Judit from Italy (Hungarian/English)
Aug 15, 2014 20:36:17 GMT 9
Post by Judit on Aug 15, 2014 20:36:17 GMT 9
Hi everyone,
And let me start with a huge thank you to Adam for creating this great forum and of course the wonderful Bilingual Monkeys site as well. I’ve been following you there for quite a while.
Let me tell you about myself, I apologize if it gets a bit long…
I am a Hungarian born English “fanatic”, having lived in the UK for seven years before coming to Italy 12 years ago. Moving to England as a teenager and having spent quite a few years at school there had a great impact on me and I kind of consider myself bilingual in a way, for years my only language that I used on a daily basis was English.
Of course I love my native Hungarian and consider it a beautiful language but even after moving to Italy my main language was English. I’ve been working here as an English teacher for 12 years, teaching teenagers and adults in the afternoon and very young children in a kindergarten three times a week in the morning.
Initially I wasn’t going to stay for long just so that I could learn Italian properly, and was ready to leave when I met my to-be husband 10 years ago…
Long before we had a child I knew that the OPOL method would not work for us because there is no way I could choose between English and Hungarian. My husband speaks Italian and Calabrian (the dialect of this region, we live right in the south of Italy, I see mount Etna in Sicily from my balcony) and very basic English.
So when I found out I was pregnant, the clock started ticking and I only had 9 months to come up with something that could work in our situation… I was basically spending hours and hours searching the net looking for some useful ideas how to tackle this new adventure but couldn’t find anything that struck me as, apart from suggestions such as finding an English speaking nanny or sending him to language clubs…well I knew that none of these would have worked for us.
And then Samuel was born two and a half years ago and suddenly everything seemed so natural, I stopped worrying and was looking forward to this wonderful journey of bringing him up as a multilingual child. How? I’ll tell you in another post.
Well, just to cut it short, I’m very proud to say that so far his strongest language is Hungarian, followed by English and Italian on a similar level (although he speaks more Italian than English his understanding is more or less equal). He is not quite aware of the Calabrian dialect just yet. And the most astounding thing is that he doesn’t seem to mix up the languages. (might happen later??)
Looking forward to meeting mums and dads in similar situations here.
Judit
And let me start with a huge thank you to Adam for creating this great forum and of course the wonderful Bilingual Monkeys site as well. I’ve been following you there for quite a while.
Let me tell you about myself, I apologize if it gets a bit long…
I am a Hungarian born English “fanatic”, having lived in the UK for seven years before coming to Italy 12 years ago. Moving to England as a teenager and having spent quite a few years at school there had a great impact on me and I kind of consider myself bilingual in a way, for years my only language that I used on a daily basis was English.
Of course I love my native Hungarian and consider it a beautiful language but even after moving to Italy my main language was English. I’ve been working here as an English teacher for 12 years, teaching teenagers and adults in the afternoon and very young children in a kindergarten three times a week in the morning.
Initially I wasn’t going to stay for long just so that I could learn Italian properly, and was ready to leave when I met my to-be husband 10 years ago…
Long before we had a child I knew that the OPOL method would not work for us because there is no way I could choose between English and Hungarian. My husband speaks Italian and Calabrian (the dialect of this region, we live right in the south of Italy, I see mount Etna in Sicily from my balcony) and very basic English.
So when I found out I was pregnant, the clock started ticking and I only had 9 months to come up with something that could work in our situation… I was basically spending hours and hours searching the net looking for some useful ideas how to tackle this new adventure but couldn’t find anything that struck me as, apart from suggestions such as finding an English speaking nanny or sending him to language clubs…well I knew that none of these would have worked for us.
And then Samuel was born two and a half years ago and suddenly everything seemed so natural, I stopped worrying and was looking forward to this wonderful journey of bringing him up as a multilingual child. How? I’ll tell you in another post.
Well, just to cut it short, I’m very proud to say that so far his strongest language is Hungarian, followed by English and Italian on a similar level (although he speaks more Italian than English his understanding is more or less equal). He is not quite aware of the Calabrian dialect just yet. And the most astounding thing is that he doesn’t seem to mix up the languages. (might happen later??)
Looking forward to meeting mums and dads in similar situations here.
Judit
Just think of 25 people sitting at a big table all trying to speak at the same time!!! Now that's what I call language exposure!! lol
