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You're so lucky that you're going to be able to bring your child up bilingually, I'd love to be bilingual.
I would probably like to learn something like Maltese. It would probably be useful for me to learn to speak French & Spanish as well. (I know very little of each)
Best way to learn a language is to be around native speakers or fluent speakers and picking up on the things you won't learn in the classroom. Of course you need to have a basic knowledge of the language, how sentences are formed, tenses and shite like that.
My wee cousin is being brought up speaking Irish and English at home and when I was young I was speaking it since the age of 4. Yip ya!
just refer you back to my previous link
http://linguistlist.org/ask-ling/biling2.html
Not bad Italian and I have a smattering of German and Turkish.
cunning linguist you
At last someone I could talk to in 4 different languages! :wave:
My mum is Maltese and regrets not bringing up my brother and I bilingually. Not that Maltese would be much use to me now as most people in Malta speak English, but that's not the point.
As for me, I have Standard Grade German, conversational French, and can understand Maltese.
I can count to ten and say my name in Gaelic too
Read that completly wrong.
I was bilingual when I was little cos I lived in France for a few years and went to a French school.
My sister took to it really well and was even top in French lessons in her class... and was just as good at English... I struggled a bit more and found it too confusing to do English and French at the same time... When I came back to England and started learning to read/write in English I went on French-strike.
I was later diagnosed with discalculia and I think maybe that affected how I could hold all the information in my head... Still have trouble spelling to this day, so dunno if it's anything to do with my start with languages or not.
I'd say it would be easier to bring up a kid with two languages from the word go; instead of suddenly introducing something else to the mix which I think it potentially more confusing. Kids do have an amazing ability to absorb languages though.
I really wish I was still good at French... Truth is I have a great accent but pretty crap vocab and grammar
I can also speak a little bit of German, which I love and want to do more of.
I'd say Spanish too... But I have no idea how I even got a pass in the exam I did cos I literally can only speak about 2 short sentences. :rolleyes:
Really?
Apart from Frecnh & spanish, I also know a little bit of Hebrew (can't wite anything in it though) and a little bit of German. I did also used to know how to say some (very rude) words in Norwegian.
I dated a Dutch guy for just over a year and spent 4 monhts of that summer working in a Dutch factory packing bolts and screws into boxes for the measly sum of 3.03€ an hour but picking up a lot of Dutch at the same time. My boyfriend now is Norwegian and although we've been together for over two years I've not picked up that much Norwegian, I think its probably because the intonation is very different from English and my bf thinkgs is only amusing to teach me all the nasty stuff instead!! :impissed:
Oh I have a Scottish Higher (A) in Spanish but I can honestly say that is because I learned a lot by memorising a kind of proforma for my exam and the rest has just faded away through lack of use! What a waste...
I speak french§ even worse and I speak a little bit of caker rocker ie a bit of romany.
Lol, perfect...come over for a holiday and i can take you to meet my grandparents and omars grandparents and older aunts
Hi! Hola! Salut! Привет! :wave:
God yeah. You go to Malta and, generally, the only people that can't speak English are the elderly.
Briggi, I fully support what you're doing by the way. I'm not sure that came through in my original post. Good luck with it.
I was taught some french last year but I don't remember anything!
Oh, and in Primary School I learnt a bit of Japanese but, again,
I don't remember anything.
Anyway, recent research has shown that learning two languages is very beneficial. The whole 'conflict' notion popular in the 60s/70s/80s is no longer viable. Standardised testing is difficult as a marker for language proficiency anyway, since it tests particular kinds of knowledge (e.g. grammatical, phonological boundaries) rather than performance, and it's performance rather than competence which is important in everyday communication.
Personally I speak Greek (since I am) and English. I only have a Lower certificate in the latter. I believe I could get the highest one too, but I've not bothered to. :grump:
As for bilingual children, my brother and sister will be (they're twins too). Their mum is half German, so they're already hearing both languages. According to the doctor they'll be fine with that, they might just take longer to start speaking. And they'll take even longer anyway, because apparently twins tend to learn to communicate between each other first and only later with other people.
I can also speak a little german and spanish but not loads - however because of learning french so much when in a foreign country which isnt' france i tend to revert to one or the other cos my head goes your in a foreign country you must speak foreign - not because its particually useful. I'm also reasonabley good at food in italian suprisingly.
However when i was in India one of our members of staff asked me if we spoke french at home - because everyone in India speaks at least 3 languages - English and Hindi which they learn at school and normally use in the work place and then their local dialect which they speak at home - she thought it was really strange that I only really spoke one langauge.
However this weekend i went away with a big group of people including some New Zealanders - who thought it was really weird that we could all speak so many languages in europe - like we talked to the car hire people in french etc - so maybe i'm not as bad as I think. But i am dyslexic so I find it realllly hard to learn english let alone another language and i really want to live abroad probably in france so that I can actually get fluent in at least one other one.
I think that all children should learn to speak lots of languages from a young age - I think the confusion point in childrens minds (if it exisists) is often around grammer though as languages have different gramaticall constructions. I'm bitter though as my mother speaks fluent french yet didn't pass any of it on to me other than her weird rural french accent (she is english just lived in a very random rural part of france) which means I have a very odd accent - though probably better than most english peoples.
However to get multi lingual babies - it really needs the parent who is at home with the children most to speak the foreign language. As they will pick up english out side the home and when interacting with other people so its really important that they are only spoken to in one langage at home. My father in law's first language is french - however my husband and none of his brothers and sisters speak it fluently even though thier dad tried to speak to them in french at home - whilst my husbands cousins who were brought up by my father in law's sister do all speak fluent french..................
That argument only works for england though obv - if your in another country it would be important to only speak to them in english at home.
Ohh and lastly I know this is a really long post - but I know of parents who are bilingual but have not bothered teaching thier children another language purely so they can have conversations which thier children wont' understand!
I find this strang as well. Personally, if my irst language wasn't English or I lived in a country where the main language wasn't Englsh, I would happily teach my children English.