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Showing posts with the label native 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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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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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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