| Ekaterini |
| | 02/23/10 | Reply with quote | #1 |
|
Hi,
I will have my first baby girl in the next couple of days. My husband and I agree to raise our child at least bilingual.
Our situation is this:
Mom - native German, native Greek (with loads of missing grammar and vocabulary), non-native English
Dad - native English
Mom and Dad to each other - English
currently living in Germany
one half-sister (from my husbands first marriage) currently living with us - native English
As half of my family is Greek I would like my child to learn German as well as Greek. We could be moving to the States at some point, possibly before our daughter starts school. Our first idea was that I talk German and my husband talks English to our child. Although I am not sure my husband could reach the recommended 30% exposure of English to our child as he is working long hours at the office. 1st 'problem' I have is that I don't know if I can fit Greek anywhere in the daily plan...would it be too much of a hassle and too complicated for me to speak half a day German and half a day Greek to my child?
Also, I would have to talk English to my husband and my stepchild.
Say I speak Greek in the morning hours until around lunch time and switch to German the afternoon half of the day. When my stepchild comes home from school I speak English to her, while still speaking German to my baby girl. Finally my husband comes home which whom I speak English too. Sounds confusing to me...could it work anyways?
I've heard from an elementary school teacher (native English) who spoke German to her daughter whenever they were driving in the car. Is that an approach to take, to speak a minority language (in our case Greek) for example on the weekends and whenever I am with my Dad (native Greek) or even just adding a 'play-time' every day for a few hours speaking only Greek?? Does anyone have experience with this?
My biggest fear is, that I am too ambitious to begin with and can't follow up with my big plans in my daily life.
Any ideas? Thanks for any replies 
|
| Loading... | |
| Caroline |
| | 02/26/10 | Reply with quote | #2 |
|
Hi Ekaterini,
I was in a similar situation as yours when my boys were very young (now 10 and 12 y.o.) - dealing with three languages. Mum: Danish; Dad: English; living in Spain.
My advise is definitely to stick to OPOL - don't take on the morning/afternoon system! It might work for some, but I've seen it fail too many times - mainly because it's very difficult to maintain and you loose a lot of the spontaneousness in communicating with your child when you have to remember when to speak what language. Besides, my experience is that your child will very soon see right through that system and simply decide to speak whatever language she feels most comfortable with anyway, and that'll make it even more frustating for you. Keep it simple and avoid the pressure for all of you!!! Really, that is the most important isssue here!
You speak Greek to her and make sure your family provides you with DVDs, books, nursery rhyme CDs etc. You and your husband/stepdaughter can still communicate in English around her but you still address her in Greek directly.
Your husband/her sister speak to her in English only.
Let the surroundings take care of German - take her to a German playgroup, let her watch German childrens tv, have German friends over to play when she gets older.
She'll most likely prefere Greek for the first year or so, since she'll be with you most of the time. But that's perfect because once she starts to communicate herself with her sister or if you move to the States or when she attends German nursery etc. she'll change her prefered language to one of those two (English or German), but still have a solid basis of Greek even if it eventually becomes her third language. I did that with my boys - knowing they would live in a Spanish environment and attend an English school, I chose to make sure they spoke mainly Danish when very young.That way they had a solid background - Danish is now logically their third language but they master it perfectly because I emphasised it from day one.
Letting your child grow up multi-lingual is a gift, but keep it simple and fun. Don't panick if it doesn't go to plan sometimes - she WILL have periods when she'll refuse to speak a certain language, she WILL mix up the languages sometimes, and your social network WILL question your decision to do this (especially if she takes longer than mono-lingual children to speak, which is only natural, though not for sure)- but take my advice, ignore the obstacles, laugh at the mistakes she makes (don't correct her constantly), take a deep breath and start again every time you are ready to give up! It's so worth it - mine are now fully trilingual and taking on 4th and 5th language by themselves :-)
|
| Loading... | |
| Izi |
| | 03/09/10 | Reply with quote | #3 |
|
Hello Ekaterini,
I would also recommend you to stick to OPOL and to Greek to start with. In case your Greek is at a social language level (no school in that language) I would try to improve it by reading, using a dictionary etc.. German being your best language it might be difficult not to use it when you are short of the right word in Greek. It is a challenge.
The surrounding takes indeed care of the local language (German), specially the day care.
We live in the Netherlands and my son (now 5 y.o.) is dealing with four languages: German (mum), Turkish (dad), Dutch and English (pre-school).
I left Turkey more than 30 years ago which makes it sometimes a challenge to find the right words. Nice to rediscover dictionaries!
After a very strict OPOL until he was about 4.5, I started speaking also Dutch or English to him depending on the social context. It works well.
Mum/dad language is Dutch.
My wife (native Polish & grew up in Germany) has a passive knowledge of Turkish and I speak German. I think this has an overall positive influence.
Good luck and have fun.
|
| Loading... | |
