here we are for another Carnival. The family of bloggers involved is growing really nicely and this is really contributing to creating a debate on bilingualism and sharing ideas, doubts, tips and tricks. Most of all I think we can all feel less lonely on our journey, and that is of tremendous help when you need to find in yourself the motivation to stick to your plans and speak that language that nobody else around you is speaking, often enough not even your own children!

So let’s go for it once again, and feel free to join us. You can submit your own posts to the Carnival or you can host the Carnival yourself, you’ll find all the info here. Also, to be always up to date  with the Carnival, deadlines for submitting, new issues, etc please subscribe to the newsletter. You will receive only one or two emails per month, just for coordinating the carnival.

Here we go!

Sarah, from Bringing up Baby Bilingual, shares a truly inspiring story. Clarisse and her family are raising 28 months old Julia quadrilingual. What is really inspiring, and makes me feel slightly envious, is not the number of languages, but where they live, which languages they chose and how they are exposing the child to the languages. And the picture in the background too! This is just like a dream….

Sandra from bxlsprout is raising her child trilingual, which I understand is the bare minimum necessary to guarantee survival in Bruxelles, where they live (I’m kidding, but just a bit). Her point of view is very interesting and quite unusual. Contrary to most parents of bilingual children, who were raised monolingual, Sandra was raised as a bilingual child herself, so she’s looking at her child’s experience through the lens of her own experience.

Mamapoekie from Authentic parenting gives us a different view of Belgium and Brussels, and indeed the experience of living there is very different depending on whether you are a local or an expat. Why in such a multilingual country is bilingualism and cultural differences among the Flemish and the French “side” still considered an issue? Or is it really? Mamapokie reminds us that languages are often used and abused.

Melanie from Multilingualmania hosts Sandrine, who’s raising her children trilingual in a rather hostile environment. If you think raising a bilingual child is hard for you in your settings, try to imagine what it would be like to raise an autistic child trilingual. No I don’t think we can even begin to imagine, but we can read Sandrine’s story, admire her focus and determination and share similar stories on our blogs, because bilingualism is a gift for all children, also those with disabilities, but their parents all too often feel isolated and criticized for their efforts.

Smashedpea from intrepidlybilingual shares one of those moments when you finally  feel you’ve done something right. All your efforts, and doubts and wondering and trying and trying some more were worth it. As I’ve been reading her blog since she started on her journey I’m really happy for her, but also, I think we can learn a lot by sharing the journey with each other. Once you’ve achieved something everything looks obvious and easy, but to keep going when you don’t know where you are going, this is the tough part, let’s just be aware that applies to virtually everybody and let’s share the burden.

Janis from mumversuskids at times finds raising a bilingual child rather demanding, specifically when they start asking really specific questions, which by the way, most parents wouldn’t be able to answer anyway, no matter in which language!

Jan and Souad from babelkid made me laugh. Their child manages to speak Arabic with hardly a whole arabic word in the sentence, yet in her view she is speaking arabic! This is also an opportunity for parents to spend some thought on code mixing and code switching, it’s difficult to expect children not to mix if parents do it.

Maria from Fabmums has a brilliant idea! “Learn though play” and because the kind of game your bilingual child might not be ready available just make it yourself. There you go, really smart!

Eve from Blogging on Bilingualism (last minute entry, my fault) is packed with info and practical advice about traveling with children. It is indeed possible, and it can even be fun, really! all you have to do is make sure you have everything you need. This is a post I’ll go back to over and over in the future!

And finally there’s me, Letizia, here on Bilingual for Fun. I want to question your definition of a bilingual family. More and more families are raising bilingual children against all odds and with plenty of initiative and creativity and a pinch of risk taking. Who are these families? How do they do it? What do experts think of them?

I’m sure you’ll enjoy reading all these posts and getting to know the families behind them. Before I close I have a suggestion to make, I find Twitter a really powerful tool. It’s much more flexible than Facebook and it allows you to stay on top of what’s going on and to connect in a very effective way. I swear i receive no money whatsoever for saying this, it’s just that I’m looking for your blogs on Twitter so I can follow you there but most of you aren’t on Twitter please, give it a chance, try it. At first it’s rather awkward, but after few days you’ll get used and you’ll soon realize how effective it is. If you have questions feel free to ask, at bilinguepergioco AT yahoo DOT com. Or find me a bilingualforfun or bilinguexgioco.

Finally don’t forget to subscribe the newsletter, so you won’t miss any carnival, do it now, here. And please let us know if you’s like to host, here you’ll find schedule and info.

Next Carnival will be hosted at Mummy do that, those registered to the newsletter will receive a reminder, if not just email sbach AT cartside DOT co DOT uk.

Read, comment, share, think, laugh and try something new. In short have fun!

Image from A Journey Round my Skull

Related posts:

1. Second Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism
2. 5 ways to react when Bilingual Children mix languages
3. 10 bloggers and a Carnival, on Bilingualism

Does your child start a sentence with one langue and finish it with another? Yes, that happens a lot, but what this really means strongly depends on how you react to that. If you think you just react normal, keep reading, there are at least 5 different ways of reacting normal, they are all normal, but not all the same.

Parents often look at their children’s habit of mixing languages in one conversation (a phenomenon called Code Mixing and not to be confused with Code Switching) with some apprehension, fearing that they child might not become bilingual, or, worse, that s/he might end up speaking a language of his/her own, without mastering any language fully (now THAT would be scary, wouldn’t it?). Although these fears are normally completely exagerated, it still is not only reasonable but also sensible for parents to help children separate the two languages, so how do they go about it?

Research has showed that parents’ reactions mostly fit into one of 5 alternatives:

• The parent pretends s/he doesn’t understand and can’t either understand or speak anything but the chosen language, and will wait until the child conforms to that
• The parent guesses (or pretends to) what the child meant, normally asking in the chosen language a question like “do you mean…?”
• The parent repeats what the child said in the chosen language, without asking any question or expecting any answer
• The parent accepts what the child said and continues the conversation in the chosen language, without commenting on the fact that the child had switched to another language
• Code switching, the parent follows the child’s lead and starts speaking the language the child had used

Unsurprisingly the first strategy, pretending one doesn’t understand, yields the best results in terms of bilingualism. The more coherent parents are in sticking to one language, the higher are the chances that the child will speak both languages. Unfortunately this method is also the most difficult to implement, both because sometimes it’s hard to pretend one didn’t understand, and because this can generate some tensions or frustration. For sure this approach requires a lot of consistency and firmness.

An interesting point is that all 5 these methods have been observed in families that reported practising OPOL, One Person One Language. That should make you think. This confirms that OPOL is quite a vague word but in reality OPOL is different in every family. Your family’s OPOL is defined by thousand little decisions you take on a daily basis, like whether you give or not a biscuit to your child who’s asking for a biscotto. Little things do add up and create a trend, so be aware.
This does not mean that some methods are better than others and that you should do this or that, by any means. True some approaches will have a stronger impact on promoting bilingualism than others, but this is not the only thing that really matters. You only can and should decide what is best for you and your family, taking into consideration your specific circumstances, your family members’ personality and sensitivity, how much exposure your children have to either language, your relationships, etc.
What this does mean though is that you should take some time to think about it and decide what is best for your family, because if you don’t take a conscious decision you’ll still be taking many small unconscious decisions (like giving that biscuit or not), which might lead you in the right direction, or might not. And again, you and your family are the only persons who can answer that.

Click here to read more on OPOL and different OPOL implementations.

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Image by A journey Round My Skull

Related posts:

1. Code Mixing and Code Switching in Bilingual Children (and Families)
2. Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism, April
3. What the OPOL are you saying?

Code Mixing instead happens to both adults and children as they learn a language and borrow words and grammar from their mothertongue to compensate for their inability to express themselves in the second language. Code Mixing happens when one doesn’t speak one, or both, languages properly.
Code Mixing is very typical among bilingual children, a couple of points on this:

• Code Mixing is normal and temporary, it’s no reason for concerns. All children get over it, so if it happens to your child, just let it be.
• Even if the child mixes the two languages it doesn’t mean he’s not aware of speaking two different languages. Research has observed that in this phase children have already acquired two linguistic systems and are aware of each language’s grammar.
• If adults do a lot of Code Switching the child is more likely to get used to Code Switching too. He’ll still get over Code Mixing and he’ll learn both languages, but most likely he’ll jeep using a lot of Code Switching to express himself
• Code Switching is not in itself a problem but does have some disadvantages. If a child doesn’t separate the two languages it might be more difficult for the parents to understand how well he masters his language, it might look like he speaks both, while what might be doing is speaking one language and borrowing only few words from the other. If parents are not well aware of the dynamics, it’s difficult for them to understand whether they should provide more input for the weaker language.

So in short, if your child mixes the languages don’t worry, but if you can avoid doing the same it’s probably better.

Related posts:

1. 5 ways to react when Bilingual Children mix languages
2. Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism, April