Comments on Hobo Mama: Book review: 7 steps to raising a bilingual child

your post is interesting, and I am glad to have re...

2010-01-19T17:04:04.674-08:00

your post is interesting, and I am glad to have read it. For many years I have thought seriously about raising my children (you know, the ones I am unlikely to ever have) in a bilingual fashion.

My perspective is a bit different than that of the book (which I have admittedly not read) - but one of my main thoughts has been to move elsewhere in the world for some of the formative years to that my children learn more than the language.

It seem that your review and perhaps the book deal with the issues of spoken language, but what about body language? What about issues of social understanding and cultural idiosyncrasies which are inextricably tied up with a language? How might a parent teach a child about the issues that begin where words end and living-language begins.

"Words are not the end of thought, they are where it begins"
Jane Hirshfield

Thank you for writing this review. I would really...

2010-01-18T21:43:15.310-08:00

Thank you for writing this review. I would really love for my son to learn a second language from a very young age. I speak Spanish as a second language (even majored in it in college) but my fluency is not where I would like it to be. Still, I think it would be beneficial to start exposing my son to Spanish soon. I've spoken it to him a little but not in any consistent way. Perhaps this book will give me some guidance on the subject.

Thank you for writing this review. I would really...

2010-01-18T21:43:13.242-08:00

I admire your resolve to do this with a non-native...

2010-01-18T01:44:32.834-08:00

I admire your resolve to do this with a non-native language!

My mom spoke German and Spanish fluently but only spoke them to me if I asked her to. I guess she didn't want me to have linguistic overload since I started learning French in 1st grade.

But what made the best impression on me for language learning was traveling. We'd go somewhere, even if it was the Spanish part of NYC in the '70s and she'd just rattle away, communicating with everybody. I thought that was the coolest thing: she knew a secret language.

Before we'd go somewhere exotic (like Egypt) she and I would study Arabic together. She'd take a course and teach me what she learned and we'd do homework, listen to tapes and practice on each other. Then we'd use it as much as possible 'in situ,' try to read signs and write down phrases we heard all the time to decipher them later. Same thing with Russian in the Soviet Union.

So I think my advice would be to attend these native speaker groups you know about and get comfortable chatting away with native speakers. Your son might feel your embarassment and discomfort and that might send the wrong message. I always learned what was important wasn't perfection but communication in whatever way imagineable. To have fun with people and their language, to be humble and ask for help and tips, and to not be afraid or intimidated because you're not doing it to be the best but to crack a code so you can discover an entirely new mindset and world.

That was my motivator to really learn other languages (I also wanted to be a spy when I was 10 so code-logic was very intriguing, too.)

I only speak English with the kids and they speak back to me in English with some Italian mixed in. My hubs only speaks Italian and he asked our son to teach him English! It's adorable. So we do mini-lessons each day and it's a great way to sneak in some grammar rules I would otherwise never bore my kid with. All our tapes, DVDs and books are in English. They hear Italian all day at school and around them.

My goal with them was just have them understand English so my relatives could chat with them on the phone and so they would be acclimated when we go home in the summer. So I'm really happy they are actually fluent, too. But I want to check out the books you recommend because I would like for them to be able to write in English and that is a huge challenge for anyone.

Keep at it!! the LOVE of language is the greatest gift to give and the fundamentals of how another language works and what it sounds like is even greater.