Children not speaking parent's native language

[yaxomoxay]

I’m not sure if I disagree with what was said in the article, if that’s what it actually said. The only part I’d disagree with is:


“By denying their children exposure to the native language, the parents have set back the children's language development more than a decade.”

Ummm….no, not 10 years!!! 😂 However, knowing and learning 2 (or more) languages truly does help you learn and understand your first language better. Being able to identify the subtle differences between your 1st and 2nd language helps you understand particular grammar points better in both languages.

Also, learning a second language from your parents is a free gift that lasts a lifetime, and all your parents need to do is speak naturally. 🤷🏻‍♂️ Even if you don’t care about learning it today, you’re probably regret not knowing your ”ancestral” language by the time you reach adulthood.

My parents are from Hong Kong, but I only understand Cantonese. I don’t speak it anymore. However, I understand and speak (very little) Japanese. My wife is Japanese, and both my (young) kids can understand and speak Japanese. The 7 year old can read and write (a little).

Personally, I think this was important to us as parents, and not strictly because of cultural ties. I wish I could still speak Cantonese, and I really wanted my kids to learn Japanese from my wife because why wouldn’t I????

We speak mostly Italian at home (we live in Texas). My kids understand it very well, but their accent and their vocabulary is clearly imperfect. At any rate, it helped them develop their brain and language learning abilities, plus whenever they go back to Italy on vacation they can communicate pretty well.

 

[AlaskaMoose]

My wife's first language (as I mentioned) is Spanish. So, technically I could have 'immersion', but in reality that's not going to happen. My wife has neither the time nor patience to consistently speak nothing but Spanish around me or my kids. She will want to get her point across and to do that it's going to mean English. I have not resisted learning it per se, but in the the 28 years I've known her I haven't picked up much either. Most of what I may or may not know would be considered slang and not proper Spanish words.

What always irritated me about Spanish (classes in high school) was all the conjugation. You need a handful of words to say the thing you'd say in English with one word. With Spanish it all depends on gender and past, present or future tense. English just uses past, present or future tense and in some cases the word is the same.

OTOH, I've also come to understand over time the difficulty that non-native English speakers have in learning English. It's my first language, so I grew up with all the words, the senses, the context, tone, etc. But English (at least American English) is a mishmash of borrowed words. It's easy to see why it's so hard to learn if you didn't grow up with it.

And yet, one of my wife's complaints to me when there are misunderstandings is "English is YOUR first language!!!" 😀

I understand your situation. But what I meant to say by "immersion" is to not speak or listen to your native language, just the language that you want to learn for long periods of time. In my teenage years in NY I started learning to communicate in English at my workplaces (part time jobs) because I had no choice. At the beginning my brain was engaged in language translation, so the process was quite slow, but slowly things started falling into place, and eventually I even dreamed in English 🙂. About ten-fifteen years later I enlisted in the military, and again I could only communicate in English. In my last years of service I was already translating documents. The most difficult for me was pronunciation.

Just imagine landing in an isolated island where your language isn't spoken. That's the kind of immersion I was referring to. Nowadays one can take crash courses to learn the most common (street talk) of most languages. This is done in the military, too. Then there are various forms (?) of Spanish speaking that complicates things a little. Latin American Spanish is the most common, but there is Castilian Spanish too. And believe me...there are differences, specially in "slang talk." Other than that, I do agree that Spanish conjugation can be cumbersome for a lot of people.

Now, about your HS Spanish classes: In Spanish, just like english, there are ways to say the same things with a few words. It may not be grammatically correct, but you still can communicate while omitting a few words. You can see this when your have a group of Italians, Spanish, and English speaking friend or neighbors talking to each other. A lot of the words are omitted.

 

[eyoungren]

I understand your situation. But what I meant to say by "immersion" is to not speak or listen to your native language, just the language that you want to learn for long periods of time. In my teenage years in NY I started learning to communicate in English at my workplaces (part time jobs) because I had no choice. At the beginning my brain was engaged in language translation, so the process was quite slow, but slowly things started falling into place, and eventually I even dreamed in English 🙂. About ten-fifteen years later I enlisted in the military, and again I could only communicate in English. In my last years of service I was already translating documents. The most difficult for me was pronunciation.

Just imagine landing in an isolated island where your language isn't spoken. That's the kind of immersion I was referring to. Nowadays one can take crash courses to learn the most common (street talk) of most languages. This is done in the military, too.

Now, about your HS Spanish classes: In Spanish, just like english, there are ways to say the same thing with a few words. It may not be grammatically correct, but you still can communicate while omitting a few words. You can see this when your have a group of Italians, Spanish, and English speaking friend or neighbors talking to each other. A lot of the words are omitted.

I get you.

I asked my wife once what language she thinks in. For her of course, it's Spanish but being bilingual it doesn't trip her up if a thought happens in English.

Me, I have to translate, although after so many years it's not as difficult as it used to be.

My wife has told me though that there are certain words in Spanish that convey a meaning far better than any English word(s) and I totally believe that just because I've experienced some of it, even if it was just peripherally. Sometimes English can just be downright clunky.

 

[AlaskaMoose]

I get you.

I asked my wife once what language she thinks in. For her of course, it's Spanish but being bilingual it doesn't trip her up if a thought happens in English.

Me, I have to translate, although after so many years it's not as difficult as it used to be.

My wife has told me though that there are certain words in Spanish that convey a meaning far better than any English word(s) and I totally believe that just because I've experienced some of it, even if it was just peripherally. Sometimes English can just be downright clunky.

Sometimes I wonder about what language I think in, and already know that I seldom think in my native language, just English. But when counting numbers in hundredths and fractions of hundredths I catch myself jumping back and forth from English to my native language (I grew up in the metric system). Almost 100% of my time is spent around English speaking people (friends, families, coworkers, and everything else). I only speak Spanish when talking on the phone to family members who live hundredths or thousands miles away. Some of my family members living in the US are multi-lingual too. My grandfather was Spaniard.

Maybe one thinks in the language one is engaged to most in one's daily life? I could be wrong, of course, but once one can communicate without "conscientiously" translating, that's the time when thinking becomes fluid. For example, I assume that when engaged in a conversation with more than one person-in various languages (all at the same time), there isn't much time for one's brain to translate. I can handle two conversations at once, but I wonder how some people can fluently speak to several people? I have heard that one of the Popes could converse in more than ten languages. 🙂

By the way, language is an interesting subject (I do love Italian, too):

Speak To The World In Just 8 Languages: Converse With 75% Of The Global Population

languagehobo.com

 

[phazedout]

Sorry if I'm butting in but, as a linguist, allow me to discourage you from wasting your time on apps like Babbel and Duolingo.

What's wrong with language apps?

 

[KaliYoni]

What's wrong with language apps?

In my personal experience, as somebody who has learned languages in several ways, apps can be effective for learning vocabulary and pre-formed phrases. So I think apps are fine if your goal is to prepare to be a tourist or to be able to read signs and labels on products. But apps aren't very good at teaching learners to be able to carry on conversations or to be able to truly use a language.

 

[fanboy-ish]

What's wrong with language apps?

Apps will just teach you words and phrases, they won’t teach you a language, they won’t teach you the foundation of a language, which is grammar, therefore you wouldn’t know how to use a language, how to go beyond the simple phrases the app shows you.

Apps are ok if you only want to learn a few words and grasp a vague idea of a language, they are not more comprehensive than those language survival booklets tourists used to buy.

 

[satcomer]

All oi know a Doctor and their family from Hong Hong went to Alabama so their kids at my high school (twin boy and girl) and Southern Accents with the English even though the ends we valid Victorian and the sister was salutatorian at our rural high school! I always felt for them learning their English in Alabama then mobbing up to Finger Lakes must have been a culture shock and their parent seem to fall in love with local Wine tours though!

 

[AlaskaMoose]

There are some apps that are designed to teach the "street language" or the language one may encounter in the streets of Italy, for example, not just words and phases. In these apps one learns to put entire sentences together, until one can put together an entire paragraph or a short conversation. There are several methods used to learn to speak a language that fall within a certain number of languages that are related by "root." For example a Spanish-speaking person can understand a good portion of the Italian "speak." All he or she has to do is to learn how to organize sentences and pronounce the words. The same for an Italian trying to communicate with a Spanish-speaking person. Even the military has language-learning crash courses. Some apps and crash courses are designed to "get you by" understanding what people say when visiting foreign countries.