Bilingual environment

[Maria Koptjevskaja Tamm]

I have a good experience of raizing three bilingual (Russian-Swedish) 
kids in a Swedish setting. My situation is slightly different from 
Nino's, since we are a mixed marriage (my husband is a Swede and I am 
Russian),  each of us speaks his / her native tongue to the kids and 
accepts replies only in the same language. However, I think the main 
strategy in all such situations is to be consistent with the languages 
one uses. I am personally not completely sure that the "one hour a 
day"-practice is a good thing to do, but there might be other opinions 
and results. Those who read Russian and are interested in practical 
questions related to raizing bilingual kids in "diasphora" might 
perhaps be interested in a paper where I discuss my experience: it can 
be downloaded from my home page, 
http://www.ling.su.se/staff/tamm/publ-r03.html

Best,
Masha Koptjevskaja Tamm

2005-10-05 kl. 09.40 skrev Amiridze, Nino:

> Dear colleagues,
>
> I would appreciate it if you could give me any advice on a problem 
> related
> with a biligual environment.
>
> Because of my husband's job we together with our two daughters (5 and 
> 7,5
> years old) live in a small Upper Austrian village where my husband's
> reserach institute is located.
>
> Although some co-villagers are xenophobic, we did not really have 
> serious
> problems untill recently when our older daughter started visiting the
> primary school (Volksschule) there. The teachers seem to be nice and 
> our
> daughter seems to be one of the best students according to their 
> records.
> But the main teacher who leads their class has started asking us to 
> speak
> German at home. We are Georgian nationals and although speak also other
> languages including German we always speak only Georgian to our kids. 
> First
> of all because it is the most natural thing to do to speak a native
> language. Second, here there is no one else but us who could address 
> our
> kids in Georgian and the only chance to learn the language they have 
> only
> with us.
>
> Apart from the school subjects, at home we read with our kids books 
> both in
> German and Georgian. But it seems that just reading is not satifactory 
> for
> the teacher and she repeatedly asks us to speak German ``at least one 
> hour
> per day".
>
> I tried this several times and I think this is a dangerous experiment, 
> at
> least it seems to me to be so. My daughters started asking me why are 
> we
> different, why don't we speak German like others. Even when carefully 
> having
> explained that they started apologizing for us in the shops, buses, 
> and at
> many occasions that their parents, you know, don't really speak the 
> German
> language properly, and so on. I think they are developing a kind of 
> complex
> not only because of the teacher but also because of the peoples 
> attitude
> towards foreigners at the place of our residence.
>
> Every time we meet the teacher, even if away from the school, she 
> reminds us
> to use German at home. Last year my husband and I explained to her 
> that they
> need to hear Georgian at least from somebody and perhaps the German 
> spoken
> by a native speaker is more important for their language development 
> than
> our German which is after all learned during the last 3 years. But we 
> got a
> sarcastic smile probably meaning that she simply didn't believe us 
> thinking
> we were avoiding her advice because of the lack of time or for some 
> other
> reason.
>
> Could you please let me know your opinion about the use of languages 
> with
> bilingual kids and what results might follow. Could you give me the
> refernces for popular articles written in German to show them to the
> teacher? Does an educational offical have any right to plan a language 
> use
> in non-native families? I think we have a right to preserve our 
> language and
> culture and we think one of the most important ways to do so is to use 
> the
> native language at home.
>
> Thank you very much.
>
> With best regards,
>
> Nino Amiridze
>
> Utrecht Institute of Linguistics
> Utrecht University
>
Maria Koptjevskaja Tamm
Off.: Dept. of linguistics, SU university, 		H.: Västerled 166,
106 91, Stockholm, Sweden			     	167 72, Bromma, Sweden
Tel.: +46-8-16 26 20					      	+46-8-26 90 91
http://www.ling.su.se/staff/tamm