Choosing a Language Strategy
Oct 18, 2016 19:06:19 GMT 9
Post by Alison on Oct 18, 2016 19:06:19 GMT 9
Baby is expected in April so we have a few months yet to prepare and decide finally on our language strategy. We are both committed to raising a bilingual child due to our shared language history and experience and really want our child to be able to communicate with family. I’d really appreciate anyone’s thoughts, experience and advice on helping us to decide what strategy to choose.
Our language history is:
Me – native English speaker, fairly fluent in French & Spanish, conversational Norwegian, about 3 words in Sami.
Husband – native Sami speaker, native Norwegian speaker (from time he started school), very fluent English speaker (has used throughout university and career and in most social situations for the last 10 years).
Between us we have always spoken English but over the last two years have gradually been increasing the Norwegian we speak between each other. We recently managed a week of almost all Norwegian! It’s still pretty difficult to do if we need to discuss serious issues, if I’m exhausted or sick, trying to argue etc.
My family, most friends and community are all monolingual English speakers so English will take care of itself, especially once nursery/school starts. My husband’s family are all bilingual Sami/Norwegian speakers. For them, Sami is extremely important to their tradition and culture. Norwegian is necessary to interact with the rest of the community where they live. This makes us think that it would be good to use both Sami and Norwegian with our baby but this will pose a number of challenges.
To generalise, my husband’s family (and extended family which is huge!) are very quiet people. They don’t talk unless it is necessary and always use as few words as possible. My husband is probably an even more extreme example of this than most others in his family. This can make it difficult to practice conversation and build up vocabulary. Partly for this reason, I decided a couple of years ago that if we wanted our child to actively use one of his languages, we would need a lot of support to make this happen – and that I should probably increase my fluency so that I can help with this!
So trying to decide whether we should use Sami and/or Norwegian with our child is the biggest dilemma. The two languages are really dissimilar. Norwegian shares quite a lot with English, Sami belongs to a different language family. There are a relatively large number of Norwegian resources available compared to Sami. There are not quite 5 million native speakers of Norwegian but only around 25,000 native speakers of Northern Sami. There are quite a lot of language classes available in Norwegian – only a few available in Sami and in very specific locations. We can get TV and radio in both languages but a lot more in Norwegian than Sami. We already have a reasonable number of books both for children and adults in Norwegian – we’ve got a couple of children’s books in Sami. My husband never learned to read or write in Sami so finds it very strange to do so and it is much harder to track down Sami books.
My husband’s family live in a rural Arctic location, and their life is very much based on the outdoors, traditional culture and their immediate community and so their conversation reflects that in both languages. Almost every person we come into contact with who speaks Sami is related to us and has a similar lifestyle. There is a much wider community of Norwegian speakers and variety of lifestyle. The reason I have been learning Norwegian and not Sami is because I find it much easier, there are more resources and more opportunities to practise it. However, when staying with family, I still hear Sami for the majority of the time and can feel excluded from conversations. All of this makes me think that we should try to introduce both languages to our child. If we only introduce Sami, it makes it difficult to get by in Norway. Many Norwegians speak English so travel there is easy without Norwegian but if we ever choose to live there (only likely to be for a year at most) we would need Norwegian to get by. I also think that with my husband the only speaker of Sami to have regular contact with our child and the limited resources it would be difficult to achieve enough fluency to make communication with family easy. I think it would be much easier to achieve that level of fluency in Norwegian with much wider availability of resources, greater range of people to mix with and the fact that I can speak some Norwegian. There are even some native Norwegian speakers who live in our city although I’m not sure how much interaction we would have with them.
My husband’s sister’s children are passive users of Sami as they prefer speaking Norwegian. They can understand everything as their mother’s side of the family use Sami almost exclusively but their father’s side speak Norwegian and that is the ML language at school and in the community. Also, they know that all Sami speakers speak Norwegian. I think this is probably a realistic goal for our family too although it will be much harder for us. If our children can understand Sami then they won’t feel excluded with family and will be more able to learn about important traditions and culture but if they only speak Norwegian then everyone can still understand them. This means that my husband will need to speak both Sami and Norwegian with our children and this might be difficult given the long hours he works and his very quiet nature.
I’m not sure how much Sami input they would need to be able to understand what happens around them. We plan to visit family at least once a year but I’m not sure for how long. We will invite them to visit but not sure if that will happen as they are not very keen on travel abroad. I can’t imagine we will use Skype – I suggested it to my husband but his parents don’t have internet access and he thinks that he and they would feel very uncomfortable with using it which they could only do when visiting his sister or brother. I have a CD of Sami children’s songs and a simple CD-Rom to teach basic Sami vocabulary like numbers, colours etc as well as a couple of children’s books. I think my husband should aim to talk Sami to the baby every day, especially when they are alone together and read a story or two. I can try playing the CD and learning to sing along with the songs and can also try learning some of the basic vocabulary. We can ask family to support us by finding resources and sending them to us and asking if we can video them talking to the baby or reading a short story.
For Norwegian, I think we should try using Norwegian as our main family language and that is why we have been trying to increase the time we use it together. I guess we’re still ok using English as a couple when the baby is asleep/in another room so can save important discussions and arguments for those times. I’m more concerned about feeling exhausted and sick and how easy it will be to stick to Norwegian then. When I’m alone with the baby I think it might be good to still try using mostly Norwegian – especially if I can make use of books, songs, internet etc. However, my Norwegian is still not that great – I make lots of grammatical errors and find pronunciation difficult as well as not having a very extensive vocabulary. The last Norwegian course I did was B1 and so would be ready to do B2 but can only do that in Norway or trying to study alone at home. That makes me concerned about the baby learning mistakes but also about my own ability to express myself with my baby. So I have three options:
1. Only speak Norwegian with the baby when there are other Norwegian speakers around to support me and speak English the rest of the time.
2. Speak Norwegian with my baby as much as possible but maybe use a time and place strategy so that I could still speak some English but in more limited time, like only when other English speakers are around, only outside the home, or have a space in the house where we go to read English stories and talk in English.
3. Try to never use English with my child although realistically they will still hear me speaking English when out and about and with other English speakers.
I think option 1 would make it unlikely that our child would get enough exposure to Norwegian to become fluent but I am unsure how well-equipped I am to use either option 2 or 3 and which would be best.
If you’ve managed to read through my very long post I’d be grateful for any thoughts, suggestions and advice!
Our language history is:
Me – native English speaker, fairly fluent in French & Spanish, conversational Norwegian, about 3 words in Sami.
Husband – native Sami speaker, native Norwegian speaker (from time he started school), very fluent English speaker (has used throughout university and career and in most social situations for the last 10 years).
Between us we have always spoken English but over the last two years have gradually been increasing the Norwegian we speak between each other. We recently managed a week of almost all Norwegian! It’s still pretty difficult to do if we need to discuss serious issues, if I’m exhausted or sick, trying to argue etc.
My family, most friends and community are all monolingual English speakers so English will take care of itself, especially once nursery/school starts. My husband’s family are all bilingual Sami/Norwegian speakers. For them, Sami is extremely important to their tradition and culture. Norwegian is necessary to interact with the rest of the community where they live. This makes us think that it would be good to use both Sami and Norwegian with our baby but this will pose a number of challenges.
To generalise, my husband’s family (and extended family which is huge!) are very quiet people. They don’t talk unless it is necessary and always use as few words as possible. My husband is probably an even more extreme example of this than most others in his family. This can make it difficult to practice conversation and build up vocabulary. Partly for this reason, I decided a couple of years ago that if we wanted our child to actively use one of his languages, we would need a lot of support to make this happen – and that I should probably increase my fluency so that I can help with this!
So trying to decide whether we should use Sami and/or Norwegian with our child is the biggest dilemma. The two languages are really dissimilar. Norwegian shares quite a lot with English, Sami belongs to a different language family. There are a relatively large number of Norwegian resources available compared to Sami. There are not quite 5 million native speakers of Norwegian but only around 25,000 native speakers of Northern Sami. There are quite a lot of language classes available in Norwegian – only a few available in Sami and in very specific locations. We can get TV and radio in both languages but a lot more in Norwegian than Sami. We already have a reasonable number of books both for children and adults in Norwegian – we’ve got a couple of children’s books in Sami. My husband never learned to read or write in Sami so finds it very strange to do so and it is much harder to track down Sami books.
My husband’s family live in a rural Arctic location, and their life is very much based on the outdoors, traditional culture and their immediate community and so their conversation reflects that in both languages. Almost every person we come into contact with who speaks Sami is related to us and has a similar lifestyle. There is a much wider community of Norwegian speakers and variety of lifestyle. The reason I have been learning Norwegian and not Sami is because I find it much easier, there are more resources and more opportunities to practise it. However, when staying with family, I still hear Sami for the majority of the time and can feel excluded from conversations. All of this makes me think that we should try to introduce both languages to our child. If we only introduce Sami, it makes it difficult to get by in Norway. Many Norwegians speak English so travel there is easy without Norwegian but if we ever choose to live there (only likely to be for a year at most) we would need Norwegian to get by. I also think that with my husband the only speaker of Sami to have regular contact with our child and the limited resources it would be difficult to achieve enough fluency to make communication with family easy. I think it would be much easier to achieve that level of fluency in Norwegian with much wider availability of resources, greater range of people to mix with and the fact that I can speak some Norwegian. There are even some native Norwegian speakers who live in our city although I’m not sure how much interaction we would have with them.
My husband’s sister’s children are passive users of Sami as they prefer speaking Norwegian. They can understand everything as their mother’s side of the family use Sami almost exclusively but their father’s side speak Norwegian and that is the ML language at school and in the community. Also, they know that all Sami speakers speak Norwegian. I think this is probably a realistic goal for our family too although it will be much harder for us. If our children can understand Sami then they won’t feel excluded with family and will be more able to learn about important traditions and culture but if they only speak Norwegian then everyone can still understand them. This means that my husband will need to speak both Sami and Norwegian with our children and this might be difficult given the long hours he works and his very quiet nature.
I’m not sure how much Sami input they would need to be able to understand what happens around them. We plan to visit family at least once a year but I’m not sure for how long. We will invite them to visit but not sure if that will happen as they are not very keen on travel abroad. I can’t imagine we will use Skype – I suggested it to my husband but his parents don’t have internet access and he thinks that he and they would feel very uncomfortable with using it which they could only do when visiting his sister or brother. I have a CD of Sami children’s songs and a simple CD-Rom to teach basic Sami vocabulary like numbers, colours etc as well as a couple of children’s books. I think my husband should aim to talk Sami to the baby every day, especially when they are alone together and read a story or two. I can try playing the CD and learning to sing along with the songs and can also try learning some of the basic vocabulary. We can ask family to support us by finding resources and sending them to us and asking if we can video them talking to the baby or reading a short story.
For Norwegian, I think we should try using Norwegian as our main family language and that is why we have been trying to increase the time we use it together. I guess we’re still ok using English as a couple when the baby is asleep/in another room so can save important discussions and arguments for those times. I’m more concerned about feeling exhausted and sick and how easy it will be to stick to Norwegian then. When I’m alone with the baby I think it might be good to still try using mostly Norwegian – especially if I can make use of books, songs, internet etc. However, my Norwegian is still not that great – I make lots of grammatical errors and find pronunciation difficult as well as not having a very extensive vocabulary. The last Norwegian course I did was B1 and so would be ready to do B2 but can only do that in Norway or trying to study alone at home. That makes me concerned about the baby learning mistakes but also about my own ability to express myself with my baby. So I have three options:
1. Only speak Norwegian with the baby when there are other Norwegian speakers around to support me and speak English the rest of the time.
2. Speak Norwegian with my baby as much as possible but maybe use a time and place strategy so that I could still speak some English but in more limited time, like only when other English speakers are around, only outside the home, or have a space in the house where we go to read English stories and talk in English.
3. Try to never use English with my child although realistically they will still hear me speaking English when out and about and with other English speakers.
I think option 1 would make it unlikely that our child would get enough exposure to Norwegian to become fluent but I am unsure how well-equipped I am to use either option 2 or 3 and which would be best.
If you’ve managed to read through my very long post I’d be grateful for any thoughts, suggestions and advice!