Raising a bilingual child

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:a different prespective:

my oldest is almost five and in the first three years of his life there was very little no native english-speaking people around him, even after 1.5 years in an english-speaking preschool he's english is still very behind and has picked accents from us and broken grammar and structure, poor word-use and limited vocabulary, etc. which really worries me. his teacher said don't be but i'm not sure he can lose all that and speak at native-level. he may be bi-lingual but end up being not 'native' in either.

At this age, I wouldn't worry about it. This is such a young age that they will quickly "outgrow" any accents. Young children quickly pick-up the dominant language without thinking about it and speak like a native. Are there native English speakers at your 5 year old's preschool?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:a different perspective:

my oldest is almost five and in the first three years of his life there was very little no native english-speaking people around him, even after 1.5 years in an english-speaking preschool he's english is still very behind and has picked accents from us and broken grammar and structure, poor word-use and limited vocabulary, etc. which really worries me. his teacher said don't be but i'm not sure he can lose all that and speak at native-level. he may be bi-lingual but end up being not 'native' in either.

At this age, I wouldn't worry about it. This is such a young age that they will quickly "outgrow" any accents. Young children quickly pick-up the dominant language without thinking about it and speak like a native. Are there native English speakers at your 5 year old's preschool?

yes everyone (teachers & kids) in his preschool is a native speaker.

not trying to make fun of people of other ethnic background but have you heard of the expression 'chin-glish'? i was told it's what ethnic-Chinese in Singapore joke about the style of English they speak which is influenced by the Chinese language (beyond the accent). also i've met people from India whose mother tongue was said to be English but his English was hard to understand (again it's beyond the accent) even for native speakers. those are the problems i'm worrying about. i guess European languages and English share the same root so it's not an issue but for some other languages there could be different barriers in between?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband's first language is Spanish, I only speak English. I told my husband to always speak in Spanish with our children from the time they were born because they will hear English from me. I want my children to be bilingual and our 3 year old understands Spanish perfectly but speaks mostly in English. We'll see what our 9 month old does.

I used to work in Montgomery County Public Schools and came across many children who were ashamed to admit they spoke a language other than English. I find that sad and want my children to grow up being proud of who they are, where they come from and what languages they speak. All parents who know languages other than English should definitely teach their children those other languages.

that's really sad, and a horrible product of our xenophobic culture.

What do you call someone who can speak three languages? Trilingual.
What do you call someone who can speak two languages? Bilingual.
What do you call someone who can speak one language? American.

I know, isn't America just the worst country that has ever existed? It absolutely disgusts me every single moment of the day. The rest of the world is so much more enlightened than us.

[Anonymous]

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I know, isn't America just the worst country that has ever existed? It absolutely disgusts me every single moment of the day. The rest of the world is so much more enlightened than us.



disgusts me too, and this is not sarcastic.