It's not easy. Especially if your an native English speaker with poor language skills. Not hard like having a baby, that's mainly exhausting with lots of easy cool stuff at the end. It's more hard like learning to ski when you're in your 20s/30s...
The Little Bear is surrounded by English because we're living in London, and he's probably going to go to playgroup and school with English friends learning English things. But what about at home? For over a decade Charlotte and I have spoken to each other in English most of the time. I say I can manage in Swedish, but we're gonna make it the only language we use it home if we want to compensate for the English he's gonna get everywhere else. All the stuff says we can't switch languages around him or he'll start to get confused or to learn that he doesn't really need to speak Swedish. Not to mention my Swedish has a really strong accent, and probably sounds like Officer Crabtree trying to speak French on 'Allo 'Allo. This bodes ill for the little bear learning Swedish properly. Although, if he starts talking Swedish with my accent, I'm going to be pretty pleased with the mini-me cuteness it's gonna have. But just because it's tough, doesn't mean it's not worth doing. So we're trying (hence the 2 'p's in pappa!). We only speak Swedish to him now, although we're still mostly speaking English to each other. But I'm sure we'll manage to make the switch to fully Swedish speaking at home over the next year, or his Swedish might end up as good as my skiing abilities.
Great bilingual parenting website to try out if you're interested: http://multilingualchildren.org/
5 Comments
Christina
1/6/2016 07:49:49 am
Some research claim you should only use your native tongue teaching the child. But I believe the 30 procent rule will overrule this. Books and movies will have to be carefully monitored too...
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Dave
1/6/2016 09:20:15 am
Hi Christina. You're right. There are two main methods, One Language at Home, or One Parent One Language (each their native tongue). The problem for us is that the 'OPOL' approach isn't going to give Tor enough exposure to speak it properly given he would get the majority language, English, from me, friends, school and tv.
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26/10/2016 10:05:46 pm
It sounds very complicated, but I'm sure it will be worth it for your family when your little one effortlessly flips between the two languages. #EatSleepBlogRT
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Dave
27/10/2016 08:30:30 am
Really hope so!
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29/10/2016 07:52:19 pm
I think its great that your son will grow up learning two languages - I wish we could give our children such a great opportunity #eatsleepblogrt
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AuthorI'm Dave, dad of Little Bear. Also known as 'Pappa' to the little man as we try and bring out his Swedish roots Categories
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