FAQ 4 CAN I SPEAK A FOREIGN LANGUAGE WITH MY KIDS EVEN IF I AM NOT A NATIVE SPEAKER?

Of course you can. The trick is to make it a positive experience for your child. To do that you must concentrate on sharing your Love and Enthusiasm for the language. The opposite would be “tricking” your child into thinking you are a native speaker (I have seen this happen. Not pretty) and creating a pseudo target language environment because you think it’s going to give the kid a better chance at a job later. That would be manipulative and you will be found out.

The people who seem to have the most success sharing their foreign language with their children are the ones who learn together and/or dedicate specific times to working on or speaking the language together. This may mean watching films together in the language, listening to children’s radio programs in the target language (Kids Public Radio in English, for example) and having certain times of the day where they speak the language together-- the walk home from school, for example, or while you are getting the table set for dinner, you decide.

The only time I saw things go terribly wrong was when the non-native parent was sneaky about it.  She was a foreign language teacher, so the language was important to her and she wanted to save her daughter the pain of having to learn it like she did. Her heart was in the right place. So she created the immersion atmosphere at home.  Fine. She had all of the Disney films in the target language (they were videocassettes back then). Fine. She spoke to her child only in that language. Fine, but at some point she should have EXPLAINED to her what she was doing. She did not. The daughter eventually figured out her mother was not a native and it was all a hoax. Man, was she pissed! 

Be prepared for rebellion. 

Be open about it too. Explain why you going against the grain. If you put your kid in a school taught in a different language like I did (I speak English to my daughter, husband speaks Italian, she goes to school in Slovene), the questions will come immediately. Mine looked like this:

Why did you put me in this different school when everyone else is speaking my language?

Why are You talking to me in this funny language when I Know that with daddy you speak a different way?

You have to answer. 

Explain the advantage you are giving them. If you are passionate about languages and you want your child to be passionate about them, give every bit of reason to love the language(s) as much as you do by traveling, and enjoying the culture, getting to know other people in that language. Show that languages are about people and making friends. 

I did my best to answer my daughter. I said, “It’s good for your brain development, honey!” and “Your grandparents used to speak Slovene, dear, and Mommy is just stealing back the language that was stolen from you!”

Blank stare. Not convinced. I told her that she should stick it out and see how it goes. She did.

Then Carnevale came along and, as we always do, we went up to the Slovene part of town to celebrate. My husband and I and my daughter dressed up like the three little pigs. We walked from house to house getting treats, singing and dancing in the streets (we also drank wine). At lunch time there were two accordions and a guitar. They played all of the Triestino classics, in Slovene. Eva knew all of the songs. They were the ones that she had learned in Pre-School. Joy.

She sang her heart out that day. In Slovene.

Later that week she did one of those things you thought only adults do: she took me aside, like she was going to tell me a little secret.

“Mommy. NOW I understand why you put me in that school. It was for Carneval! So I could sing all the songs. Now I know why.”

"Yes, that is exactly right," I agreed with her.

FAQ 3 I AM TRYING TO SPEAK ITALIAN BUT MY HIGH SCHOOL FRENCH KEEPS COMING OUT. WHY?

Another variation: I am trying to speak English but German keeps coming out. In other words:

I am trying to learn a foreign language but words from the other languages I have studied come to mind instead of the ones I want. Why is that?

Sometimes when we try to learn another language we have the perception that other languages we have studied “get in the way”. When my brother came to visit me for the first time in Italy, he complained that French words he learned in High School were coming out, and there is a good reason for that.

 It is like your brain is saying: “Hmm we have to get used to a new situation here, and my native language just isn’t going to cut it” and  it goes looking for anything that is NOT your native language. It might be the French you learned in High School, for example. If this happens to you, it is a good sign.

 

It means that your brain knows to suppress your native language and, by the way, it is THIS skill that differentiates bilingual speakers from monolinguals and is responsible for all the benefits of foreign language that we read about: faster thinking, pushing off Alzheimers, etc.

 

In my brother’s case, he was lucky because that French probably helped him somewhat with his Italian because they are both Romance languages. As a general rule, if you THINK you understand a word because it reminds you of a word you learned when you were studying a different language, 99% of the time you are  going to be right.

 

So don’t worry about your other language. It may seem like an obstacle, but it is not. It can and will help you, and if you are able to suppress your native language already, you are in great shape to becoming a fluent speaker in your language of choice. Embrace it!