Szevasztok from Hungary, Hallo from Germany
Jun 2, 2017 7:25:25 GMT 9
Post by David on Jun 2, 2017 7:25:25 GMT 9
Hello everyone,
We're a family of four from Hungary and Germany, i.e. we have two residences and travel back and forth between the two countries. Our two youngsters are 2 years and a tender 2 weeks now, so this post deals with our older one, Lisa. The family language between myself and my wife is English (we both are fluent, but not on the level of a native speaker). She speaks Hungarian to the kids while I speak German to them.
Our goal is to achieve mother language fluency in both Hungarian and German, they will both visit a German/Hungarian bilingual school starting at the age of 6/7. Long-term, we hope to add a very good command of English as that's what we use for day-to-day communication between my wife and myself and it would feel odd if the kids can't join in.
Most of our relatives have told us that this will be a simple set of goals to achieve, given our international background and the fact that we already speak English day in day out. I do not speak Hungarian myself, my wife's German is good enough for basic communication but not good enough to teach the kids so we stick with our native languages when speaking to the little ones.
But as Adam has mentioned in many of his articles -- unless you hit the ground running you might set yourself up for some disappointment and frustration (that's where I am at right now). I was a bit too naive going into this adventure.
Some words about our travel schedule: We maintain two full residences, one in Germany and one in Hungary. We spend about 4-5 months in Germany, and the rest of the year in Hungary. Here's the conundrum I am facing right now: I was prepared to see our oldest pick up Hungarian first, given that's what my wife uses to speak to her and given that I spend less time with her. When we were in Germany last however, I noticed our 2 year old daughter picked up new German vocabulary week by week. Great I thought, this is easy! She was happily mixing Hungarian and German, I spent around 1-2 hours with her playing, going to the playground and watching some German cartoons, probably barely getting 8 of hours German exposure from myself, then maybe 3-4 hours extra from outside sources. But still this was enough to spark her German flame, she was using German words, trying new German words when asking her to say them and clapping her hands when she got something right.
Fast forward 4 months of life in Hungary. Our daughter Lisa has basically 'lost' (or so she pretends) any ability to speak a single German word. She blocks any encouragement to say German words, she looks away or tries to change the topic. She is obviously able to identify the language spoken to her and given that Daddy is the lone wolf in Hungary speaking that 'weird language' she seems to have lost all motivation to give it a try. This is very frustrating for me but reading Adam's blog articles I realize what happened: She didn't get the necessary exposure (hours per week) and there was less of a need because the amount of different people speaking German went from say 3-4 (daddy, granny, auntie etc) to 1 (daddy only).
I have to admit the last couple of weeks I felt like giving up. She wouldn't say dozens of words she already used before -- and I know she knows. It feels like she's regressing but I understand this is probably a natural reaction to the change in her surroundings. Sometimes I felt like I'm trying to push her a bit too much (like asking her 10 times in a row what the German word for flower is -- while she calmly responds in Hungarian and looking at me like I'm a doofus for not speaking Hungarian ) -- Then I read Adam's "volcano" article and knew I have to keep at it.
We made a few changes over the last two weeks:
- I started tracking my time spent with her. It was around 8 hours per week, I have increased it to 12 hours last week and can probably do a bit better still. I realized now that consistency is key and being idle and "hoping it will fix itself" is not going to work.
- I am trying to get a German native-speaking nanny in Hungary to spend 10 hours with her per week.
- I will also get a German-speaking nanny while in Germany to make sure we hit the 22/25 hour mark and really get the most out of the time there. I feel she really is much more motivated while in Germany.
- We changed all cartoons, songs and books to German only while we're in Hungary. And will do the opposite while in Germany to balance out the language exposure.
This turned out to be a longer post than I intended, thanks for reading everyone. I will continue detailing our progress on the "Track Your Progress" board.
We're a family of four from Hungary and Germany, i.e. we have two residences and travel back and forth between the two countries. Our two youngsters are 2 years and a tender 2 weeks now, so this post deals with our older one, Lisa. The family language between myself and my wife is English (we both are fluent, but not on the level of a native speaker). She speaks Hungarian to the kids while I speak German to them.
Our goal is to achieve mother language fluency in both Hungarian and German, they will both visit a German/Hungarian bilingual school starting at the age of 6/7. Long-term, we hope to add a very good command of English as that's what we use for day-to-day communication between my wife and myself and it would feel odd if the kids can't join in.
Most of our relatives have told us that this will be a simple set of goals to achieve, given our international background and the fact that we already speak English day in day out. I do not speak Hungarian myself, my wife's German is good enough for basic communication but not good enough to teach the kids so we stick with our native languages when speaking to the little ones.
But as Adam has mentioned in many of his articles -- unless you hit the ground running you might set yourself up for some disappointment and frustration (that's where I am at right now). I was a bit too naive going into this adventure.
Some words about our travel schedule: We maintain two full residences, one in Germany and one in Hungary. We spend about 4-5 months in Germany, and the rest of the year in Hungary. Here's the conundrum I am facing right now: I was prepared to see our oldest pick up Hungarian first, given that's what my wife uses to speak to her and given that I spend less time with her. When we were in Germany last however, I noticed our 2 year old daughter picked up new German vocabulary week by week. Great I thought, this is easy! She was happily mixing Hungarian and German, I spent around 1-2 hours with her playing, going to the playground and watching some German cartoons, probably barely getting 8 of hours German exposure from myself, then maybe 3-4 hours extra from outside sources. But still this was enough to spark her German flame, she was using German words, trying new German words when asking her to say them and clapping her hands when she got something right.
Fast forward 4 months of life in Hungary. Our daughter Lisa has basically 'lost' (or so she pretends) any ability to speak a single German word. She blocks any encouragement to say German words, she looks away or tries to change the topic. She is obviously able to identify the language spoken to her and given that Daddy is the lone wolf in Hungary speaking that 'weird language' she seems to have lost all motivation to give it a try. This is very frustrating for me but reading Adam's blog articles I realize what happened: She didn't get the necessary exposure (hours per week) and there was less of a need because the amount of different people speaking German went from say 3-4 (daddy, granny, auntie etc) to 1 (daddy only).
I have to admit the last couple of weeks I felt like giving up. She wouldn't say dozens of words she already used before -- and I know she knows. It feels like she's regressing but I understand this is probably a natural reaction to the change in her surroundings. Sometimes I felt like I'm trying to push her a bit too much (like asking her 10 times in a row what the German word for flower is -- while she calmly responds in Hungarian and looking at me like I'm a doofus for not speaking Hungarian ) -- Then I read Adam's "volcano" article and knew I have to keep at it.
We made a few changes over the last two weeks:
- I started tracking my time spent with her. It was around 8 hours per week, I have increased it to 12 hours last week and can probably do a bit better still. I realized now that consistency is key and being idle and "hoping it will fix itself" is not going to work.
- I am trying to get a German native-speaking nanny in Hungary to spend 10 hours with her per week.
- I will also get a German-speaking nanny while in Germany to make sure we hit the 22/25 hour mark and really get the most out of the time there. I feel she really is much more motivated while in Germany.
- We changed all cartoons, songs and books to German only while we're in Hungary. And will do the opposite while in Germany to balance out the language exposure.
This turned out to be a longer post than I intended, thanks for reading everyone. I will continue detailing our progress on the "Track Your Progress" board.
