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Hi everyone,

 

My kids are 6.5, 4 and 1 and I've only spoken english with them so far. I do speak arabic, but my husband does not. Arabic is my "first" language, because my parents spoke to me in arabic as a child, but I was born and raised in Canada and English is definitely my FIRST/proficient/fluent language. My arabic is not the greatest and I feel like I can't express myself the way I'd like to with my kids and so because of this I'm ambivalent. We did visit an arabic country for 6 weeks several years ago, but the whole time we were there, all the kids wanted to practice their english with my kids so they didn't pick up anything.

 

Especially now that they are older, for me to just start speaking arabic scares me. I feel like I'll be explaining everything 3 times, arabic/english/arabic again. Should I do that? Or should I stick to *just* arabic for a long while to get them used to it?

 

Is or Has anyone been in this situation that you all of a sudden started introducing a language to them at these older ages? Is it too late for my 6 year old?

 

They do know some arabic vocabulary words for a few foods/household items, so some sentences they can figure out from hand gestures and by picking out the word they know.

 

Any advice? Been there done that?

I'm upset with myself for waiting so long. Fear of failure has been holding me back but I want to push through.

 

Thanks everyone

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I started speaking French with an older child, older than your 6yo. He agreed to the project, but even so, it was rather a shock to have your mother suddenly un-understandable. I began by saying everything in English and then in French. Then after a few days I switched the order. Then I began leaving pauses after the French to see if I needed to give an English translation. It was sort of an excersize in how little I could get away with saying to my sons. Nevertheless, it turned out to be successful, at least with the younger child. My oldest wasn't around enough to absorb any French and didn't like the project anyway (he was in high school). I spoke English to him. My middle child was a young teenager and my French wasn't up to explaining the complicated moral reasons behind things so I gave up with him within a few weeks. The youngest and I spoke only French for about a year. Maybe? It is hard now for me to remember. If my French hadn't been so poor, within that year he would have learned a ton. As it was, we read lots of children's books and watched lots of movies and by the end of the year, he could understand most children's books and children's movies and speak a little French. It happened amazingly fast. The first three days were the hardest because I kept forgetting. I found that I had to be reading a book in French myself (my escape reading) for me to be able to keep it up. We let it lapse after a year when life got a little complicated, but we kept reading and occasionally speaking it. Then my son went to Switzerland for a month and got a good dose of it. Now he is 15 and has French literature and history textbooks at a 6th grade level and understands them. At a guess, I'd say his speaking is at about a 4yo level, his understanding (spoken or written) is at about a 6th grade level. I was scared at first, too, until I realized that if I didn't do anything at all, he was going to have NO French, and NO French would be much worse than BAD French. I felt strongely, also, that bad French that I had taught him would still be better than school French. Your Arabic is sure to be better than my high school French! You don't have to do it forever, either. Any is better than none. I would like to encourage you to find a friend or relative who can tell you how to say things, buy a dictionary and some children's books to read, make a big excited deal about how great this is going to be with your 6yo, and then just start. I insisted on keeping on speaking French, but I always translated if my son asked me to. If he was in some sort of crisis, I translated quickly without being asked (I just said everything twice). That kept him from hating the project.

 

Good luck!

-Nan

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Hi everyone,

 

My kids are 6.5, 4 and 1 and I've only spoken english with them so far. I do speak arabic, but my husband does not. Arabic is my "first" language, because my parents spoke to me in arabic as a child, but I was born and raised in Canada and English is definitely my FIRST/proficient/fluent language. My arabic is not the greatest and I feel like I can't express myself the way I'd like to with my kids and so because of this I'm ambivalent. We did visit an arabic country for 6 weeks several years ago, but the whole time we were there, all the kids wanted to practice their english with my kids so they didn't pick up anything.

 

Especially now that they are older, for me to just start speaking arabic scares me. I feel like I'll be explaining everything 3 times, arabic/english/arabic again. Should I do that? Or should I stick to *just* arabic for a long while to get them used to it?

 

Is or Has anyone been in this situation that you all of a sudden started introducing a language to them at these older ages? Is it too late for my 6 year old?

 

They do know some arabic vocabulary words for a few foods/household items, so some sentences they can figure out from hand gestures and by picking out the word they know.

 

Any advice? Been there done that?

I'm upset with myself for waiting so long. Fear of failure has been holding me back but I want to push through.

 

Thanks everyone

 

It's not too late. Two of my cousins became proficient in different languages as young adults. Of course, they learned European languages, but they became totally fluent. One of my cousins was so good that even Germans thought she was just from a different part of Germany (after being there about 2 months, although she had studied it for a year in university) when she spoke Hoch Deutsch. She did a degree in it. My other cousin is good enough to teach French Immersion all in French.

 

Yes, the younger the better, and my cousins have good ears for languages, but lots of kids change countries at 6 or older and become fully immersed.

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There are lots of toys and movies in Arabic for kids. We have Saturday School here, and Arabic is offered. Is there anything like that where you are? Most are in Modern Standard, but lots of movies are in Egyptian, so I have heard. Here's something that might be nice to start off your tots with: http://www.littlepim.com/ I won't be buying it for another two years, probably, but I've heard good reviews.

 

Rosie

Edited by Rosie_0801
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My husband miserably failed when trying to switch from Italian to Hebrew when they were some 7-8 years old. It wasn't their first Hebrew, but he got all hooked into the idea of speaking only Hebrew to them, I let him go, but *they* didn't. They were disturbed by the change of language, it felt "wrong" for them and they just wouldn't cooperate. The weirdest thing though is that we both have been slowly introducing English since they were 3-4 (when we came to the US) and they took it very easily, weren't disturbed by it as long as it was clear that the situations are different (I literally spoke English to them ONLY in school setting, and their dad ONLY outside or on the balcony, they needed the feeling of a "different situation" for English and Italian, different place) and that the dominant emotions language was Italian. With the years of course English got into them so much that those "rules" are very flexible now (we have to insist on Italian now, for example) and the languages can be used in all situations interchangeably.

 

But with Hebrew, it just didn't go. They were totally okay with having Israeli relatives who spoke to them in Hebrew, and who ALSO at some point made the switch (when they were toddlers, everybody spoke only Italian to them, even if Hebrew was spoken around them), but they just wouldn't allow their dad to do it. The whole experiment lasted for a few weeks, after which he just got peaceful with the fact they would allow Hebrew to be used "situationally", with other people and at most for in the context of shabat, but not as an everyday language.

 

The older kid however now got into the Hebrew mode totally and I hear her speaking sometimes Hebrew to dh. I asked him if he intends to totally switch to Hebrew or if it's only when she asks for practice or help with some school material in Hebrew, and he said he's going to follow her, if she shows a desire to fully switch to Hebrew when they're speaking one on one, that he'll do it, if not, that he won't force anything and will speak Hebrew to her only when she starts in Hebrew. Currently it's still a situational language for her.

 

But I digress, the advice I wanted to give you is to be very, very aware of a simple rule: young children don't differentiate languages, they differentiate sitations (differentiating language by people is basically only a variant of the situation). You have to make a different situation for Arabic - speak it in a different room, speak it with/to some toys which are only Arabic toys (we had those to learn both English and Hebrew, different ones of course :D), and whenever you expose them to Arabic materials (films, books, etc), do it within that situation (not with dad speaking to you in English while they watch). With the oldest one it might not be that needed (he differentiates languages already), but it's still a very good method with young kids. And when in that situation, just swith to Arabic, no English. Simple Arabic at first, and then increase complexity.

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But I digress, the advice I wanted to give you is to be very, very aware of a simple rule: young children don't differentiate languages, they differentiate sitations (differentiating language by people is basically only a variant of the situation). .

 

 

This is a great point. This is why my sister & I forgot our German when we were little. We refused to do it when we got back to Canada, although this was due in great part to well meaning adults asking us to speak in German because they thought it cute. They'd known us since we were tiny so it was quite a deal for them. Plus my mother had only picked up conversational German and wasn't fluent enough to continue speaking it to us all the time & my dad worked a lot.

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