As I’ve mentioned before, my husband is French. I spent seven years at school and then another four at university struggling to become fluent in French, so there was never any question of not raising our children to be bilingual.
My husband speaks French to the children, I talk to them in English and we speak to each other in a combination of the two. As I’m a stay-at-home mum and my husband gets home just before bedtime during the week, they hear me speak a lot more and so my daughter speaks English much more than French, but she understands them equally well. (Although she seems to have difficulty grasping what “Why?” or “pourquoi?” mean. Hasn’t stopped her entering into the why phase with gusto, though…).
Here are five things I’ve learnt about having a bilingual child:
Language development is fascinating – at least, if you’re a language geek like me it is. But then, I also find dictionaries fascinating. Don’t tell me you’ve never accidentally wasted an hour or so looking up definitions and etymologies. No? Just me?
When my two-year old was starting to talk, she just said whatever was easiest with no distinction between English and French – là-bas, merci, l’eau, no, yes, please (although that last one was rare, and still is if I’m being honest). This makes the ‘guess what my toddler is trying to say’ game even more impossible interesting.
Now she says French words almost exclusively to Papa and English to everyone else. Her French isn’t good enough to be able to say full sentences in French to him, but whenever she knows the French word she uses it. The other night she asked for some strawberries and some fraises, just to make sure we all understood. This leads on to my next point:
Children can be really patronising.
I know my daughter isn’t the only bilingual child to do this because we have several friends in the same situation, but fairly often the two-year old will translate words for me or her father, usually when she’s being ignored or not getting her own way.
I can’t wait for her French to be advanced enough for her to be able to correct my grammar mistakes in a few years’ time. And I’m sure my husband will be thrilled when she starts teaching him English… Although he probably deserves it because he laughs at her appalling French accent.
Accents are tricky things.
I don’t speak French to the children because I don’t want them to pick up my grammar mistakes and I also don’t want them to have my dodgy accent.
This doesn’t really seemed to have worked though, because my daughter has a very pronounced English (and occasionally Yorkshire) accent and intonation when saying French words. Highly amusing or extremely confusing and frustrating, depending on circumstances. Her French aunts think her accent is sweet, this is less true two hours past bedtime when you’re met with incomprehensible demands for a certain type of pillow.
Speaking of family members, those who are not fluent in both languages should just stick to their mother tongue.
My mother-in-law does not speak English, yet she persists in speaking “English” to my daughter. I think she thinks it’s helpful. It is not. As my daughter is only two, she absorbs everything that her Bonne Maman says. For months she thought a fire was called an “’ott!”.
On the plus side, this sponginess makes it so much easier to learn languages as a small child.
My daughter already understands French better than I did when I moved to France at the age of 20 and she hasn’t had to do any grammar exercises or vocab tests. She also speaks English better than my husband did when he came to the UK. Heck, she even has some passing knowledge of Korean thanks to spending time with her half-Korean BFF. This is very unfair (see opening paragraph re spending 11 years studying French) but also pretty cool.
Children are just amazing, aren’t they? (Most of the time.)
The Mulberry Bush 