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Multi-Lingual families?
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Posted by: Buckeye5704

For those of you who have children, how do you handle the language differences at home? In other words (and I just had this question asked of me), if you have children with your FSU mate do they learn both languages or do you only teach them the language of whatever country you now reside in?

My thoughts are that the little sponges will naturally learn both if both are being used between the parents. I for one think it is only right to learn my future brides language as much as I can to improve communication so both would be used in my home.

I await your input,
Tim

Posted by: Jill

My daughter speaks both English and Russian failrly well, although she still occassionally mixes them, saying things like "eto ochen hot". But for the most part, she has become accustomed to speaking Russian at home and English at preschool and does a fairly good job of remembering which language to speak where.

Posted by: Jill

Ah, I also wanted to mention that while children LEARN languages easily, it can be very challenging for them to maintain the minority language over time. I have several (college age) students who spoke Russian at home as children, but who can barely put two words together now as adults. And even though my daughter is still very young (2.5 years), we're already seeing small signs of how difficult it can be to compete with an English language school system; for example, she can count to 20 in English, but only to 10 in Russian; she knows the whole Latin alphabet, but only a few letters of the Cyrillic alphabet, etc. Sure, this seems fairly trivial now, but I do believe the differences between her abilities in Russian and her abilities in English will grow as she grows. K sozhaleniu.

Posted by: Buckeye5704

Thanks for the response Jill.

I can understand how one could dominate and the other could slip away. I would prefer that any children I may have with my future FSU bride be able to speak both. I'm sure mom would apreciate the sentiment plus the kids could understand their FSU relatives when we go for a visit. I can see the need for proper balance too so as not to overload the child.

Thanks again,
Tim