limbo Posted June 16, 2003 Report Share Posted June 16, 2003 Hi Samak, I've been told by some people who have babies who can speak two or lingos that if you're not strict with speaking just one lingo to your kid, it may get confused and end up speaking just one lingo. Like, if I speak Dutch and my 3 words Thai to my baby, it won't reply to me in Dutch possibly. However, if I stick to Dutch, she will always reply in Dutch to me. Thai she'll pick up from my wife and her relatives easily enough. Southern Thai and later BKK Thai when she grows up and goes to school. Does this make any sense? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BelgianBoy Posted June 16, 2003 Report Share Posted June 16, 2003 Limbo, No it does not make any sense......... I grew up speaking french at home, english at school in detroit till the age of nine, when we returned to Belgium and had to lean Dutch / Flemish at school then...... No problem to mix at all....... I speak now fluently 5 languages, never had problems to learn them mixed. Good luck ! Cheers ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Hippie Posted June 16, 2003 Report Share Posted June 16, 2003 Both my adopted parents speak several languages, and have a few in common. When I was younger, they would speak German or whatever when they didn't want the kids to understand. As we caught on, they dropped it and went to English, or just didn't talk in front of us on certain topics. I tended to speak Spanish with my grandfather who had passed through Argentina on his way to the USa, no idea why we spoke it, but we did. When it came time to learn a foreign language in school, my Father forbade us from learning German for some reason. This caused a bit of a riff with his father, but life went on. To date, neither my sister nor I can speak German, we both speak other languages, non of which my parents speak. This does seem odd to me. My sister has 2 adopted kids from Mexico, and neither one speaks Spanish anymore, oddly enough, the older one is learning German, which my father thinks is great, go figure! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
limbo Posted June 17, 2003 Report Share Posted June 17, 2003 Hi BB, what I'm trying to say is that each parent should concentrate on speaking one language with their children, so the child identifies this by replying in the mother language of the parent. What they learn at school, has nothing to do with this, that's all extras and are very beneficial and good. I assume that when you learned all these languages at school, you still spoke Frnech to your parents at home? That's my point. If the parents talk a mixture of Thai/English/Dutch, the kid will be confused on how to adress the parent and won't learn Dutch properly, in this case. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pescator Posted June 27, 2003 Author Report Share Posted June 27, 2003 Hi Limbo, I recall raising this question on the Newsgroup Soc.culture.thai quite some time ago and the general opinion (from people who had bilingual kids) was definitely that that each parent should concentrate on speaking one language with their children. Cheers Hua Nguu Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
limbo Posted June 27, 2003 Report Share Posted June 27, 2003 Hi Hua Nguu, that's also the impression that I'm getting from people who have children and as parents have different mother languages. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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