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Will I mess up my kids?


wintermom
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My kids will be starting a Saturday morning Swedish language course next week. I speak Norwegian and understand Swedish, but don't have a Swedish accent or even really know how to pronounce words the correct way in Swedish. Will I mess them up by speaking bits of Norwegian to them at home, or even Swedish with a poor accent? Or will the amount of language they hear from me now probably not be a huge factor in the long run. They are only going to learn the language really well by being immersed in it for large portions on a daily basis (which I won't be doing).

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Kids seem to be remarkably flexible where languages are concerned. I met a kid who was about six and speaking four languages, mostly because her parents each came from a different lote background.

 

Not sure how it works with languages that are closely related, or accents (in fact I'm pretty sure I couldn't tell the difference between Norwegian and Swedish by listening!). But since second generation immigrant kids usually speak like their school friends rather than like their parents, I'd hazard a guess that you won't be messing them up.

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Kids seem to be remarkably flexible where languages are concerned. I met a kid who was about six and speaking four languages, mostly because her parents each came from a different lote background.

 

Not sure how it works with languages that are closely related, or accents (in fact I'm pretty sure I couldn't tell the difference between Norwegian and Swedish by listening!). But since second generation immigrant kids usually speak like their school friends rather than like their parents, I'd hazard a guess that you won't be messing them up.

 

:D Norwegian and Swedish are VERY similar! In fact, some Norwegian dialects might be more different from each other than some Norwegian and Swedish dialects.

 

There's this soft, kind of back of the throat 'sh' sound in Swedish that doesn't exist in Norwegian, but is very common in Swedish, that my dc will probably master long before I do! :tongue_smilie:

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  • 4 weeks later...

If you speak Norwegian well, I would speak Norwegian and not Swedish to your kids. Also, I wouldn't have one person (you) mix languages while they're learning them. Kids seem to understand when one person speaks one language and another person speaks another. I'm sure your kids will be essentially learning a lot of Swedish while you're speaking Norwegian given the similarities. Our son learned a lot of English while his mom spoke Spanish -- and he learned a lot of Spanish while I spoke English to him, especially since some of the basic differences were explained to him after awhile.

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  • 3 weeks later...
My kids will be starting a Saturday morning Swedish language course next week. I speak Norwegian and understand Swedish, but don't have a Swedish accent or even really know how to pronounce words the correct way in Swedish. Will I mess them up by speaking bits of Norwegian to them at home, or even Swedish with a poor accent? Or will the amount of language they hear from me now probably not be a huge factor in the long run. They are only going to learn the language really well by being immersed in it for large portions on a daily basis (which I won't be doing).

 

Nope, running 4-5 languages without making a mess, and considering adding 4 more.

 

However why do Swedish and not Norwegian?

 

Indeed why do Scandinavian languages at all? De snakker alle engelsk!

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