Silly language choice question

[Carpe]

My DH and I have agreed to teach our kids all of the languages we speak. I speak English and French fluently, and Spanish, German and Italian conversationally. DH speaks only English fluently, but French, Spanish, German, Japanese and Mandarin Chinese conversationally.

 

I speak English and French at home pretty much randomly. We live in a city with many speakers of all of these languages and, if we tried, could find native speakers for all of them that we could see once a week, maybe twice.

 

We're going to start formally schooling our oldest this year in a very laid back junior kindergarten sort of way. If that makes sense. He's demanding more academic challenges, but we don't want to do anything too structured because he isn't even 4 yet.

 

The plan (ha!) is to teach English reading etc. first, because we live in the most English part of Canada. Then teach French once we're confident that he's doing well in English.

 

First, is that a good idea?

How and when do we introduce the other languages and in what order?

How hard will it be for me to pick up Japanese and Chinese, and for DH to pick up Italian? Or should I just teach them Italian myself, and DH will teach them Japanese and Chinese himself?

[regentrude]

I would focus on two languages first. I am raising my children bilingually, and it is a big effort to achieve anything close to proficiency. It requires a lot of time and persistence.

You should ask yourself what your goals are for language education. I would prefer my children to be proficient, i.e. speaking, reading and writing, in three languages over having dabbled in seven and not being proficient in any. YMMV.

 

We have spoken German to the kids from birth. I have started teaching the kids to read German as soon as they had understood how reading works in English.

We have begun the third language, French, the first truly foreign language, in 6th grade. In order to make progress in French, we are investing an hour per day.

[Ester Maria]

As regentrude said, it is incredibly difficult to achieve anything close to proficiency without a lot of TIME and high quality interaction with GOOD language models (which basically come down to two groups - native speakers educated in their native language (NOT just random heritage speakers!) and highly proficient that-language experts who had at least some kind of an extended stay in the place where the language is spoken). Anything which does not include primarily these two things - TIME and GOOD models - is not going to result in any tangible proficiency, spoken fluency and age-appropriate literacy, but in what we usually call "tourist skills".

 

Your first concern, therefore, is TIME - how much time can you realistically spend with the language, around the language, with native speakers? And also note that every hour of time dedicated to Japanese takes an hour away from Spanish and vice-versa: this is a very common problem for those learning many languages, how to balance it out and what level of importance to assign to which language.

 

Your second concern is providing those high quality models - and frankly, "conversational" can mean anything, from "knowing the language really well, only beign modest" to "not really having a clue". Are you really capable of providing all the quality instruction, spoken time and school component for your conversational languages? And are you able to do it without transferring your own mistakes onto your kids (i.e. do you have additional models, somebody to work with, etc.)?

 

Personally, I am all for multiple languages approach, but even I have some "red lines", so to speak: we insists on classics (which are easier as they involve no spoken component), on native-level English and as-native-as-possible level Hebrew (our daughters differ in Hebrew skills), and one more (big, European, etc.) language of their choice which is added for the last five years of school, and I am EVEN considering allowing my DD13 not choosing one more language (since it is not in her formal school requirements), i.e. have her either continue Greek, either pick one more language, not both, and have her focus on other areas. So, in addition to our native Italian, that would be 2-3 modern foreign languages (one of which, Hebrew, includes the ancient component too) and 2 classical languages... That, in my view, is something like a reasonable maximum unless you have VERY "drastic" life circumstances, and even that, for most people, is without expecting wonders. Only if you get to travel, live abroad, be educated simultaneously in those languages, etc. you can expect tangible results in all languages.

 

So, it all depends on your goals: what exactly do you want your son to get out of it and, realistically, how can you go about it.

Edited May 11, 2011 by Ester Maria
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[In The Great White North]

Go for it!

 

Far too many Americans have little to no knowledge of any foreign language at all. It's better to have a tourist knowledge of a language than none at all (and better to be conversational than to have a tourist level,) so don't hesitate just because you don't have the perfect model to make them college professor proficient. Lots of native speakers never reach that level either.

 

Of course, learning languages takes time, just like everything else. Learning a language is like learning to walk - one step after another - and they have to take the first baby steps before they can run the Boston Marathon. Don't be discouraged by how much effort it takes. As with any big undertaking, the first step is often the hardest. Start today!

 

At this point, I would recommend continuing with the English and French, and whichever of Japanese or Chinese your dh is better at. The sounds of those two are so different from the Indo-European languages that some people who try to learn them as adults physically cannot make the correct sounds. Starting as young as possible eliminates that problem.

 

 

First, is that a good idea?

How and when do we introduce the other languages and in what order?

How hard will it be for me to pick up Japanese and Chinese, and for DH to pick up Italian? Or should I just teach them Italian myself, and DH will teach them Japanese and Chinese himself?

Start the languages orally immediately - don't worry about reading in them til after the dc can read the primary language. Teach reading in the primary language until the dc is proficient. Once he can read in English, reading in French will be easy, and vice versa.

 

It will be hard for you to pick up Japanese or Chinese. Much harder than for the dc. I'd let dh teach the ones you don't know yet. Some people recommend teaching two languages by having one parent always speak one language to them and the other parent always speak the other. (YMMV as this works best starting with newborns, but has been known to work with older preschooolers and grandparents too.) Then add the other languages in as foreign languages with formal study with their regular schooling.

[cathmom]

Since you are in Canada, I would do English, French, and one other language. That's enough to keep you busy for centuries! I would probably choose another language that you both speak a little, unless you've got a lot of local resources for one of the Asian languages.

[Carpe]

I say conversational when I mean could carry on a purposeful conversation. I have the worst accent in the world in every language, apparently including French (Parisiens tell me it's too Quebecois and Quebecois tell me it's too Parisian). But I can read a newspaper and have an intelligent conversation with someone about the news. So good-ish? LOL. I have no idea.

 

According to the gov't of Japan DH is the lowest level of fluent in Japanese. His "cousin" (they're actually not related: the cousin is the son of my DH's "Aunt") is Level 1 fluent, So we have lots of Japanese options. My husband cannot read Chinese as far as I know, but is more or less the same level of "conversational" across the other languages he knows.

 

We do travel a lot to Central and South America. We go to Japan and Europe less frequently but often enough that I've picked up a touristy understanding of Japanese.

 

Our oldest has oral malformations that he's been having surgeries to repair since he was just a baby, so he cannot speak well in any languages, yet. He has one more surgery in the fall and will *fingers crossed* be speaking understandably by the end of the year. Our 16 month old can speak in both English and French equally well and I expect he will be properly bilingual. I'd be happy if the older could talk at all, but I would like him to be able to read English, French, and German (our ancestry) at the very least.

 

Which I suppose answers my own question.

[Ester Maria]

The problem is not you are not perfect or do not have a perfect accent, as if you expose your children to other people who speak the language they will have the power to "fix" what you might have "messed up". The problem is if you are a main (or only) source of a certain language for your kid and you transmit your mistakes to them, which are often very deeply ingrained and you might not be even aware of them - in that case, your child might have to completely "unlearn" big chunks of the language later and "relearn" things properly, which is time-consuming, bothersome and just plain difficult, if we are talking about the need to get rid of some bad habits which were acquired early and then perpetuated all the way through. Those are often very banal and basic mistakes, but they get numerous, so things complicate. It is because of that that I mentioned that "conversational" can mean anything - I know some people who are just being modest, who know the language truly very well and call it conversational; on the other hand, the family I met which totally messed up their daughters with incorrect and bad Italian to the point that I had to start ab ovo with them was also describing themselves as conversational. If you have good knowledge and expose your kids to other people with good knowledge, nothing to fear :), but if you do not, you might really wish to be careful and provide for a LOT of high quality language models, not being your child's main source of the language.

 

The problem with quantity is that every hour of language X takes away an hour from language Y. If you travel frequently and have a way of being in touch with all those languages, no problem, but I would still recommend you to focus on fewer and study formally fewer, just letting your son pick up bits from the rest from his surrounding, but without formally teaching him. We opted for that approach when it came to French, German and Spanish / Ladino / Venetian (I mostly group it together) because I thought that we could not reasonably teach all of them and that it was much better to focus on non-negotiable things for us (which were classics and Hebrew, in addition to bilingual education in Italian and English), and let the rest be informal, as it comes up, without sweating it. Both of my daughters are conversational enough to get by in those languages, simply thanks to exposure from childhood, but we refrained from formal study until high school. I am really glad because we chose that approach, so I thought for your situation something similar might work better than start with all seven at once.

 

So I would say start with English and French, a good grounding there, and then gently add a few more by the end of formal education (and maybe not at once), but while adding them doing so the way your son gets a lot of time with each language and a lot of good language models. I also recommend combining languages with school work, it speeds up general acquisition time and helps you maintain the language. Regarding the order of languages, only you can know what will be the most relevant and useful in your situation.

[Storm Bay]

My DH and I have agreed to teach our kids all of the languages we speak. I speak English and French fluently, and Spanish, German and Italian conversationally. DH speaks only English fluently, but French, Spanish, German, Japanese and Mandarin Chinese conversationally.

 

I speak English and French at home pretty much randomly. We live in a city with many speakers of all of these languages and, if we tried, could find native speakers for all of them that we could see once a week, maybe twice.

 

We're going to start formally schooling our oldest this year in a very laid back junior kindergarten sort of way. If that makes sense. He's demanding more academic challenges, but we don't want to do anything too structured because he isn't even 4 yet.

 

The plan (ha!) is to teach English reading etc. first, because we live in the most English part of Canada. Then teach French once we're confident that he's doing well in English.

 

First, is that a good idea?

How and when do we introduce the other languages and in what order?

How hard will it be for me to pick up Japanese and Chinese, and for DH to pick up Italian? Or should I just teach them Italian myself, and DH will teach them Japanese and Chinese himself?

 

I'd focus on Engish and French first and would teach your ds to read and write in French first because you live in the English part. My cousins grew up in Vancouver and went to a francophone school (my uncle is considered French Canadian). They spoke English at home and did French all day at school. All of them picked up reading in English on their own around grade 3. You will need to teach English as a sujbect, but that can wait a few years.

 

As for the other languages, that's something you'll want to do at different times. Mandarin is not a language you can learn well without a native mandarin speaker as a tutor to help with the tones, etc. I'm not sure which part of English Canada you live in, but if you're in Toronto or the lower mainland (that's in BC) you shouldn't have a problem finding one, although you'll have an even easier time finding a Cantonese one (but Mandarin is more widely spoken.) That's something I'd focus on later, or, if you really want to do three, outside the house with someone else (only because Mandarin is so different from European languages that starting early would be a real plus).

 

As for how structured you'll be, I'd follow your ds's lead at this age. As long as he's having fun you can be as structured or unstructured as he wants and needs.