Hello from Kansas, USA!
Nov 25, 2018 13:13:09 GMT 9
Post by Andrej on Nov 25, 2018 13:13:09 GMT 9
Hello everyone!
Me and my wife just had a baby boy and I'm trying to get us prepared for the difficult multilingual journey. Adam, I read your book, and I loved it!
I am originally from Slovenia, which is a small country in Europe. I was raised monolingual, but we are geographically surrounded by a multitude of other European languages, so I tried to pick up quite a few as I was growing up.
My wife is from northeast India, close to the Myanmar border (India actually extends very far east and transforms into ethnically very different type of people around that area). She is from a small tribe (Thadou) of about 100,000 people that have their own language which is her first mother tongue. She was brought up in a multilingual society, since their tribal language alone is not enough for survival in her home state. Her mother is from a different tribe (Gangte), also very small, so she learned that too as her mother tongue. All in all, she speaks two tribal languages, a state language (Manipuri), a national language (Hindi), and English, all as mother tongues, effectively making her pentalingual. While growing up, she picked up a few more languages, some tribal, some languages from nearby states.
We communicate in English and we are not able to communicate in any other language to each other. However, we would like our boy to be able to speak my original language, Slovene, and at least her primary mother tongue, Thadou. As he grows older, I would like him to learn more languages that are close to us, but also useful (perhaps other tribal languages are not as important as some more widely used ones). It will definitely be a challenge to pick which ones to go for next. At this time, I am trying to focus on the 3 mentioned.
We will have challenges in both areas that the book mentions, in exposure as well as the need. At this time, I'm mostly concerned about lack of resources. For Slovene, even though there are not many speakers in the world, I can bring books and DVDs from Slovenia and it will not be much of an issue, as long as I try really hard to speak to him in my language (even though there is no way to avoid English, as we have to communicate with my wife in it). For Thadou, they have no written words at all! The only book in her language is the Bible, and it's fortunately in Latin script since they have no script of their own. And even when we travel to her home, I'm afraid our little guy is just gonna get confused with people speaking not only Thadou, but constant Hindi and Manipuri mixed into their everyday speech. The only positive thing about the situation is that she is the primary caregiver and can talk to him much more.
As you can see, I am concerned and doubtful of our success, but your enthusiasm and support definitely give me hope.
This should be enough for now I believe.
Andrej
Me and my wife just had a baby boy and I'm trying to get us prepared for the difficult multilingual journey. Adam, I read your book, and I loved it!
I am originally from Slovenia, which is a small country in Europe. I was raised monolingual, but we are geographically surrounded by a multitude of other European languages, so I tried to pick up quite a few as I was growing up.
My wife is from northeast India, close to the Myanmar border (India actually extends very far east and transforms into ethnically very different type of people around that area). She is from a small tribe (Thadou) of about 100,000 people that have their own language which is her first mother tongue. She was brought up in a multilingual society, since their tribal language alone is not enough for survival in her home state. Her mother is from a different tribe (Gangte), also very small, so she learned that too as her mother tongue. All in all, she speaks two tribal languages, a state language (Manipuri), a national language (Hindi), and English, all as mother tongues, effectively making her pentalingual. While growing up, she picked up a few more languages, some tribal, some languages from nearby states.
We communicate in English and we are not able to communicate in any other language to each other. However, we would like our boy to be able to speak my original language, Slovene, and at least her primary mother tongue, Thadou. As he grows older, I would like him to learn more languages that are close to us, but also useful (perhaps other tribal languages are not as important as some more widely used ones). It will definitely be a challenge to pick which ones to go for next. At this time, I am trying to focus on the 3 mentioned.
We will have challenges in both areas that the book mentions, in exposure as well as the need. At this time, I'm mostly concerned about lack of resources. For Slovene, even though there are not many speakers in the world, I can bring books and DVDs from Slovenia and it will not be much of an issue, as long as I try really hard to speak to him in my language (even though there is no way to avoid English, as we have to communicate with my wife in it). For Thadou, they have no written words at all! The only book in her language is the Bible, and it's fortunately in Latin script since they have no script of their own. And even when we travel to her home, I'm afraid our little guy is just gonna get confused with people speaking not only Thadou, but constant Hindi and Manipuri mixed into their everyday speech. The only positive thing about the situation is that she is the primary caregiver and can talk to him much more.
As you can see, I am concerned and doubtful of our success, but your enthusiasm and support definitely give me hope.
This should be enough for now I believe.
Nice to meet you all!
Even without the aim of raising a child in more than one language, being a new parent--as wonderful as it is--can be a stressful time. So I encourage you, while savoring each day, to also hold a longer view of this process firmly in mind and ground your efforts in patience and perseverance. While your family's multicultural and multilingual background will be such a rich influence on your son's life, it's also true that the circumstances themselves are challenging and will require a resourceful and proactive approach.
