At home I mostly speak English to my 2.5yr old son, whereas my wife speaks Swedish to him and he also picks up a lot of Swedish from the other kids at day care. In the past he has mostly only spoken Swedish but he understands English very well when I speak to him. Now he has started mixing the two languages more and more.
I've trained him to say bye-bye when he leaves somebody, but if a Swede says hey-då instead he somethimes replies bye-då.
Also, I've taught him all the English animal noises as well, so he knows English pigs go 'oink-oink' instead of 'nöff-nöff' and that English frogs say 'ribbit'.
He can also sing along to both 'Ba-Ba Black Sheep' and 'Bä, Bä, Vita Lamm' and can do the actions to both 'Incy-wincy Spider' and 'Imse Vimse spindel'.
If he wants to get my attention he repeatedly shouts pappa-pappa and if that does not work he switches to 'daddy-daddy'
Eventually, when he develops an attention span of more that 5 minutes, I'll start him on English children's TV shows.
I only hope my own Swedish will be able to keep up with him....
A sign of life
6 months ago
4 comments:
I have a friend with a German mother and is raised in Sweden (not the mother). And my friend talks both German and Swedish perfect.
Now she (the friend) is trying to get her own children just as Bilingual she is. With much problems - they are not interested in talking with mormor in her own, native, langaue.
I think you also need a cultural aspect, many visits in the country, books and films to complement the speaking. With the DVD it's so much simpler to use the english audiotrack.
I have discussed this with my older son (who's starting English lessons this year). To watch a film in English with Swedish subtitles and vice versa.
I wonder how old your friend’s children are? I think you have to begin speaking both languages right from when the child is born so that they learn the languages as part of their natural development. As soon as they are 'aware' of the fact they are being presented with another language it becomes more difficult.
I know of two families in Västerås where both parents are from different countries and then they have moved to Sweden. At home they speak their two natural languages and then their children have learned Swedish on top from dagis and school. Because they began doing this from day one the children learnt the languages quite effortlessly.
My wife’s father came to Sweden in the 60s from Croatia and didn't speak Serbo-Croat with her. So now she feels the cultural attachment to Croatia, but has had to try and learn the language the hard way.
Try learning a foreign language (like Swedish) when you are in you 30s......
Oh, she started when they where newborn.
I think, in some cases, maybe when you move to a new country yuo want to break with the old culture. You want to build a new life, let the children learn only the new language.
A blog I followed previous.
http://www.francisstrand.blogspot.com/
Thanks for the link. That's a really good blog I hadn't seen before.
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