Question on bilingual language acquisition from non-native speaker

Tue Dec 16 22:49:13 UTC 2008

Dear Kristin
  only on the basis of personal experience  I would suggest
1. you do how you feel like, knowing that your feeling might evolve  
along the interactional experiences you will have with your child
2. not underestimate the importance of passing to your children the  
language you know best.
Sharing with our children the language we are most comfortable and  
familiar with in everyday experiences is very important. Language is  
not only a cognitive or social asset but also a very intimate, family,  
history and emotionally- laden experience. And these are aspects of  
your inner life that you may want to share implicitly with your child,  
something that you will find very rewarding also later, when your  
children will be grown up and will live who knows where and with whom.

3. there are many ways to learn a language well if not perfectly well.
I learned a couple of languages in late adolescence and of course my  
knowledge of them is non native. My children instead speak three  
languages fluently (including their parents' mother tongue), and live  
in countries that are neither that of their upbringing nor that of  
their parents' language.

Best luck with whatever you'll choose to do
Edy

Edy Veneziano
Institut de Psychologie
Université Paris Descartes-CNRS
  Paris
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On 14 déc. 08, at 14:16, Yarden Kedar wrote:

> Dear Kristin and everyone on Info-Childes,
> As far as I can see most of the discussion so far touched on the  
> plausibility of whether the child would eventually fully acquire the  
> non-native language or not.
> One central issue however in my view is whether such 'non-native  
> upbringing' has an effect on the parent-child emotional bond. This  
> is not my area of specialty and so I'm not sure whether any research  
> findings on this have been reported, but I think that before you  
> begin considering the linguistic, cognitive and social (community)  
> factors and implications, it may be even more important to try and  
> think ahead if there might be some limiting effect in not being able  
> to fully express your emotions to your child.
> Cheers,
> Yarden
>
>
> -- 
> Yarden Kedar, Ph.D.
> Department of Psychology
> Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
> Be'er Sheva, 84105
> Israel
>
> Tel:  +972-8-647-2044
> Fax: +972-8-642-8348
>
>
>
> On Sun, Dec 14, 2008 at 12:28 PM, Isenthia  
> <kristinborjesson at yahoo.de> wrote:
>
> 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
>
>

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