Question on bilingual language acquisition from non-native speaker

[Isenthia]

Dear All,

thanks a lot for all your answers! Sorry I didn't react any earlier,
but I've only had the opportunity to access the internet again today.

Since you all showed so much interest, I'd like to give some more
specific information so that maybe you'll find it easier to give your
opinion on my particular situation.

So here goes:

I and my boyfriend are native speakers of German. We live in Leipzig,
Germany. My boyfriend only has rudimentary knowledge of English;
enough to follow basic conversations in holiday situations, since we
spent our holidays the last three years in Scotland and England. I'm a
very big fan of the English language, literature, culture and history.
That's why my boyfriend also very often has to watch British films in
the original only with subtitles, although we could in principle watch
them dubbed ;) I asked him what he thought about the idea to bring up
our child bilingually and generally he is ok with that.

The two problems I see are the following: first, I'm not a native
speaker of English, I do speak with an accent, although it's
comparably slight. ALso, being able to talk to my child in English as
I would do in German is going to require some effort on my part, as
I'm aware that I'm lacking vocabulary typical in `child-directed'
speech. But I'd be happy and eager to remedy that ;)

Second problem: So far, I'd be the only person in the child's
immediate environment that'd be using English to him. However, since
my partner shares my liking for the UK & Ireland, it's likely that a
lot of our holidays will continue to be spend there. Also, a very good
friend of mine is English and lives in Glasgow. Then, I'd try to build
up contact to native speakers of English living in Leipzig and I'd try
to see to it that, when the time comes, our son'll go to a
Kindergarten that offers some sort of English-German bilingual
interaction. I'd also be looking forward to provide my child with
English children's stories, music, rhymes etc. I'm aware that it's
totally unclear whether this `enterprise' is going to be successful in
the sense that my son will see anything useful or worthwhile in
speaking/learning a language and about a culture that seems so
unconnected to him and the parent speaking it to him. But I personally
also think that, if my not being able to provide `native-speaking'
input is not considered problematic, it might be worth a try!

Again, thanks a lot for your comments and `reading' suggestions. I'll
definitely have a look at those.

Best Wishes
Kristin

On 11 Dez., 13:35, "Barbara Zurer Pearson"
<bpear... at research.umass.edu> wrote:
> Dear InfoChilds,
>
> This was frustrating for me yesterday to be on the road, aware of this
> thread, but not able to join in--till now.
> Here are my two-cents (and of course, a recommendation of my own book for
> Kristin's friend).
>
> Raising a Bilingual Child (by Zurer Pearson :) came out this year from
> Random House, and I think I can say, has been well-received both by parents
> and the research community.  In addition to what I tried to make a balanced
> review of the research, there's a section where I talk about why we don't
> have the studies one might want to design to answer a question similar to
> Kristin's. There are also several extended testimonials from non-native
> parents with multilingual families. (Check out some background and reviews
> about it atwww.zurer.com/pearson/bilingualchild(--and at Amazon).
>
> People seem to have strong opinions about whether non-native parents will do
> children a disservice by speaking non-natively to them. The issue rarely
> comes up, of course, if the language the parents are speaking non-natively
> to children is the community language.  No one has thought to research it,
> since children so clearly surpass their parents in the community language.
> (The question is framed somewhat differently for immigrant and guest worker
> communities, but I don't get the impression that this literature would be
> relevant for Kristin's friend.)
>
> My own opinion is that a parent who *wants* to speak a non-native language
> to a child should be encouraged to do so.  The child will lose much less
> from the parent's disfluencies than she or he will gain from the extra
> practice.   Practically speaking, it's not optimal to have *any* single
> individual be the only source of input for a child.  Among the many parents
> I spoke with for my book, non-native parents seemed to understand that
> principle more readily than many international couples, and they took active
> steps to involve native speakers somewhere in the child's routine--through
> schools, sitters, travel, media, etc.  I especially enjoyed one parent's
> comment that he hesitated to speak only Yiddish with his child since he
> didn't know if he knew it well enough to carry it off.  Ten years later, he
> feels funny speaking a language other than Yiddish to any child, not just
> his own.
>
> These days, parents can find a virtual community to help them out. Kristin's
> friend might like one of the internet sites with discussion groups etc.www.biculturalfamily.org (with an on-line magazine one can subscribe to)www.multilingualchildren.org
> humanities.byu.edu/bilingua  (especially for non-native parents, but it
> doesn't look like it has changed much since I first looked at it)
> (among others).
>
> Good luck to the friend--and others contemplating the same move.
>
> Barbara
> *************************************************************
> Barbara Zurer Pearson, Ph.D.
> Research Associate,
> Depts of Linguistics and Communication Disorders
> 226 South College
> University of Massachusetts
> Amherst MA 01003
>
> Tel: 413-545-5023
> Fax: 413-545-2792
>
> bpear... at research.umass.eduwww.umass.edu/aae/bp_indexold.htmwww.zurer.com/pearson/bilingualchild
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Isenthia" <kristinborjes... at yahoo.de>
> To: "Info-CHILDES" <info-childes at googlegroups.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 6:04 AM
> Subject: Question on bilingual language acquisition from non-native speaker
>
> > Dear All,
>
> > I'm not entirely sure whether this is the right place to pose my
> > question. However, a friend of mine suggested I'd try here to get some
> > information on the following issue.
>
> > I'd like to know whether there are any studies investigating the
> > question of whether or not a non-native speaker of a language (with
> > fairly high competency) should try and raise his child bilingually
> > nevertheless. I'm simply interested in views on that question.
>
> > I'd be very happy if you could help me with suggestions or references
> > on this.
>
> > Thanks a lot.
>
> > Best,
> > Kristin
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