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

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Phd Sabine Pirchio says:

Is it advisable to introduce English as a third language in the life of a child? Introducing a language in the life of a child is always a very delicate matter. Whether the child will learn the language or not depends on several factors, including:

• How often the child is exposed to the language
• Who are the people the child can interact with in that language
• How the language is delivered
• Motivation
• Consistency in the approach used

In fact we know very well that learning a language requires considerable efforts and use of mental resources, although it might seem a very natural and spontaneous process, particularly in the early years. Both adults and children go through this process only if they deem it useful or necessary. What children really care about is relating and communicating with people they like and love, and of course engaging with them in interesting and pleasant activities. If they need English in order to accomplish this they will learn it, if not, they won’t. So really it’s up to parents to make a decision and behave accordingly with consistency.

As a psychologist I perfectly agree with what stated in the previous post: English can wait, there’s no hurry! However this is not a hard rule, there are exceptions or way to work around it, here a couple of ideas:

• The child could learn English at day nursery and/or kindergarten. Nowadays this is a widely available option in most countries, often even in state owned schools. At home parents can support and reinforce what the child learns at school, without actively teaching English the parents can help the child’s learning experience by acknowledging and praising him.
• English is now part of our lives, wherever we live, to the point that we often forget that words like T-shirt and computer are foreign words for most of us. This is very similar to what happens with writing, which is everywhere around us even before children know how to write. One option then is to take a similar approach, children are encouraged to “read” and “write” well before they are actually able to do so, similarly they can be encouraged to play with English words.

A key point though is to have realistic expectations about efforts and results: if parents expect children to actually speak English they should be ready to invest a considerable amount of time, identify suitable methodologies and implement them consistently over time, they should also be aware that they are asking a considerable effort of their children and factor in that they might be frustrated if things don’t turn out as they wish.

On the other side a light, a playful approach would do no harm. Things like “gimme five”, counting “one, two, three”, singing “jingle bells” or watching English cartoons has no negative impact on the child’s psychological health, on the contrary it can even be positive if the whole experience is pleasant and loving. However in this case one can’t realistically expect the child to learn the language, not even to familiarize with it, unless these experiences were frequent and both consistent and diversified.

A last point. Parents might consider the early introduction on English because they would like the child to have a positive attitude towards the language before they are taught it at school. However if the school environment will be good and supportive there’s no reason why the child should offer resistance to learning the language, the association English=Good and fun will easily happen in due time. However if the school environment or the way English is taught at school will be negative or demotivating, this will unfortunately but surely overwrite any previous, positive, experience.

Did you like this post? You can receive free email updates from Bilingual For Fun, you’ll find it very helpful!

*PhD. Sabine Pirchio does research in Developmental and Education Psychology at La Sapienza University (Rome- Italy). Her work focuses on language acquisition and use, particularly on second language acquisition is infancy; relationship between gestures and language in the development of normal, bilingual and special needs children; relationship between abstract abilities, bilingualism and cognitive development as well as integration of immigrant children in primary school. Sabine is French-Italian bilingual and is raising her child, 21 month old, bilingual.

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In order to better answer your questions Bilingual for Fun is hosting some experts on Bilingualism. Today Professor Sorace answers the question Giovanni sent us, Giovanni has a trilingual child and some real concerns about his linguistic development.

Antonella Sorace is professor of Developmental Linguistics at the University of Edimburgh, and together with her team created Bilingualism Matters, whose objective is to bridge the gap between research and the community.

Giovanni asks:

“I’ve been living in London for 10 years where I met my partner, a Swedish girl with whim we have a 3.5 year old child. Sandro goes to kindergarten here in London. His friends speak a good English, but Sandro is not fluent yet.

At home his mother and the baby sitter speak Swedish to him, and I speak Italian, when I can. Between me and my partner the common language in English, so when we are all together we speak English, although sometimes we translate in our languages. This is probably a bit confusing for Sandro.

Sandro doesn’t speak either Italian nor Swedish, but sometimes mixes words from either language into English sentences, he seems to understand well both languages, if I ask him something in Italian he would answer in English, but appropriately. So far we just tried to give him exposure to all languages without sacrificing the communication between us, but now we are noticing delays in his speech development and we are getting worried. We would welcome any advice.

Thanks.”

Professor Sorace, are Sandro’s parents’ concerns justified?

Their situation is not unusual. I know many trilingual children who understand three languages but say little in either language. Delays are normal, particularly for trilingual children. The fact that Sandro’s understanding is good should reassure his parents.

Also it is quite normal for a child to mix languages, borrowing words from other languages. Growing up he’ll normally develop both grammatical and social rules for his code mixing, i.e. he’ll mix more if the parents mix languages too. Sandro will certainly learn English, give that he lives in London, so the parents are right in speaking their own languages, which need more input.

It’s also important to accept that the development of the three languages might differ, because it’s very rare that the child receives the same amount and quality of input in all languages. However he’ll still develop and understanding of the languages, and later on if circumstances change his command of the language might become fluent.

In any case parents can be reassured: trilingualism doesn’t cause confusion in the child.

But when should parents start worrying if the observe a delay?

“I don’t personally deal with speech impairments, but I am in touch with some speech therapists who tell me that before seriously considering the risk of speech problems one should wait until the child is 3 year old and should consider also the mastering of other communication channels, like visual communication. Of course bilingual children can have speech problems too, but the incidence is just the same as among monolingual children, hence speech problems are not to be attributed to bilingualism”

Whom should parents ask for a specialist’s opinion?

“ We are trying to inform speech therapists to help them distinguish normal reactions from pathologic ones, however all too often doctors and teachers recommend to abandon Bilingualism, without really knowing what they are talking about. So it is really important to identify speech therapists that have experience with Bilingualism.”

Did you like this post? You can receive free email updates from Bilingual For Fun, you’ll find it very helpful!

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English is clearly the one language we all need to speak now, so all to often parents of bilingual children are worried that their child should learn English early on too, but obviously don’t know how to go about it. I really want to challenge this assumption, and I’d say that if a family is bilingual but English is not part of their portfolio, it’s probably better to just leave it aside for the moment, at least when the children are very young. And these are some good reaons for that:

• trilingualism is more difficult than bilingualism,  it requires lots’ of consistency and exposure to all three languages, which is difficult to achieve if one of he languages is neither spoken at home nor in the community
• the child will learn English eventually anyway, no need to worry about it. In fact people who can speak two languages are more adept at learning a new foreign language than their monolingual counterparts
• the native language is necessary for a serene upbringing and for staying connected with one’s orginins and family, it shouldn’t be sacrificed for the sake of a language of pragmatic use, like English is
• parents shoudl ask themselves too much and get stressed about it, by having unrealitsic expectations and quite you might set yourself up for failure, become frustrated and end up abandoning bilingualism all together
• better to do one thing properly, rather than doing two things so-so
• don’t ask too much of the child, a child is just a child, his/her priorities are to be loved and cared for, to play, have fun and discover the world, going to language classes shouldn’t be part of the picture (assuming that the family environment in this circumstances is not best placed for learning the language)

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My husband and I are Americans and we have been living in Rome for 10 years. Although all three of our daughters were born here, we have always spoken to them in English. With our oldest child, when she started school at 3 years old – we decided on an international English speaking school. Although we are here long term in Italy, we wanted to be very involved in her education and the environment where she went to school. It was important for us to be able to have a close relationship with the school and in being able to help her with her studies. Although we are fluent enough in Italian (my husband is much more fluent than myself), at that time when we made the decision 5 years ago, I was not that confident that I would feel comfortable with my child going to Italian school.
Now 5 years later – both of our older daughters have been going to this English speaking school (although our middle child is being home educated by us this year). Our youngest who will be 3 years old in March has had a Romanian nanny since she was 6 months old and who only speaks to her in Italian. However, although my daughter’s initial words were in Italian, she now only speaks in English. She recently started at an Italian nido as we thought it would be a good idea and in the few short weeks we have already started to hear her speaking a few words in Italian although her predominant language still remains English.
My husband, daughters and I are now moving to Bali for one year starting in August and so our children will be attending another international English speaking school, but that also teaches the local language Bahasa Indonesia. Once we return, we are not sure how our children’s education will continue as my daughters are extremely resistant to going to an Italian school, but realistically and financially speaking – we cannot continue for all three of our daughters to go to this private school for the rest of their schooling as it is very expensive. So we have some hard decisions to make before we return to Rome in August 2010.
My family background is Puertorican so at some point I would like the children to learn Spanish and my husband is Jewish and would like to spend some time in Israel and have the children learn Hebrew. So our daughters’ multilingualism has just begun!
We do not anticipate ever living in the US again – our daughters have never lived there and are not interested in it. They are, however, interested in living in the UK so that may be a possibility. Who knows what the future will bring. I must say, I am very happy that they are living a more international life than many of my friend’s children in the US and that they are seeing different parts of the world – I think this is important in so many ways. They are used to being friends with and around bilingual/multilingual children as almost every child at their school speaks more than one language.

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I am an American mother of three children, whose father is Italian, and we are living in French-speaking Switzerland.

I am raising my 3 kids in 3 languages and it works fine. My oldest (12) recently did a CILS test in Italian and received a 37/40! We are very proud! He goes to school in French and gets English from me and the TV!

None of the languages are as fluent as a monolingual child. You do notice a lack of vocabulary and a slight accent but they are fluent in all 3 languages.

We are proud of our children and happy with the choice that we made. We stay consistent with our children (I speak English, my husband speaks Italian, and they are schooled in French). We NEVER speak to them in another language. When other children are about we translate everything even though our children understand. We were told by our pediatrician to be ULTRA consistant. There have been times when my husband gets frustrated with them as their vocabulary is small in Italian but he trudges on and it has paid off!

I do admit that it is hard at the beginning but you must stop yourself from switching languages.
Also, if my kids asked me something in another language, I would just say…in English please, and they would repeat it in English. If they had trouble finding the right words then I would help them.

At one point my 2 oldest started speaking together in French (as they go to school in French) and I told them that when we were just us or between themselves, they must speak English together. I felt bad insisting on it but they didn’t bat an eyelash and have never looked back! They are thanking me now as they see other kids where the language is slipping
Geneva is an exceptional place. Everyone seems to have more than one language at home anyway! Switzerland has 3 main languages anyway (4 if you count Romansch) and on top of that Geneva is an international city. I only know a handful of couples where both parents are the same nationality!

I can thoroughly recommend Tracey’s book: Raising multi-lingual children.

Lisa

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