The Parenting Thread
This thread is for the discussion of parenting; to pool together the collective knowledge and experience of members who are already parents and perhaps assist those of us who are aspiring to become parents in the future.
The following is an article from "Sydney's Free Child", a free magazine for parents published by Web Child.
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In Other Words
Many parents in Australia are raising their children to speak two or more languages, writes Klay Lamprell.
Dinner conversation att he Soave household could be a little confusing if you only speak English. Italian-born Alex Soave and her German-born husband Alexander are raising their children, Leon, Oliver and Penelope, to be trilingual. "I only ever speak Italian to them and Alexander only ever speaks German. The children speak all three languages to each other, depending on the situation."
Alex says that she and Alexander used the languages of their different heritages from birth with their children, now aged six, four and two. "We want our children to speak easily with their family overseas, some of whom don't speak English, and we want them to be culturally aware."
According to British linguist David Graddol, parents who raise their children to be multilingual are not only teaching cultural sensitivity, they are also providing an employment advantage. In his comprehensive report on the future of the English language, English Next, Graddol says that the majority of the world's population is already multilingual. Speaking English and at least one other language is fast becoming the norm. He comments that young people in countries like Australia, whose educational system does not strongly promote multilingual fluency, "face a bleak economic future."
Multilingualism advocate Professor Michael Clyne, author of Australia's Language Potential, says that in addition to employment opportunities, numerous studies point to the cognitive benefits of raising children to be multilingual. "Children who develop more than one language early develop an extended range of ways of understanding language," comments Clyne. "They are more versed in the principles of language and ultimately may do better in English than monolingual children."
Clyne, who was born and raised bilingually in Australia and raised his child to be bilingual, says that monolingual children and bilingual children develop different ways of understanding representational symbols. "If you ask bilingual four to six year olds whether you could call a dog a cow, tehy are likely to think, 'There could be another language in which a dog is called a cow.' Monolingual children will tend to think it is just a silly idea. Bilingual children, when they can't express something in one language, switch to the other language, so they become more divergent thinkers.
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Alex and Alexander are essentially practising a method of raising children multilingually known as "une-personne; une langue" ("one person, one language") system as per the studies of Maurice Grammont and Jules Ronjat (Reference). I've personally seen it work with some parents and their kids. My wife and I have discussed how we could apply this theory to raise our own future child(ren?) trilingually.
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Originally Posted by roller
