the language to be used to a baby

jolalee

shadeslayer 發表於 12-11-6 15:13
Hi,

I mean tuition type teacher at spare time, not the teachers at school.

Yes, I do know friends who do that, hiring teachers to go to her home after class to talk to the kids. It does help, but you'd need to have the connection to find these teachers, and i'm sure NET teachers are pricey... Anyhow that is an option.

shadeslayer

HKTHK 發表於 12-11-6 15:23
回復 shadeslayer 的帖子

There really aren't any good solutions.  I don't disagree with you.  Just want to get a better understanding on what effects, if any, would there be if one chooses not to use their mother tongue with their children.

I have real cases where the parents use English as a second language to speak to their children and yet the children end up being very good in English. But the parent's English is pretty fluent.  The same goes for Mandarin, I suppose.

HKTHK

回復 FattyDaddy 的帖子

I guess i am getting a bit carried away ....

FattyDaddy

HKTHK 發表於 12-11-6 15:10
I am not even sure some of my friends who have spent years abroad will be able to really share their deeper thoughts and feelings in English. ...

Hehe, may be you are getting a bit too academic here, I'm not sure if deep thoughts and feelings really require "deep" English, I mean, take simple sentences like "I miss you" or "you are my everything" and consider the thoughts and feelings they convey {:1_1:}

In any case, children do not learn a language only from their parents, when I think in my mind, words crop up which I didn't learn from mum or dad, I'm sure this applies to everyone.

HKTHK

回復 shadeslayer 的帖子

There really aren't any good solutions.  I don't disagree with you.  Just want to get a better understanding on what effects, if any, would there be if one chooses not to use their mother tongue with their children.

I think the options for non-English and non-mandarin households are limited.  It is only through schooling, tutoring or study abroad.

shadeslayer

原帖由 HKTHK 於 12-11-06 發表
回復 shadeslayer 的帖子

Not sure if I understand.  How can a teacher do this properly?  What I am r ...

Hi,

I mean tuition type teacher at spare time, not the teachers at school.

Say you want your child to have the best possible environment for mandarin and English at home, but both parents are HK Chinese and do not have good enough Mandarin and English. What can the parents do other than to hire someone else good enough (teacher) to talk to their small kids after school?

HKTHK

回復 FattyDaddy 的帖子

Re-inventing oneself is good.  Especially for parents to pick up new skills.  But is it that easy to acquire a language like English?  I am not even sure some of my friends who have spent years abroad will be able to really share their deeper thoughts and feelings in English.

HKTHK

回復 shadeslayer 的帖子

Not sure if I understand.  How can a teacher do this properly?  What I am referring to is a language environment that is "rich" and "diverse" with parents/caretakers conversing with the child as a mother tongue.

shadeslayer

原帖由 HKTHK 於 12-11-06 發表
What I do wonder about is what happens when a parent who is not fluent in a language, like English,  ...

In this case, perhaps the parent should ask a teacher to it properly.

minirat

FattyDaddy 發表於 12-11-6 00:35
From what I have read it seems it is important for a young child to associate one language with one  ...

Interesting!  We are planning to do the same for our boy.  I speak to him in English, whereas his daddy in Cantonese.  We are both speaking our mother tongues to him and between ourselves, we are speaking Cantonese.  I have to keep reminding myself to speak to him in 100% English, coz I have slight tendency to speak a little Cantonese to him so that the other family members like grandparents can understand too.  I need to kick away this "bad habit".  I am the only who speak English to him, and I am a working mother, so the proportion of language is not ideal, so I am hoping that he can enrol into a school with good English (plus Putonghua will be bonus) learning environment, to reinforce his English ability.

minirat

HKTHK 發表於 12-11-6 00:51
What I do wonder about is what happens when a parent who is not fluent in a language, like English,  ...

I think parents should speak to their children in their mother tongue.

jolalee

FattyDaddy 發表於 12-11-6 00:35
From what I have read it seems it is important for a young child to associate one language with one  ...

Yes, that would be the ideal situation, but not all parents can spend the equal amount of time with their kids, plus my spouse is not as fluent with the second language as I am. In the article I posted, there is an alternative method, which I have heard about previously as well: Use L1 am and L2 pm. As long as one sticks to the time frame and language implementation, there shouldn't be much language confusion. The hard part is adhering to it and not mixing two (or more) languages at the same time.
A friend of mine knew about the method but ended up speaking to her child in three languages all meshed together from birth. The kid still cannot speak at 1.5 years of age (but does understand much in all three languages). It's good that I've my son's foundation built with a solid language more or less. If I see a 'buckling' phenomenon in his language development, I guess I'll just quickly revert back to L1.

FattyDaddy

HKTHK 發表於 12-11-6 00:51
What I do wonder about is what happens when a parent who is not fluent in a language, like English,  ...

Well, the parent can make efforts to improve his/her English too {:1_1:}

The arrival of a child is a life changing event, and a good opportunity (or excuse) to improve and re-invent oneself.

HKTHK

What I do wonder about is what happens when a parent who is not fluent in a language, like English, tries to only speak with their child in that language.  If the parent themselves cannot express the feelings and emotions in that language, then would the child's language ability be limited or inhibited somehow down the road?

FattyDaddy

jolalee 發表於 12-11-5 18:20
回復 FattyDaddy 的帖子

When he can capably handle his first language, then i shall start speaking to him more and more in the second language until the ratio is 1:1. I sure hope it works ...

From what I have read it seems it is important for a young child to associate one language with one person, if the same person talks to the child in multiple languages there is a chance that the child might get the languages mixed up, so may be it is better to ask your spouse to use the second language while you continue to use the first.

A real life example I have seen is, the mother speaks only Mandarin to the child (a daughter) while the father speaks only English, between the parents themselves they converse in Cantonese but they never use it with the child. The result is quite interesting, the child is 3 years old now and is fluent in both Mandarin and English, and she never mixes the two languages, when she talks to mum she speaks only Mandarin and no English, and vice-versa when she talks to dad. She speaks no Cantonese but she can understand some of the parent's Cantonese conversations, like when the family went to supermarket and mum said to dad "都係唔好買糖俾亞女食咯" thinking the daughter wouldn't know what they were saying, and then the daughter would surprise them by saying "I want sweets" or "我要吃糖" (in Mandarin) {:1_1:}

jolalee

Mighty 發表於 12-11-5 22:04

結果小朋友両種語言都非常NATIVE,CANTONESE就完全不識。　有可能MA？　在香港生活、不識ｃANTONESE、、、yes i m telling you yes.  是真的不識、不是PRETEND個種！

我都認識相近情況的小孩。母親說流利廣東話，但父親不懂說，所以家人全英對話。好在婆婆多照料孩子，所以也會說普通話 (而且學校有教)。小孩英普流利，但廣東話欠奉。我相信這種情況只會有加冇減。廣東話唔值錢啦!

jolalee

shadeslayer 發表於 12-11-5 20:21

I have a real case to share.  A girl born to a HK family was exposed to 99% Cantonese before she developed her confidence in Cantonese at around 2.5 years. Then English was introduced to her life through one of the parents.  She spent roughly 20% to 30% time on English conversations, books and TVs, and spend most of the rest of time in Cantonese.

I agree. Each child is different and have different interests, but i think the girl's parents have done right to expose her to one solid language to begin with, and slowly introduce the 2nd one when she was more confident with her 1st. Do you think that Cantonese is a more difficult language to acquire than English? (probably because Cantonese contains 9 tones?) Anyhow i'm very happy it worked out well for the girl, and hope it will be the same for my son

Mighty

毎個人都有自己的天分、不可一部通書看到老。　我都有個真実例子、父＆母各説一種語言、父本身是香港人、BUT同小朋友只説英文、母是内陸人、只同小朋友説MANDARIN,両位都不教CANTONESE、因覚得無用。　結果小朋友両種語言都非常NATIVE,CANTONESE就完全不識。　有可能MA？　在香港生活、不識ｃANTONESE、、、yes i m telling you yes.  是真的不識、不是PRETEND個種！！　父不是ENGLISH　NATIVE、BUｔ小朋友的英文又好NATIVE　BOR!!

shadeslayer

I have a real case to share.  A girl born to a HK family was exposed to 99% Cantonese before she developed her confidence in Cantonese at around 2.5 years. Then English was introduced to her life through one of the parents.  She spent roughly 20% to 30% time on English conversations, books and TVs, and spend most of the rest of time in Cantonese. She follow local school system to learn Mandarin.

Result: Cantonese is native, English is very fluent and I would say quite close to native (we can debate what actually is quite close to native, but you get the idea). Mandarin is normal HK kids level.

Each child has a different talent and interest so it is impossible to define a winning formula.