In this episode of Speaking of Translation, Eve, Corinne, and special guest Jennifer Bikkál Horne discuss strategies for raising your children bilingually–a topic that, while not directly related to translation, is of interest to lots of us in the language professions. Eve (mother of two tween/teen boys) and Jen (mother of two girls, ages 1 and 3) offer tips from their experiences as English-French bilingual moms, but these strategies are applicable to any language. Listen in to learn:
- How they decided to raise their children bilingually
- How they incorporate French into their kids’ lives in the US
- How their kids have responded to the bilingual environment
- How they find resources such as books, movies, music, TV shows, etc. to use with their kids
- Their thoughts on raising bilingual children in your non-native language
Jen has some excellent insights on the early childhood end of the spectrum–how to expose babies and young children to another language and encourage them to speak, how to find resources that are appropriate for young children–while Eve has the perspective of 15+ years of bilingual parenting–the various phases of bilingual life as kids get older, and how her kids use French as their “secret weapon.” If you’re raising–or thinking about raising–your kids bilingually, we think this episode will be a great source of information.
Links mentioned in the episode:
The NERCh strategies that Jen uses with her daughters–especially applicable for babies and young children (download the PDF version):
Blogs:
Facebook:
French-speaking parents in the US
For other languages, use the Facebook search field to look for “bilingual kids” and ” bilingual children.”
Books:
Maintaining Your Second Language– Eve Bodeux
Bilingual – François Grosjean
The Bilingual Edge – Kendall King
Be Bilingual – Practical Ideas for Multilingual Families – Annika Bourgogne
Podcast:
Click the audio player link to listen online
Right-click the link below to download the MP3.
Chrome/Firefox: Choose “Save Link As”
Internet Explorer: Choose “Save target as”
Safari: Choose “Download Linked File”
Raising bilingual children
Hi Corinne, Eve and Jen.
I have not had time to listen to the complete discussion but I still want to send my experience. I’m a native Swedish translator living in France and have two now grown up children (28 and 29 years old) I decided to speak only Swedish with them from their birth even if people around us didn’t understand and sometimes disliked it. Their father did understand but didn’t want to speak Swedish so nobody else spoke Swedish in the first time. I stayed at home three years after the birth of my first child. I bought a lot of Swedish books and my parents sent videos and music. Also, although it was very expensive, we made a lot of phone calls. We went to Sweden every summer and also had 3 Swedish au-pair girls when I went back to work. They still go regularly to Sweden and remain in contact with their cousins.
The results of these efforts were:
– A larger vocabulary in both languages than unilingual kids
– A very open mind
– Easiness to learn other languages (just like me, they speak English and German, too)
– Excellent school results (they are now both doctors)
Kind regards,
Liesbeth (sworn translator, Swedish-French)
Thanks, Liesbeth! Great to hear your experience and thanks for the perspective from the viewpoint of someone with adult children!
Thanks for giving us the long view – and it’s great to hear another success story. Yes, bilingualism is about more than just language – an entire world view! I love your bullet points!
Thanks for the great information!
How great it is to know I’m not alone. My boy is 5 now and even though I’m not a native English speaker I started “teaching” him English at the moment he was born. Not 100% of the time, but through books and songs and, only after he was two, I started with TV only in English. The content in English is huge so I did not face problems finding it. The thing is that now, when his friends come over to play, I cannot turn on the TV otherwise he’ll complain I’ll change the language into Brazilian Portuguese. As I’m not native, I found a little difficult to deal with his “nativeness” and when I noticed that although the vocabulary he was getting from the cartoons was being so well “captured”, when we saw kids speaking English he wanted to talk to them but usually asked me to talk to them (and the reception we had was not the best) so I decided to hire an English teacher just once a week so he could not only get the vocabulary, but actually use it when playing and could form the sentences better so he could be more confident and next time we have the opportunity he won’t miss his chance. He talks to adults normally, but with kids he showed that fear, which I belive will soon have an end. He speaks English fluently and loves the language and his English teacher! He now studies in a bilingual school, which actually teaches Brazilian Portuguese and Italian, English will be introduced later on and his teacher says he accepted Italian so easily he’s already using some words and forming his sentences in a natural and quick way.
That’s such a cool story Juliana! Thank you so much.
Thanks for sharing your great success. It shows that we all indeed to have different paths and ways of getting to our end goals with bilingualism and we should be open to that. Congrats!
This is very interesting. I have a bilingual son, or a soon-to-be-a-bilingual… Anyway, we have always spoken to him in both languages and it seems to be working!