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So, my two wonderful Angelino nieces are pretty global for three and five year olds. The youngest has already been to Switzerland twice! But anyway, the point is, my sister and I are plotting how to make these children linguistic marvels. The girls' father's family is from South and Central America, so Spanish has already taken hold thanks to the grandparents.

Our idea is to enroll them in German classes in LA and have them visit me here in Switzerland on occasion. (When they are old enough, like 10 or 12, they can summer with Uncle Stoo in Zürich, or do X-Mas in the Alps...much more posh than my childhood.)

But I am wondering about the logic of a) exposing them German at such a young age without any reinforcement beyond the classroom and the above mentioned occasional vacation; and b) having them taught High German in LA (haha) only to come here and try to manage Swiss German mud speech dialect.

Your alls thoughts would be much appreciated.

Thats great and I encourage you in this area!! It is best to learn languages early, but as you are beginning to realise, it is a LOT of work to raise a bilingual child ...even more so in a country where the second or third language is not dominant.

Young kids CAN learn languages easy as the brain is geared for that, but they can also unlearn them just as easy. Having bilingual parents or even monolingual grandparents with a second language are not guarantees and one just has to look at all kids in the US who have been raised by native speakers who can not speak thier parents or grandparents language.

We just ran into two young men who moved from Sweden to Greece at 11 and 12 and now can not speak their mother tongue.

I know a family that moved to many different countries and the kids picked up every language, but they also lost them quickly.

We started raising our child as a trilingual, but found out it was much harder than we expected to raise a fluent trilingual and decided to scale back to bilingual for now as that is hard enough to maitain well.

When in English speaking countries we work hard at maintaining her Spanish and when in Spanish speaking countries we work hard at maintaining her English. ( There are tons of people from the UK in Spain who have lost much if not all of their mother tongue just by not maintaining it while living in Spain as children).

We discussed some of these issues here.

I HIGHLY recommend that you and your sister get and read the books on raising bilingual children listed here:

http://learninfreedom.org/languagebooks.html

Languages are learned by exposure and motivation and all exposure is good ( to my way of thinking) and worth the effort. Also being bilingual is beneficial in many ways including helping with math ( they learn abstract thinking early).

They will continue to need to spend as much time as possible in all spanish and all german enviroments. The father should continue to always talk to them in his native toungue AND making sure that they TALK back to him and the spanish relative in SPANISH. I have seen too many families who have lost this advantage by not doing this and it is a shame.

It also helps to spend as much time in countries where the second or third language is the dominant language so the child understands the value of the language. Spanish is not valued much in the US ( sadly) but being in a Spanish speaking country puts things in perspective on how very important this language is today.

Being bicultural, biliterate is also just as important to add. You will help them by spending time every day reading to them ( and having them read when they learn) EVERY DAY in the second ( and third) language. Adding music and videos in the second and third language is also important and a way to support it.

Immersion is the best way to learn a language for anyone, but even more so for kids. The more one hears and uses a language the more fluent one will become and must be maintained daily.( Note, kids who are fluently trilingual and more in Europe usually have daily and or regular exposure easily to all the languages).

I would look to find a German school in LA as the immersion and other German native speakers would be most helpful. Yes, definitely learn the best German ( or Spanish or whatever) and they will adapt when necessary while in a place where the language is less than perfect dialect.

There is a great book on the list I posted about a family who was monolingual in Australia for generations and he raised bilingual kids in German which is quite a feat. His lessons are great to read about and helped us a lot. ( They did find a German community at home and made lots of trips to Germany and the father always conversed with the kids in German from birth onward).

My husband was raised by bilinguals and his Grandmother was monolingual in the non dominant second language and helped raise him. Still he does not speak like a native speaker. My niece has a mother who is a native of Holland and LOTS of exposure to Grandparents and relatives there, but can barely speak any at all despite their original intention to raise her as a bilingual.

It take a LOT of work that needs to be put in day in and day out for thier entire lives to be maintained. I think you are on the mark and should not miss the opportunity as it will enrich thier lives and help them understand part of who they are as language and culture are so entertwined.

I think it's a great idea for kids and really anyone to learn other languages. I was born in Germany, German mother, Irish father, and we moved to the States when I was about 15 months old. So I learned German and English and could speak both fluently up to a point. Then when I started school, according to my mother who I have no reason to doubt , I decided I didn't want to speak German anymore. I still had at least some when we visited Germany when I was ten, but then never spoke it again for about 10 - 12 years and pretty much lost it all. I started to relearn it during a 2 1/2 year stint in the army in Nuernberg and in college, but was basically starting from scratch. After graduating, I went back to Germany for another 2 1/2 years teaching English. I got back to a level of "fluency" but with some pretty dodgy grammar and major holes in my vocabulary. It would have been a lot easier if I'd kept it up when I was a kid!

It might be tough for your nieces with only spotty exposure to the language, but it can't hurt and they may turn out to be language whizzes. They'll need to be if they want to learn Schwitzer Dütsch!

quote:

when I started school, according to my mother who I have no reason to doubt , I decided I didn't want to speak German anymore.

This is common for kids to want to just speak the dominant language and often kids with bilingual parents will lose their second tongue unless the parent really keeps it up.


Kids ( like anyone else, go for least resistance) they do not usually naturally want to brush their teeth every day, make their beds, eat the best choices, practice an instrument daily etc OR speak a second language that no one else is speaking which is harder work for them because it is not the dominant language.

It is really up to the parents to keep the exposure up and some times it just not seem worth the effort at the time and why so many lose a second language.

Even for native born bilingual parents, it is not easy to keep up the language, so many do just give in and later the kids wish they still had it.

I think in Europe it is a little easier as one is often more aware of different languages and seeing how speaking many is powerful and useful.

STILL learning languages is an effort so one finds the biggest countries having many less multi language speakers.

Still I think your exposure is in your dentrites ( which is true too of my husband from his Grandmother) so my guess is it that makes it easier to learn the language later.

My thought is no exposure to other languages is a waste.

Thanks, WT, for the detailed response! My sister and I have been talking it over for the past two days. Your 'unlearn quickly' point is well taken.

My sister is very keen on a third language and is also considering Korean which would be much easier to reinforce. They live near Korea Town in LA, she has playmates who speak Korean, etc. A better option than German for now.

The Spanish is in decent shape as the grandparents use it a lot, my oldest niece is entering a dual immersion primary school this fall, and my brother in law is plotting trips down south with the her.

Hello there,
Just a few things I would like to add.
When a child is exposed to a language under the age of five, the sounds of that language is then stuck in his brain. If later on he tries to really learn that language, it will be easier for him or her to reproduce the accent,.

Also, a very young child can be exposed to many languages. However, if the same adult speaks to him in more than one target language e.g. Mom speaks both English and French, the child can become very confused. To make a clear distinction between every language in the kid's brain, it's much better to have one adult for each lang. e.g. Mom only speaks French with the child while Dad only speaks English. Add an Italian speaking babysitter to the mix and you've got a trilingual child...

Getting a babysitter in whatever language would help too.

When I was around eight we stopped speaking Chinese at my house, but yeah, the sounds are still stuck in my head, and I understand it, and when I started studying Chinese I picked it back up pretty quickly. It was like being reminded of what I already knew, and a lot of things started coming back to me.

I'm told I pick up languages pretty well, especially their sounds (if it's physically possible for me.. like.. Arabic, I just can't do). It's said to be easier to learn more languages when you're natively bilingual.