Why wouldn't you raise your kid bilingual?

WiresDreamDisasters

Ignore all the blue-line bullshit. That's for writing.

But the sounds. It's really fucking similar to the English alphabet and our vowel noises. When you see it without the Romaji (Romanized translation along the bottom of each symbol) then it blows your mind - what the fuck is this Matrix bullshit!?!?

But it's all easy. Just down to rote memory.

Of course they've got 3 alphabets effectively - Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji - which they culturally appropriated from China. The evil bastards.

The main thing when learning Japanese is to try to not say everything in a samurai voice. It's quite hard when you've grown up on a steady diet of samurai action movies.

The nipper was translating platlets, red blood cells, and white blood cells into Japanese at bed time.

exocet

WiresDreamDisasters said:

Ignore all the blue-line bullshit. That's for writing.

But the sounds. It's really fucking similar to the English alphabet and our vowel noises. When you see it without the Romaji (Romanized translation along the bottom of each symbol) then it blows your mind - what the fuck is this Matrix bullshit!?!?

But it's all easy. Just down to rote memory.

Of course they've got 3 alphabets effectively - Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji - which they culturally appropriated from China. The evil bastards.

The main thing when learning Japanese is to try to not say everything in a samurai voice. It's quite hard when you've grown up on a steady diet of samurai action movies.

The nipper was translating platlets, red blood cells, and white blood cells into Japanese at bed time.

My son has been teaching himself Japanese for a couple of years via some kind of App. I hope he sticks with it and takes up formal lessons at some point.

WiresDreamDisasters

@exocet Duolingo Japanese is pretty great!! It might be that.

WiresDreamDisasters

Also if you learn a few words in Japanese, the womenz will go mad gooey.

Rowby1

Makes complete sense. I wish I’d tried harder with languages earlier in life. Working on my Portuguese since I was 50.....I’ve probably left it too late. My Danish friends speak Danish English and German fluently, as do their kids. 

exocet

WiresDreamDisasters said:

@exocet Duolingo Japanese is pretty great!! It might be that.

Cheers, I'll ask him / encourage him to take a look at it if he isn't. 

AustrianJohn

I have many friends where the couple are Austrian/UK. By three years old the kids speak decent German and English (and ski better than me). Speaking multiple language is goodness - important to start as early as possible.

merlin

I most definitely would have taught any kids I had to speak French. I'm too old now to have kids so when I retire, I'll get a dog and train it bilingually instead. 

dano

It's a good thing, we should always encourage it.

The British are terrible with speaking other languages, so breaking down those stereotypes is good.

My daughter is 12 she loves languages, she does Spanish and Mandarin at school. she is constantly learning bit of languages on Apps and Youtube, usual Europan stuff like Spanish, German, Dutsch, Russian.

She has been teaching herself Korean during Lockdown3, I'm well impressed by it. 

Encourage languages ! 

Emp_Fab

I'm bilingual.  I can talk bollocks and utter bollocks.

Jalapeno

It is a great gift to learn languages so young.  I met some French schoolkids in my earl Teens which encourged me to learn French - and made it dead easy tbh once you can see spoken socially. Wish I'd started much earlier, I'd put my self at mildly competent, at least one rung higher than the policeman form 'Allo 'Allo

Dominic

I'm not bilingual but I speak degree standard French and Spanish .......that's still very different from being truly bilingual.
Being bilingual also means being able to revert naturally to the most modern vernacular and not using words or phrases that are uncommon since the 1980s or have changed meaning .
Eg ; Oh, we had such a gay time 
 It also means not having a discernable accent of a foreigner ;
Ah zo ,zis is precisely vot I am conzerned about

Sassafras

I've met expats who've been living in Spain for over 20 years and the lazy bastards can't even say Hola.
They just shout loudly in English when addressing Spaniaeds.

yocky

What a strange thing to be surprised about (them not you).

My neice was brought up learning English and French. It was extra cute hearing her throw random French words into sentences until she fully got to grips with it.

LastMantra

I don't think it's surprising considering her mum is Japanese.

There's quite a few bilingual schools here in Scotland. It was quite trendy for a while to send your kids to one.

littlegreenman

As kids my English Mother would exclusively speak French when we were in the kitchen, and we had a Belgian lodger who lived in the flat upstairs. So I was pretty well versed as a child but lack of use in adulthood combined with the inevitable embarrassment of potentially sounding daft after so long not using either has meant I've long lost most of it. Shame

RaymondLin

Every friend I have who has a better half that isn’t English is doing the same.  My sister is doing the same.  One parent speaks her mother tongue and the other parent speaks English.  My nieces can at least understand Cantonese, if they can’t then it makes communicating with the grand parents a lot more difficult.

My friends who has Brazilian wives, the mum speaks Portuguese at home, the dad speaks English.

Im bilingual (tri if you count a minor Chinese dialect), never occur to me it’s something special, learning English is out of necessity and not a hobby, much of what the rest of the world does, they learn it as it’s the international language.  But it’s funny when my friends sees me talking on the phone to my mum, they are surprise to see me speaking another language.  It’s funny seeing their faces. 

My sister in law’s boyfriend works for a bank, and was head hunted for his language skills, he speaks something random like English (mother tongue), Russian, Mandarin, Italian, French and Norwegian. 

Dontgiveupyourdayjob

I really wish I'd stuck with languages at school instead of ditching them early doors. I've often thought over the years about trying to learn a new language, but never really had a specific reason or impetus to do so as I've never lived abroad or worked in a job that required other languages.

However, my current girlfriend is French and is fully bilingual. Spurred on by lockdown boredom around this time last year, I've really been making a concerted effort to teach myself French as best I can. Not gonna lie, at 39 years young and with a busy and tiring work life, progress isn't exactly breakneck speed!

I have no kids from my first marriage, and my girlfriend and I have no intention of starting a family. But on the very unlikely off chance of that changing, I'd be 100% raising them bilingual.

RaymondLin

Dontgiveupyourdayjob said:

I really wish I'd stuck with languages at school instead ditching them early doors. I've often thought over the years about trying to learn a new language, but never really had a specific reason or impetus to do so as I've never lived abroad or worked in a job that required other languages.

However, my current girlfriend is French and is fully bilingual. Spurred on by lockdown boredom around this time last year, I've really been making a concerted effort to teach myself French as best I can. Not gonna lie, at 39 years young and with a busy and tiring work life, progress isn't exactly breakneck speed!

I have no kids from my first marriage, and my girlfriend and I have no intention of starting a family. But on the very unlikely off chance of that changing, I'd be 100% raising them bilingual.

YouTube Johnny Harris, his thing is maps...anyway he just posted a video last week where he suggested a new way to learn a language. Not your academic grammar correct way but just learn enough to get your point across.  The key is to learn 500 the most commonly used words, just memorised those and start from there.  He has able to learn enough Italian in 3 months to a conversation level by doing this. 

Since he isn’t doing it for a test, his argument is that if he goes to Italy and say “can I get 2  pizza slices for eat?” That is enough to get pizza.  Or if he understand only 8/10 words, he can fill in the blanks and get a idea of what the conversation is about.  He can always ask more question to clarify too.

3 months to learn enough Italian for basic conversation level, I think that’s pretty cool.

ToneControl

I remember my London-Italian mate told me that he was fluent in Italian until he was about 6, so I assume it's possible to undermine all the good work somehow.

Probably a lot easier now to maintain second languages, given the availability of internet media, and satellite TV shows