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I definitely take the point that as I am mono-lingual myself I'm not the ideal parent to be teaching the second language. Buuut I'm hoping that by the time speech becomes a real issue we will have moved abroad anyway, so English will become the "home" language if that makes sense. The alternative is that I might work and their father might look after them and converse with them in one of his fluencies, but that suggestion went down like a lead balloon full of shit
You make an interesting point about New Zealanders, too. My best friend is Australian (though she lived here for almost a decade) and she said the only place where second languages were even less encouraged and occurent was in Oz. She spoke Greek and English as her mother was Greek but she said that the majority of Aussies couldn't say boo to a goose in another language. Though obviously that's only one person's experience!
I don't think that's harsh at all, I think it'd be a disservice too. I'm a bit iffy about his languages though, I think Italian would be more useful to them but he actually speaks Sicilianu which is frigging weird and since I have no intention of ever setting foot on Sicily while his crazy father is still alive then it's not all that fruitful! The chances of us moving to Sweden are far higher, but still not huge. I'd really like them to learn German but if I went down that route I would do it through schooling/immersion as obviously neither of us are native speakers.
I have had a bit of sore loser syndrome from my family wondering why Irish isn't on the list of potential languages, but like you said it becomes a lot more of a priority when the language is actually needed to communicate... and with S's family in Sweden it probably would be to be honest. Best get back to my audio tape learning... I'm hoping they are learning with me whilst in the womb :razz:
I don't - maybe that would make me an evil parent - but my friends parents definatley didn't bother teaching her italian so they could speak to each other without her knowing - I dont' know weather it was neccessarily on purpose but it was very useful for them.
Also when my mum's uncle charlie (long story) died - her dad wrote a note to her in french and left it in the kitchen - knowing that her yonger sister wouldn't be able to read it and get upset. Oddly the strangest thing I find about that whole inccident is that my grandfather who left at school at 14 and was essentially a builder and only ever left the country once to go to the fareo islands during the war - could write french.
I think the lack of bilingual children / people in NZ & Australia is predominantly due to the isolation of the countries. I only know English but then we didn't have the population around (e.g. Europe at a stones throw) that necessitated learning a different language. With that in mind however, NZ has a rather high Pacific Island population who mostly can speak their mother tongue.
What I wouldn't give to be able to fluently converse in another language.
Imagine you have a friend over.
"Hey, what are you parents talking about?"
"I have no clue at all."
or:
"I'd wish to know what you parents are talking about."
"yea, you and me both buddy
Strubbles i'm sure its quite normal/useful for parents to want to sometimes discuss things and not want their children to know what they are saying - I'm not implying they do it all the time though. I recently read a biography of Amos Oz and his parents and grandparents would often switch from hebrew to russian when they were talking about subjects they thought were too old for his young ears to hear.....
Which is what parents (including mine) would do.
YES!!! My dads family do that, and many other Arabic famillies....they dont teach the younger generation "the old language", they speak it when they want to discuss adult and private things...we normally pick it up as we grow up, i can understand but cant speak it at all! But one of my friends and her younger sister are fluent in it.
I did French for 3 years at high school, and German for 2, but the only things I remember are "je ne comprende pas" (I don't even know if that's spelt right), and "ich habe ein pony" because of a song we listened to in our first ever lesson
I also know the words for "Hello", "Welcome", and "Thank you (very much)" in kiswahili. My dad can speak it almost fluently, and my stepmum (being Kenyan) is fluent in it, as well as being fluent in English and her native language of Kamba. They were going to teach my baby sister to be tri-lingual, but it didn't work out very well...