Anybody Have a Partner Who Doesn't Want to Speak Their Native Language to Your Kids - Page 3

[dex_millie]

It is good that he is at least going to a class, hopefully dad will realize the importance soon.

I am half french and my grandmother(married a english guy, not my father bio-dad) didn't teach my dad the language, hence we didn't get thought. Results when we meet our french side(well my father fater side) of the family only one of them knew english and we had a sit down dinner with a heap of translations inbetween. We haven't seen them again, how would we communicate. I actually don't care for learning it now and am trying to learn spanish (even went Puerto Rico) and will get my son involve in spanish also. I guess we will do french as the next language.

[sandsprite]

If you know spanish, french is not that hard to pick up. one of the romance languages... and vica versa.

We learned french in school and I found it very helpful when were were in Spain/Portugal... it was much easier to pick up those languages when you have a little french exposure.

[LauraN]

I am so relieved to read about all these experiences. In our case, both DH and I speak second languages, but only speak English to our kids (me=Spanish, him=Arabic).

It's not on purpose--we both want our kids to speak all three languages. But it's really, really hard to speak to our kids in a language the other doesn't speak. It's much more natural to speak to them in the one language we have in common.

We've gotten a lot of flack from both our families for not working harder to teach the kids languages. And we both know they're right. It's just hard.

So our solution was to move to Miami . DH's family lives here, so the kids hear Arabic daily now. And it's Miami, so they hear Spanish all around them.

The move turned out to be the right thing for us. The kids have become a lot more interested in learning both Spanish and Arabic, and have recently begun trying to speak Arabic to their grandparents. :

[mags]

Could it be that some of you who are hesitant to speak (or your partner who is hesitant to speak) are self conscious? My DH speaks korean, but pretty much only exclusively with family member and only when necessary when going to the korean store or restaurant. He is very self conscious about his korean. He immigrated to the US from south korea when he was 7 yrs old and feels that his korean is at the skill of, "baby" korean. I have encouraged him to speak to our kids in korean and he seems to forget to do it. Usually, he will just teach them what x is called in korean. So, they are picking up some vocab, but don't hear conversational korean.

As for me, my parents spoke both taiwanese and mandarin at home. I learned mandarin, was sent to school not knowing any english at home. My parents freaked out and wanted us to only speak english at home (while they spoke mandarin to us). Then around jr high aged, my parents suddenly decided they wanted us to speak back to them in mandarin, but by then, we weren't used to it and just couldn't get into that mode. So, while I understand mandarin and taiwanese, I speak HORRIBLE mandarin and taiwanese (and they even sent me to chinese school on sundays, which was a torture and a waste of time). I regret that my parents did not have my siblings and I speak mandarin at home.

So, my question to all of you who want your spouse to speak another language with your child. Do you expect your child to speak back to your spouse in that language? If you don't make them do that, they will end up like me, and understand the language, but their speaking skills will not be very good.