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Categories > Family Language Systems > How to teach a language we DONT know?
 
 


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Mart
  Posted   Reply with quote  #1 
hi everybody!
my name is martin from canada im 35 my wife 28 and we have a 4 months old baby 
;0
Our native language is French and we did also learn english at school wich we speak at a decent level of fluency ( i think )

But the situation is that after a few trips to norway we did literaly fall in love with that contry, we do plan to go there in vacation every summer and maybe one day move there or retire there.

So the question is , since we plan to go there often and for relativly long period of time me and my wife want to learn norwegian AND we was wondering if it could be a good idea to teach norwegian to our kids at the same time ?

If yes what could be the best method ? we actualy speak french at home and dont plan on teaching english to our kids since anyways they will learn it a school around the age of 10-12.

What method should we use? im not realy comfortable to speak only norwegian at home since my wife dont catch up languages as fast as me i fear that this can make some distence between us and or distance beween my kids and my wife since im a realy talkative guy [tongue]

i tought that we could try to speak french in the morning , norwegian in the afternoon and revert back to french in the evening while we spend time together the most at meal/tv  time ?

So what is your advice about our situation and concerns?
thanks a lot have a nice day!
 
Violet
  Posted   Reply with quote  #2 
I would say don’t teach a language you aren’t fluid in to your kids. The reason why I think this is that I have met many kids/teenagers that spoke a second language with strange sounding accents (as in not the one of their parents, but their own made up mixed accent) since they learned it from parents who didn’t pronounce everything correctly. If you are sure that the words you do know are pronounced correctly, then I think it would be fine, but if you are hesitant, then don’t. I would wait until you are more comfortable with the language before introducing it to your kids since it is harder to un-learn mispronounced words. If you are traveling for a while, they will learn the basics fairly quickly, and improve on it with repetition.

My mother speaks french and enough english for light conversations, but has a very strong accent. My father speaks english (with a slight accent), french, and arabic. At first they tried to speak french and english to me, but apparently I was pronouncing the english words like my mother, so they stopped. I ended up learning my english in daycare/pre-school and now I am just as fluent in english as I am in french (I also think in both depending on what I”m thinking about). Point is, your children can still learn the language quickly (compared to adults) even if they are a bit older when they are immersed in the language, and this time they will learn it without your accent. Once they have the basics, you can then help them maintain the language.
 
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