children in Cordoba

[John Myhill]

My wife and I have been facing a more difficult problem--I am a native speaker
of English, she is a native speaker of Japanese, we are living in Israel,
and we have a four-year-old daughter who we would like to be a native
speaker of all three languages. Hebrew is not going to be a problem with us
living here, but English and Japanese are not so easy. However, I think
things are going well. It is obvious to me that throwing so many languages
at Shayna has slowed down her progress in each of them. However, she has
plenty of time to catch up. In my opinion, if her English or Japanese were
to be slowed down a year, it wouldn't be much of a problem. Her life is not
about to be affected by standardized tests at this age, and I am more
concerned about her long-term ability in the different languages than
whether she is a year behind at the moment in any one of them. I think that
it is a mistake to withhold English from the child for any length of time
at all, especially given that only the father is a native speaker of
English; psychologically children will never feel that the language is
'theirs', in addition to causing phonological problems.
I do not think that hiring a private teacher will help at the age of 3 1/2.
I think that the most important thing is:
(1) The father should ALWAYS speak to the child in English.
(2) You might want to set up a rule where English is the 'language of the
home',
where even the mother normally speaks English to the child at home.
(3) As much exposure as possible to English, even if the people don't speak
such good English. The child will realize that the father is the one whose
English should be imitated.
(4) You might try pushing the children to respond to the father at least in
English.
(5) Get English children's videos; the father should look at them with the
children and talk to them in English about it.
(6) If at all possible, have extended stays in English-speaking
countries--like summers, sabbaticals, etc. This has been an immeasurable
help to our daughter's Japanese, although she has only been in Japan a
total of maybe 5 months. She can now go a long time speaking almost no
Japanese but when she realizes that she's in Japan she can just switch into
Japanese immediately. I would not say that her Japanese is as good as other
children her age, but she has the phonological tools--and she clearly
regards Japanese as 'her language' (as she regards English and she is
coming to regard Hebrew).
It is very important to realize how much the family can do. In Ann Arbor,
Michigan, I knew a Chasidic family with seven children, all born in Ann
Arbor. They were the only Yiddish speakers in the city, to my knowledge.
The parents categorically spoke Yiddish to the children until the children
were maybe 7 or 8 years old, after which they would progressively use more
and more English with them. The parents almost always spoke English to each
other. The children's acquisition of English was obviously delayed several
years, but in that environment there was absolutely no danger that they
would not acquire completely normal English abilities by the time they were
10 (younger for the younger children who might speak some English with
their older siblings even when they were pretty young); their ability to
understand English was of course way ahead of their ability to speak it,
since their parents spoke English to each other. The very young children
also would try to speak English when they were playing games and pretending
to be grownups. But it was clear that Yiddish was their main language until
they were 7 or 8. This plan has worked very well in maintaining Yiddish in
a bilingual situation for the last 1000 years; the kids know that they'll
use more and more English, reserving Yiddish for some studies and special
occasions, but then when they have children they'll switch back to Yiddish
with them. The lesson I learned from this was: don't worry about the
children's ability in the local language, that will come.  John Myhill