Language planning and thoughts on future interactions
Mar 12, 2018 5:38:59 GMT 9
Post by Graham on Mar 12, 2018 5:38:59 GMT 9
Hello everyone, this is my first post and I have a few questions. 
My situation:
We have a couple of friends also living in Germany who had their first baby (a girl) May last year.
As you can see we both have very different situations. But we both aim to bring up our children multilingual.
I have read 4 books on bilingualism and one book which was devoted to trilingualism and have formed my own opinions on OPOL, ml@home and the rest. We (my wife and me) have both agreed that I will be speaking only English to our son and that we will communicate in English together. I'm waiting for her to catch me up with the reading and form her own opinion on whether she agrees with me that OPOL is good for our situation. And also if we will proceed entirely with OPOL, whether she will choose English or German as her language with our son (I hope she chooses English!). But I think her current opinion is that she will speak English at home, and maybe some German when we are around the Grandparents or out and about.
So now for some questions:
1. What have the experiences from the community been like, where they or their partner has spoken both the ML and ml with their child, not enforcing the OPOL rule 100%? My concern is that the German Nan will not like my wife speaking English to our son when we are altogether. She has the fear that our son will not understand German. Based on what I have read, I do not hold this concern because even if a child enters kindergarten or preschool almost entirely brought up in the ml, even though at a massive disadvantage in the ML early on, they eventually catch up and normally surpass their peers later in life in educational achievements.
Unfortunately my in-laws received bad advice when raising their children, which is why not one of them can speak Italian.
2. I pointed out to my friend that as he is the sole input of Russian for his daughter, he would need to avoid speaking German around her, so as to keep the need to speak Russian there. As I understood it, if a child realises their ml speaking parent can speak and understand the ML, there is the risk that they would default to the ML and refrain from responding in the ml. My suggestion was that he should switch to English when speaking to his wife to help prevent this problem from arising. But her opinion on this was negative, as she made the point that their daughter would not know what they are talking about when using English and feel left out. What are the thoughts/experiences on this issue where the communication between parents is different from the ML and the ml?
3. I envisage that we will all be spending a reasonable amount of time together in the future, weekends, holidays etc. and see that our communication with one another is going to be...interesting.
Our wives always communicate with each other in German. When we are all together as a group we mostly communicate in German with sometimes a little bit of English. When me and my friend (the Dad) are the only ones together we converse in English.
Me and the Dad recently had the discussion of how we would go about communicating when it is just the two of us playing games with our children in the future. Obviously my aim is to speak English with my son and he is comfortable with me speaking English with his daughter. He is naturally aiming to speak Russian with his daughter. I doubt that our kids would ever be able to converse in Russian with one another as my son would not receive enough input, but there is the possibility that we could start them out in English. I am pretty sure that as they get older though, that they would most likely default to German with one another. But this question also partially relies on question 2 I guess for this to seem realistic at least in the early years.
Has anyone good experience or advice they would be willing to offer or share?
4. Does anyone know of good bilingual or trilingual books for combinations of English, Russian and German?
5. If there are any British parents in the Stuttgart area who would like to setup play dates in the future please get in touch.
I look forward to all your wisdom and experiences!
Thanks in advance!
Graham
My situation:
- My wife and I are living in Germany.
- I am from England and speak English and a good basic level of German (I started learning at 24 and am now 31).
- My wife is German and speaks German and also English to an extremely high level (pretty much like a native).
- We converse 95% in English and approximately 5% in German.
- We are expecting our first baby (a boy) towards the end of April.
- My father in-law (the Grandad) is Italian and I know that he is going to speak only in Italian. He has done this with our niece and I can see, even though she replies in German (the need to speak Italian doesn't arise enough), she already has a good passive understanding here. He also speaks German but no English.
- My mother-in-law is German and does not speak English but understands Italian.
- My, or our aim, is for our son to be able to speak English fluently and have at least very good literacy skills in reading and writing. I expect he will also develop a good passive understanding of Italian which I am also happy about!
We have a couple of friends also living in Germany who had their first baby (a girl) May last year.
- He is from the Ukraine and aims to teach his daughter Russian. He grew up speaking both Russian and Ukrainian but feels Russian is his mother tongue. He speaks very good English, and a good level of German similar to myself. He also has a reasonable understanding of French and Finish.
- She is German, naturally speaks German, speaks a good level of English, but knows zero Russian.
- They started their relationship communicating in English, but now mostly speak in German.
As you can see we both have very different situations. But we both aim to bring up our children multilingual.
I have read 4 books on bilingualism and one book which was devoted to trilingualism and have formed my own opinions on OPOL, ml@home and the rest. We (my wife and me) have both agreed that I will be speaking only English to our son and that we will communicate in English together. I'm waiting for her to catch me up with the reading and form her own opinion on whether she agrees with me that OPOL is good for our situation. And also if we will proceed entirely with OPOL, whether she will choose English or German as her language with our son (I hope she chooses English!). But I think her current opinion is that she will speak English at home, and maybe some German when we are around the Grandparents or out and about.
So now for some questions:
1. What have the experiences from the community been like, where they or their partner has spoken both the ML and ml with their child, not enforcing the OPOL rule 100%? My concern is that the German Nan will not like my wife speaking English to our son when we are altogether. She has the fear that our son will not understand German. Based on what I have read, I do not hold this concern because even if a child enters kindergarten or preschool almost entirely brought up in the ml, even though at a massive disadvantage in the ML early on, they eventually catch up and normally surpass their peers later in life in educational achievements.
Unfortunately my in-laws received bad advice when raising their children, which is why not one of them can speak Italian.
2. I pointed out to my friend that as he is the sole input of Russian for his daughter, he would need to avoid speaking German around her, so as to keep the need to speak Russian there. As I understood it, if a child realises their ml speaking parent can speak and understand the ML, there is the risk that they would default to the ML and refrain from responding in the ml. My suggestion was that he should switch to English when speaking to his wife to help prevent this problem from arising. But her opinion on this was negative, as she made the point that their daughter would not know what they are talking about when using English and feel left out. What are the thoughts/experiences on this issue where the communication between parents is different from the ML and the ml?
3. I envisage that we will all be spending a reasonable amount of time together in the future, weekends, holidays etc. and see that our communication with one another is going to be...interesting.
Our wives always communicate with each other in German. When we are all together as a group we mostly communicate in German with sometimes a little bit of English. When me and my friend (the Dad) are the only ones together we converse in English.
Me and the Dad recently had the discussion of how we would go about communicating when it is just the two of us playing games with our children in the future. Obviously my aim is to speak English with my son and he is comfortable with me speaking English with his daughter. He is naturally aiming to speak Russian with his daughter. I doubt that our kids would ever be able to converse in Russian with one another as my son would not receive enough input, but there is the possibility that we could start them out in English. I am pretty sure that as they get older though, that they would most likely default to German with one another. But this question also partially relies on question 2 I guess for this to seem realistic at least in the early years.
Has anyone good experience or advice they would be willing to offer or share?
4. Does anyone know of good bilingual or trilingual books for combinations of English, Russian and German?
5. If there are any British parents in the Stuttgart area who would like to setup play dates in the future please get in touch.
I look forward to all your wisdom and experiences!
Thanks in advance!
Graham
