Overall, I’m not too worried about my son’s prospects of becoming bilingual.  Partly, it’s because I started exposing him to Hebrew from birth and I’ve been very consistent with him ever since.  But it’s also because of personal experience.  In my case, my parents weren’t even trying to teach me another language, but I kind of picked it up without anybody really trying.  Let me explain…

I grew up in Israel were the community language is Hebrew.  In many ways, Israel is even more of a melting pot than the U.S.  Over the past 100 years, Jews have been returning to Israel from Europe, Africa, Middle East, etc.  While the parents are slower to adjust to a new country, the formal and informal education systems strive to assimilate the kids into Israeli mainstream culture.  So any immigrant child that goes through kindergarten, school, boy/girl scouts and mandatory army service - ends up 100% Israeli by the time the “system” is through with him/her.

 

In my home, my parents communicate with each... Read More »

While the Rosetta Stone is now a brand of language-teaching software sold in airports, it’s of course a 2,200 year old stone tablet found in Egypt. Prior to its discovery, scientists and Egyptologists had no idea how to read hieroglyphics.  But the tablet contains the same text in three different languages: two Egyptian language scripts (Domatic and Hieroglyphics) and Classic Greek.  The breakthrough in this discovery was that while the Egyptian script hasn’t been used in millennia, Classic Greek had endured and provided the key for understanding Egyptian script.  Once the Rosetta Stone was deciphered (it wasn’t easy!), it provided an amazing insight to all the archeological finds, that were not yet understood at the time.



Why did someone bother to translate some text to three different languages?  Presumably, to make its content known to as many people as possible!  The Rosetta stone is essentially a fairly... Read More »

 The book “Raising Bilingual Children” by Carey Myles, won me over.  I had read it after reading “The Bilingual Edge” and knew immediately that the books would be quite different.   The Bilingual Edge is written by two pros in the linguist fields and is full of insightful statistics and a battery of research results that confirms or blows away commonly held beliefs.  Carey Myles, on he other hand is an educator and a parent in bilingual family.  

 

Her book has large pages, large fonts and in general very readable.  She emphasizes practicality and takes care to spend time going over some common mistakes and simple approaches to issues relating to raising bilingual costs.  She recalls for example her Husband calling their child “My little American” after hearing her speak Farsi with an American accent – causing the 4-year old refuse speaking it for weeks.

 

Myles takes special care in explaining cause-and-effects when introducing a bilingual regimen onto children.  There are a host of emotional issues involved that affect both children and parents; and if not managed properly, will lead to disappointment at best. The reader’s takeaway from the book is to “Dream for your children, but set goals for yourself.”  Getting it the other way around will likely yield poor results.

... Read More »

English doesn’t make the top three spoken languages in the World?  French – an official language of the U.N. and the Olympics – doesn’t make top 10??  This chart puts a few things in perspective..

Could it really be that one out of every six Americans returns home at the end of the day and hears another language besides English?  More than likely, this figure is quite higher.  For the most part, the census historically has not done a great job accurately counting minorities and immigrants especially in dense, urban areas. 

Something to think about...

 

I’m currently reading Carey Miles’ book “Raising Bilingual Children.”  So far it seems a fairly readable; large fonts, big pages.  It doesn’t seem to have the depth of research and statistics that “The Bilingual Edge” has, but that makes it a little bit more readable.

One of the book’s section focuses on passive/receptive bilingualism, which in essence means the child can understand a secondary language, but will respond and communicate with the primary one.  The author offers some stark words in the eventual outcome of such a situation: “[passive bilinguals]may not become fluent speakers and are very unlikely to achieve native-like proficiency.”

As I mentioned before, “The Bilingual Edge” offers hard, research-based backup for this prognosis.  After surveying dozens of families, the authors conclude that children that are exclusively exposed to a language less than 20% of waking hours (i.e. 2.5 hours), will end up passive bilinguals.

Unfortunately, since 2.5 hours per... Read More »

In my house, we use the One Parent / One Language system.  We try to be as consistent as possible, so when I converse with my 2 1/2 year old, I keep it exclusively in Hebrew. Since I'm fluent, but my wife isn't, this system seems best suited for us.  As you evaluate your own situation, you may find that a different framework is in order.

Another fairly straightforward system is the Home Language / Community Language, typically suited for expatriates and immigrants.  The parents are both fluent in one language, which is different from the language spoken at school. For the truly ambitious, you could combine the two systems and speak two languages at home (each parent takes one) and a third language is practiced in school or in the community.

These two systems aside, there are some other creative options.  For example, a 3rd party, such as nanny, tutor or other relatives, takes up the teaching duties.  Or you may choose to enforce an alternating schedule for languages, E.g. Spanish on Monday, Wednesdays,... Read More »

Linguistic professionals have a term for the communication pattern we set at our house: One Parent One Language (OPOL).  My wife speaks English to our child, while I speak to him exclusively in Hebrew.  It’s been that way since his birth so this dynamic doesn’t seem quite so weird to our son.

As we got started, I worried about eventual 3-way interactions with my wife and son, when the primary language would end up being English.  My wife isn’t conversant in Hebrew, so I always interact with her in Hebrew.  However, along the way something quite interesting happened; as I was speaking to my son, my wife also picked up Hebrew.  So now, my wife’s vocabulary of Hebrew is as extensive as my son’s and she doesn’t feel at all excluded when I converse with my son.

At the dinner table, for example, I’ll switch back and forth between Hebrew and English depending on who I’m talking to.  And since this has been going on for a while, everybody follows the conversation without feeling left out. Of course, I needed... Read More »

My Sincerest hope is that this web site doesn’t become just a platform to project my thoughts out there.  I’d like to collaborate with like-minded individuals and hear about your challenges and triumphs in this area.  So I’ve designed this web site to be interactive.

The BLINGuals Blog: I would love to see your comments on my blog entries.  You can your existing facebook account to leave comments on blog entries.  I just ask you to keep it civil and on-topic.  Ultimately, if you’re passionate about this topic and if you’re interested, you can be a contributing blogger about your own interests and topics.

Facebook Integration: I know that creating user accounts on multiple sites and keeping track of passwords can get really cumbersome.  That's why I'm piggybacking off some existing facebook functionality for Commenting, Discussion Forums, etc.  Assuming you have a facebook account - you're all set!

Miscellaneous Links: On the right side of the page, I posted a few resource links: Recommended... Read More »

I’m a native Hebrew speaker, living in the US for quite a while now.  My wife is American and a native English speaker.  Our son is 2 ½ now and is going full time to day care, where the primary language is English. Since he was born, I had wanted our child to be proficient to some degree in Hebrew.  But I knew that the deck was stacked against this happening.  The challenge lay in the fact that my son would simply not be exposed to enough Hebrew to become proficient at it. 

Even with the best of intentions, there are some practical reasons that limits my son’s exposure to Hebrew:

Where we live, there’s no full-day daycare service in Hebrew. We’re not keen on having him stay at home with a Hebrew-speaking nanny.  It’s not just the cost and inconvenience for us, it’s about ensuring he gets a good dose of social activity during the day. Even though I speak Hebrew to my son, I communicate with my wife in English. Our nearby family and friends are mostly English speakers. But despite all these challenges, I’ve been speaking to my son in Hebrew ever since he was born.  He now has a rich vocabulary and understands virtually everything I say to him.  It’s completely natural to him that every object, action or term has two names – one in English and another one in Hebrew.  However, for the most part he usually responds to me in English.

... Read More »