Re: Raising Bilingual Kids (was: Bilingual Kids and Playgroups)

"hbar" <hrg1000@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1147942370.845948.267380@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hi,

I live in Israel but was born and grew up in England, my husband is
Israeli-born. My mother tongue is English and I learnt Hebrew when I
was 18 and am now completely fluent. My husband's mother-tongue is
Hebrew but he learnt English at school and is also completely fluent.
My two oldest kids were born here and then we moved to California when
my oldest was almost 3 and my middle was 16 months. My youngest was
born in California. We moved back to Israel when my oldest was 5, my
middle nearly 4 and my youngest was 3 months.

When we were in Israel before we moved to America I spoke exclusively
in English to the kids and my husband spoke exclusively in Hebrew. DS1
went to a Hebrew-speaking day-care from 9am-4pm. I was with him from
4pm and my husband got home about 7pm. It worked very well and DS1 was
totally bilingual. When we moved to America, very quickly the kids
started speaking English exclusively (I continued speaking with them
only in English and they went to English-speaking pre-school) and my
husband (who came home from work about an hour before they went to
sleep) made the mistake of answering them in English. Within a few
months they forgot Hebrew. When we moved back to Israel last summer
they found the lack of language at pre-school/kindergarten very
difficult and the aquisition of Hebrew was harder and less quick than I
thought it would be. Now they both speak Hebrew fluently but not at a
mother-tongue level, they have not forgotten English at all and still
speak at mother-tongue level. I speak only in English to them and my
husband speaks in Hebrew. They have books and videos in both languages.
We go to English-speaking story time once a week and they have friends
who are both English and Hebrew speakers. Hopefully if my son gets into
the school we want him to, he will have English lessons especially for
native engish speakers.

In summary in order to have bilingual kids I think it is important that
the main language at home is not the language of the majority culture.
I think the kids forgot Hebrew when we lived in America because just
half an hour of hearing it before they went to sleep was not enough. In
Israel they haven't forgotten English as I am with them for at least
half the day.

do you think the kids genuinely forgot (as in, literally could not
understand previously familiar words) or was it that their access to the
language became more difficult so they effectively forgot (but didn't
really)? i assume they must have caught up again fairly quickly, becaue they
are so young?

this subject interests me because while i'd love to have bilingual kids, in
reality it isn't happening because i'm only now learning another language,
but my kids are 10 & 7. i've noticed the kids will pick things up much more
easily than dh (who is entirely hopeless about it & really does forget
things 5 minutes later ;-) but again, the horrible reality is that i have to
translate myself immediately afterwards much of the time or the whole
experience is just a frustrating blank for them. i'm lost as to how to help
them learn _some_ of the language at least as a base for learning later if
they wanted to, or something. i'm not sure how it could be done beyond
sitting down with them & teaching them, as i am being taught, but they
themselves lack interest in doing that. (i'd be happy to do it if they were
interested). oh well :-) they're happy to be able to understand some words
and phrases (but wouldn't miss it if it wasn't there, i don't think). it's
fine by me, but in years to come they might be kicking themselves that they
had all the resources & an interested teacher (me), but failed to take up
the opportunity. :-)
kylie


.

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