Reply to If your child goes to weekend language schools of your heritage (Chinese, Korean, etc.)

Forum Index » Elementary School-Aged Kids

Reply to "If your child goes to weekend language schools of your heritage (Chinese, Korean, etc.)"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am bilingual (English and Russian). I was born here but my parents are from the Soviet Union. [b]I never went to language school but I speak fluent Russian because we always spoke it at home, [/b]and I taught myself how to read Russian at 12. [b]My mom only spoke to us in Russian and my dad spoke to us in English and Russian as he was fluent in English but my mom wasn't. [/b]She was fluent enough to talk to teachers though. My sister doesn't know Russian as well as I do. I think talking to her in Korean and having her watch Korean TV, etc. will help. How did you learn your first language?[/quote]

Exactly. It's about using it consistently and expecting the kids to use it with you too (which is harder than just allowing them to use the dominant language over and over again).[/quote]
Nope, not really, this poster used Russian with her mom because she had to as mom spoke no English. It's a lot harder when the kid knows you speak English perfectly well.[/quote]

I'm not sure if English is your first language or not, but the PP did [b]not[/b] say mom spoke no English. She said mom wasn't *fluent* in English, but [b]was fluent enough[/b] to talk with teachers. [/quote]

I'm not sure if it's your first language either, but why would that matter? You are in the thread that gives brownie points for multiple languages after all.  Let's review what the poster said:

1.  Dad spoke to us in English and Russian because he was fluent in both.

2.  Mom spoke to us only in Russian because her English wasn't fluent.

Is it a reach to say that if Mom DID speak English fluently, she'd be speaking it at home, just like Dad? Is it a reach to say that it helps to have a native speaker at home who doesn't actually speak any English? Are you getting tangled in all the hairs you're trying to split?[/quote]

I don't have a dog in this fight, but you (or whoever the PP was) did say the mom didn't speak English, and that's clearly not what the Russian OP said. I'm not sure why it's so hard to just say "whoops, my mistake" on the Internet.  :roll: [/quote]

+1. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics