| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4 5] | Bilingual babies Thread poster: Lucy Phillips
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| | Radka Crossley 
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:48
English to Czech
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| bilingual and fast talker | Apr 22, 2009 |
Hi Everyone,
Butting in a bit late I know but it was so educating reading all these different experiences. I have a daughter who is 5.5 and completely bilingual. Now to add spanners to the work she is exceptionally gifted with IQ to put Einstein to shame so it's quite hard for us to see what led to what... But from the day she was born I only spoke to her in Czech, my native language, my husband in English. She developed language skills extremely quickly, speaking in simple sentences by 18... See more Hi Everyone,
Butting in a bit late I know but it was so educating reading all these different experiences. I have a daughter who is 5.5 and completely bilingual. Now to add spanners to the work she is exceptionally gifted with IQ to put Einstein to shame so it's quite hard for us to see what led to what... But from the day she was born I only spoke to her in Czech, my native language, my husband in English. She developed language skills extremely quickly, speaking in simple sentences by 18 months. I never even realised that bilingual kids started talking later until I read something about it in the Linguist. We thought quite the opposite - because she had to absorb twice as much information her brain was developing much quicker and her speech was way ahead of her peers in both languages. Her Czech developed quicker but was never far ahead of English. Only when it was clear that the 2 languages were clearly diferentiated in her head I started talking to her in English in some social situations her father may have never been part of so that she would not feel left out. I sometimes even used to say, mummy says auto, daddy says car. I think this was the most fascinating part of it all for her. I can't remember at what age I introduced this tactic and it was nothing conscious, it just seemed a good idea at the time, but I think that was the greatest contributor to her bilingual language skills. She has never made mistakes or muddled words up. Even very young, if she couldn't think of a word in one language she wouldn't just throw it in, she'd ask what it was. Recently we watched a recording of her at 18 months and I was shocked - I completely forgot all these things and I guess at that time I saw it as normal but there I was on the screen saying "say auto" and she said "car", "say jabko", "apple", "say chleba", "bread", and on and on it went, about 25 words I said in Czech she would give me in English. Now in retrospect we can't work out whether it's all because she has such high IQ or her IQ is so high partially because we fed it so much from such early age.
Oh, and at 3, when visiting Italy and upon hearing the first animated Italian discussion, she said, Mummy, I really need to learn Italian, it sounds beautiful.... Now being at school and learning to read English, as I did not want to confuse her with teaching her to read Czech, she's taught herself.
However, I can already see that my 9-months old boy is not picking things up as rapidly and it will be very interesting to see if there is any difference between them. But we are doing exactly the same with him that we did with her because it gave us such great results. Doesn't help that daughter's now decided to do baby talk...
So I would certainly not dismiss the notion to start from birth, I do believe that if you start introducing it at a later stage, it would come easy to them but would not lead to true bilingualism, it would be a learned skill and would not be so close to their heart. Of any friends with bilingual children I have, none have mentioned any issues with late speech development, it may be an exception to the rule. We are proud to sound different when we go out but if seeing doctors or others where we need to speak English, there are no issues and never have at earlier age, as we differentiated the languages to her at young age. And as you rightly point out, why should one parent be silent for 2 years?! Hope this helps to reassure some of you ▲ Collapse
| | | | Alicja Weikop
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:48
English to Polish
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| My blog - bilingual baby | May 10, 2009 |
This is a fascinating thread - I will be reading it from back to back as soon as I get a chance. Wish I had looked earlier!
Just to throw in my experiences - I am a mum of 11 month old Kasper who we are bringing up bilingually. I am Polish and my husband is British, at the moment we live in the UK but this might change to yet another linguistic location...
I speak Polish to our son, my husband English. At 11 months Kasper already understands both - things like 'clap han... See more This is a fascinating thread - I will be reading it from back to back as soon as I get a chance. Wish I had looked earlier!
Just to throw in my experiences - I am a mum of 11 month old Kasper who we are bringing up bilingually. I am Polish and my husband is British, at the moment we live in the UK but this might change to yet another linguistic location...
I speak Polish to our son, my husband English. At 11 months Kasper already understands both - things like 'clap hands' he will respond to if said in either language.
I have a translation blog where I occasionally post on his linguistic development.
Here are some relevant posts:
http://www.which-word.co.uk/page/bilingualism ▲ Collapse
| | | | juvera
Local time: 10:48
English to Hungarian
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| No, it would not come easy, it would be an opportunity missed | May 11, 2009 |
Radka Crossley wrote:
So I would certainly not dismiss the notion to start from birth, I do believe that if you start introducing it at a later stage, it would come easy to them but would not lead to true bilingualism, it would be a learned skill and would not be so close to their heart.
Of any friends with bilingual children I have, none have mentioned any issues with late speech development, it may be an exception to the rule.
Any day you miss from the day your child is born to speak the other language will make it MORE difficult for him/her to absorb that language. Later you start, more difficult the whole process is. In any case, how would you define "later stage"? A year, two, or three?
Once they become truly self-conscious of the two/three languages and one of the language is well behind the other, it can become a source of embarrassment to the child, and could lead him to abandon rather than improve it.
As far as speech development is concerned, there are monolingual children, who don’t speak much until they are much older than conventional wisdom would you have to believe they should speak fluently, and as some of the previous posts poined out, bilingual or trilingual children may start speaking at an early age. Children’s personality and predisposition has a lot to do with it, and the opportunity to natter with somebody, as opposed to be waited upon hand and foot and have their minds read.
As the old joke says:
Little Mark was nearly five, and did not speak at all, although all signs showed that he understood everything what was said. His parents and grandparents were upset about it, but came to terms with it, and they were ever so attentive to all his needs, making sure they read all his thoughts, wishes.
One day they were sitting at the breakfast table, when Mark opened his mouth:
“This egg is off, it is revolting!”
The whole family rushed to him, excited, kissing, talking, asking: “Oh, you CAN talk! Why did you not say anything until now?”
Mark answered: “Because until now everything was just fine.”
Anyway, do not miss the opportunity to give your child the gift of a language, and the only way to make it easy is to start from day one.
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