Developing passion for languages That is a good thing, right? Show them how it works, make it natural for them. 2) Passing on a life skill Can you speak a conversational Spanish? Do you treasure such skill? Why don't you pass it on ...
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The "WHY" volume I. Our reasons to teach our kids our mother tongues

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This post is purely focusing on reasons why we decided to pass our mother tongues ( yes plural because husband and I have entirely different mother tongue) to our children. Czech countryside  Many people may have many other reason why to do so. In no particular order of importance, here are our answers to the "WHY": 1) Authenticity of communication with our off springs To us we will never speak our second or third language as well as our mother tongue, even though we are pretty good. Also all those little expressions and jokes...right? 2) Passing on the cultural heritage Lots of the culture we grew up in is locked in language. Some things you just cannot translate. LingoPapa uses many Urdu proverbs to illustrate a point for example. 3) Passing on a skill for life Being able to use another language and think in it is an invaluable skill and asset. Even if you think your language is too small or not wide spoken. 4) Brain development It is proven th...
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The "WHAT" ...mother tongue, father tongue or language?

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When deciding for multilingual upbringing  for your kids, it is important to clarify for yourself what you want to teach them. Your conscious intention is crucial to the success. From the very beginning we knew we want them to learn our respective mother tongues (Urdu and Czech). Living in a country that is English speaking we knew this is not going to be an easy task considering we do not have extended family here. Kid's multilingual library items We searched for a strategy that would work for us the best. We unanimously settled on One Person One Language (OPOL) approach. There will be a separate blog post on this and links to other strategies later on. We also decided later on that we want to teach them some of the languages we speak other than our mother tongues and possibly learn a new one with them. We are currently working on French and Arabic by speaking  and exposing these to them. Watch out for posts on how we do that and what is the success. Remem...
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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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