One parent one language....

Hi, paranoid parent here again.


My 16 month old is a mixed child, father French, I am Japanese. My husband and I communicate in English.


I know the rule that one parent should only speak in one language but, I find it quite impossible. The reason being

1. playgroups/activities/ school, they are English speaking so when I take her to these functions, I find myself speaking in English.

2. to have my helper understand what I expect from my daughter, I have to speak in English some times.

3. Some words in certain languages are more accurately expressing the situation. For example, in Japan we do not have the custom going around hugging and kissing and saying I love you. We do the have the words but, not a lot of people use it and even when used, it sounds very very dramatic. So it's easier for me to say, "can i have a kiss?" or "I love you so much."

4. the limitation of number of books I can read her in japanese forces me to extend to English book readings.


I know that it is crucial to have core language ability but, at the same time, I really feel that I would rather use certain words in different language consistantly. For example, "I love you," " Big Fat Hug," in English, "Doucement" meaning slowly and with love and care in French, "Orikou-san" meaning, you are such a great girl in Japanese, from both parents.


There is a new trend in the mixed child culture in Japan which is, one base language and then some word in another language suddenly pops up in the conversation when they just cannot find the most accurate expression in the base language, and this is how my husband and I communicate as well.


Rather than one parent one language, mixing the most accurate expression and being consistent with it, is it a bad idea?


Xshoequeen

I think you should still try to do as much as possible in one language. Of course with playgroups and helper, you will have to switch. I had the rule that I would only speak English to my kids when at playgroup, for example.


With books, we translate on the fly or ask the kids to choose a book in Swedish.


For point 3, it is a tricky one. We run into this issue on occasion. If nothing else Swedish has a lot of English loan words in modern usage, so where do you draw the line? We try to stay consistently with one language as far as possible.


It takes a lot of effort and consistency to be the only speaker of a language in a family. Not easy at all. Make your mind up if you want to keep doing it, or switch to English, then stick with the choice.

it's especially difficult in your situation because you're dealing with 3 languages. it will only be natural for your daughter to pick up English the most since it seems to be the one that's used most often in your household. and if you are the primary caregiver, it seems she'll pick up English and Japanese first, while daddy's french will hafta suffer for the time being (assuming that he works and isn't home most of the day).

Hi axptguy, cara michelley, thanks so much for your replies.


I read your replies and have had seious thoughts with my husband. She is still young and things will change its' orders in the course of time but, your suggestions and comments gave mommy and daddy lots to think. I think we even got ourselves together.


We agreed that we would like her to speak/comprehend/write (full command) in French and English and if she can speak and comprehend in Japanese. If she can write in Japanese which i will teach gradually, we'll take it as really lucky. The reasoning for this is that we do not know where we are going to settle, we see that we will be in Asia for a while, then U.S. but, after that, have no idea and unless SHE chooses to be Japanese, probability is more high that we we settle in the Europes as my husband has family business there. Also, and I must say, I love my country and I really want her to learn the culture and spirit of Japan but, when you weigh French and Japanese, I have to admit, a command in French gives you more choices, just preparing her if she decides to work for the U.N. without being a celebrity : )


With these thoughts, we came up with the following guideline,


1. playgroup/ school, when one on one and noone else is involved, use the parents' mother tongue.

2. Helper, unless she is involved in the conversation, no matter her presence, we will talk in our language.

3. Weekends, daddy or mommy will immediately say again what the other half said to her in her own language.

4. She will go to French bilingual section kindergarten as daddy can only support her French on weekends if he is not on a business trip.( during the weekdays he leaves at 7:30, we have breakfast together but, when when he comes home its' already past her bedtime).

But seems there is a 90 people waiting list for 2011.... isn't school suppose to be something you can go to??????

5. Books, we have not decided yet( and i hear you axptguy!!) but, in the meantime, we have switched to, when we read in English, play with the book in French and Japanese, meaning, when she is amazed with a page, we point to something and have conversations with her in our language.

6. Go back to Japan as often as possible and spend massive time with Granma/pa for summers.

7. Go play with Japanese friends as much as possible


I know parenthood is trial and error but, is there something we are doing that is absolutely out of range?


Xshoequeen

it's great to see that you have a plan.


you'll definately have to work hard to keep at it, but don't stress out about it too much.


all the best!

As michelley says, having a plan is key. It will be tough but the rewards are great.

It sounds like you have a good plan -- good luck with it. You should also know that it isn't totally necessary to use the OPOL path to raise kids bilingually -- there's a great book that I bought when we were making these decisions called Raising a Bilingual Child by Barbara Z Pearson

http://www.amazon.com/Raising-Bilingual-Child-Living-Language/dp/1400023343/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274762087&sr=8-2

Unfortunately, it reads like it was written by an academic, but it's full of great info, including other models for raising kids bilingually [minority language @ home, situational languages, etc] as well as what to do when your kid doesn't seem to be responding to your efforts [don't worry, keep on going as if they are].


We are raising our kids with Mandarin, English and Russian. Our ayis speak Mandarin [and one of our first criteria when we hire an ayi is that they speak relatively clear, standard Mandarin], I speak English and their father speaks Russian to them. We make sure that their Papa gets some "primary caregiver" time most mornings [generally 30-60 mins], but since they are generally asleep by the time he knocks off work, Russian is definitely the third, so we are supplementing with a Russian language kindy. Our daughter started there when she turned 3 [about 6 months ago], and for the first several months she didn't say much, but then one day out of the blue she announced [in flawless colloquial Russian] "Kids! To the streets! We're going for a walk!" as if she were planning to incite a revolution, and since that day she chatters away almost like a native speaker. In fact, the last time her teachers gave us a formal progress report, they said that she is actually ahead of many of her agemates with respect to vocabulary, and her accent and grammar are becoming more "like them" and less "like her Papa" [a non-native speaker].


Our son is also starting to speak all three [he is now 21 months], although he is a bit delayed with respect to his sister in language acquisition. This is fairly common among kids who grow up with more than one language -- he is just now starting to speak, but we expect to enroll him in the same kindy at around 3 as well. And of course, his sis speaks to him in a combination of all three languages.

I am a native English speaker and speak to my kid 99% in English, and 1% in Cantonese. My wife speaks to her 80% in Cantonese and 20% in Mandarin.

However, my wife and I speak Cantonese to each other 100% of the time.


MOST IMPORTANT - never mix languages within the same sentence. My kid speaks pretty fluently in Cantonese, Mandarin and English depending on who she is speaking to, and hardly ever mixes up the languages.


It seems that a little discipline from the parents in sticking to one language WITHIN each sentence definitely helps.

I disagree with the advice never mix languages within the same sentence. Even before we had children, our English was peppered with phrases from Chinese, French, Polish... any time we heard a particularly nice expression that didn't really have an English equivalent, we'd just incorporate it into daily use. My monolingual friends back in the US used to comment [positively and sometimes even enviously] on this practice; but since I've been in Asia and have met lots of multilingual families, it seems very common, and it doesn't seem to affect the kids' ability to learn and distinguish languages.

I know I was the paranoid one but, something happened that made me relaxed and believe in a child's ability.

My parents were in town for the week so there was quite a lot of exposure to Japanese without any introduction or warning for my little princess.

My dad said "dame" which is "not good" in Japanese, thought she will NOT understand as I always use "no" for no. Guess what. She instantly knew what it was (probably with the help of facial expression) and when my dad did something that is not allowed to her, she told him "dame" with her fingers crossed(the not good sign) and looked at me and said "no no." I know that I am the googoo mother that worships anything she does new but, I was just surprised how she connected the 2 languages to carry the same meaning and on top of the differentiate the people to use it on without even been taught.


How I wish my brain was as flexible as hers.......

@Z


Maybe I can clarify why I feel it is important to keep languages separate in a single sentence. I was brought up in a way where kids were freely mixing english and cantonese and my personal experience is that the "accents" of the two languages can become mixed (and therefore)... so you might insert a chinese word into an english sentence and the tone of the chinese word becomes more english.


Also, by keeping languages separate, we personally found that my kid learnt the same word in multiple languages, thereby increasing her vocabulary in all 3 languages.


This is just my personal view and I am sure kids with more natural flair for languages may have no problems with any arrangement. I just feel that keeping languages ringfenced tends to improve vocabulary, grammar and intonation.

Fair enough. But then, my daughter speaks English with a mostly American accent, except that she likes to say "No" with a pronounced Aussie accent [I swear she gets seven syllables out of it], and has many very upper-crust British turns of phrase that she has picked up from her little friends, and we just roll with it and incorporate them into our own default phrasing.


It's just little things like "ling qian" [which we use to refer to anything smaller than a 100RMB note; not really a good replacement word in English - we actually used to use a Polish diminutive that essentially meant "cute little tiny money" before we moved to the PRC to mean "anything smaller than an ATM-$20]; or xiao fangzi [little house - which is how all of the local ayis refer to the playroom in our compound] where we find it infinitely easier just to use the non-English word. Our kids understand if we ask if they want to go to the playroom, but often we will also use things like this to give the ayis a heads up on what is about to happen.

Poor little ones - we are asking a lot of them! Our own experience is that don't try to measure progress in each language as if in lock-steps. Sometimes different contexts will mean they pick it up in one language first then gradual exposure transfers it to another.


I was told by a linguist that the one single factor that determines how well various languages will develop is exposure time, in similar quality. If that's not possible then the least exposed language will not develop in the same proficiency, especially in young children. The rule about speaking one language only per parent is more sensitive in the beginning when child is trying to fathom out the languages, but once he/she has a basic, you will be amazed how flexible they can be.


One of my friends try to up Chinese exposure time by having a rule that any TV cartoon must be watched in Chinese...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/north_west/8452843.stm


-my friend is 100% Japanese family but the older one (8) is in an international school & both parents work so he spends a lot of non-school time with the helper; the younger one (3) has gone to international kindergartens & her Japanese is minimal, so she's going to Teikyo on Saturdays, while the older one goes to juku to keep his kanji alive, though mum says it's way behind what it should be. They go back to Japan most holidays & the older boy usually joins some kind of YMCA type activity so he gets to play with Japanese kids. I used to live in Japan & so have a lot of Japanese friends married to "gaijin" - they all say the written Japanese needs to be worked at.

A Polish friend in HK used to worry about her kid mixing up languages but somehow it all came together by about age 4. If you're not in F/T work, you will have more time to keep up the Japanese.

French Canadian friends here speak both French and English at home & sent their daughter to local kindy & got a Cantonese tutor 3x week ( there's some HK blood in the family too, they're not being pushy or pretentious!) - kid seems to be tri-lingual as far as I can see. What a great bonus for the kid! Keep us updated, seems a lot of people are interested in this!

Hi all, thanks for the tips!!!

My daughter now 17 months is developing every single day and she is full of surprises!!! As lamstones said in the post, true that the exposure time does determine which language she wants to speak.


English not being my natural tongue and a 17 month old wild toddler to chase and set boundries, I find myself speaking in Japanese most of the time now. Sometimes, English blurts out but, 90% of the time, I talk to her in Japanese, guess what happened. She is now starting to replicate my Japanese sentences.... Even though she has quiet an amount of English going on in her life but, still no signs of English sentences yet. As for her French, it is only 15 minutes in the morning and Saturdays and Sundays, she has finally started using a word or 2, but, daddy was overjoyed when he heard it for the first time.


Some commands such as "Bring this to Baba"(bring your dinner plate to baba our helper who is waiting in the kitchen), she can only understand in Japanese. I tried to implement it in English as well, thought it would be useful, but, since she does not understand it, I dropped it.


Sistim, thank you so much for your detailed advise and i do agree and I have no idea how I will do it. My husband learnt Japanese as a 3rd language when he was in Japan, true that reading, speaking, hearing, ok to the point where I can have fights with him in Japanese but, the problem is writing. He is very worried about that point. So far, it's not a problem as my silly goose is learning how to draw a scribble on the wall, thank you washable crayons!!! But, I this is something I will have to figure out....... Will keep you updated but, if any more experiences, advises, comforts, it's more than welcome!!!!


In the meantime, i have to make my silly goose understand that it's not the time to have a laugh fit when someone says no, she seriously thinks that it's a cue to crack up.......

I don't know if anyone else has experienced the same, but my daughter (3.5 years) makes me laugh alot because she can mimic accents pretty well.


When she speaks to the domestic helper she adopts a filipino English accent but when speaking to me she uses a strong British accent. She also laughed alot when she heard her teacher speak with a Kiwi accent, and came home speaking with a Kiwi accent... :)


She's now correcting my mispronunciations in mandarin and my wife and helper's mispronunciations in english... She also finds it fascinating that other people cannot pronounce words correctly... kids are too smart nowadays!

"She also finds it fascinating that other people cannot pronounce words correctly... kids are too smart nowadays!"


I find this fascinating as well. ;)