About Languages.

[dreamlaughlive]

I've been thinking about this for a long long while and haven't quite landed with an answer: do I bring my son up English-speaking or Chinese-speaking?

Being in Singapore, we are all more or less bilingual - we are required to learn English as first language and a mother-tongue as second language. The problem with these system is, well, most of us

Comments

[jzlyn]

I have similar thoughts though I'm more worried about her Chinese given that I don't speak mandarin. I too am from a Chinese speaking family, my exposure to Eng was only from kindergarten, couldn't even string together eng sentences till 13 (pri sch was super Ching chong) when I had non-Chinese speaking classmates! These days I get anything from "are you American / English / Aussie / canadian".

Hubby studied Latin but didn't speak French till 17 when he spent a year in Geneva. Circumstances forced him to pick up and pick up quick. My Aussie girlfriend went to Beijing with rudimentary spoken mandarin and now she's fluent, reads and writes. Same GF also did an exchange year in Italy to learn the language.

I try to tell myself given my friends', me and my husband's experiences C will catch up with mandarin and French eventually so long as we keep her interested In learning.

[dreamlaughlive]

Yea, the primary language we use at home is all but one factor in how well we all learn a language. Keeping the interest and motivation to learn is probably more important. For now, my hubs and I make sire that when we speak to T, we use proper sentences in whatever language, be it Chinese or English, instead of mixing the two languages (you know how the typical Singaporean talks :p).

[yflyn]

I come from an English-speaking background (my parents' Mandarin is even worse than mine), J grew up speaking Mandarin. Overall, he had the more traumatic P1 experience compared to me, because he spoke virtually no English till P1. He eventually caught up but struggled with the language up till P6.

For this reason our primary language with The Bun is English, but his paternal grandparents speak to him in Mandarin and I expose him to books, vocabulary (ironically, my Mandarin improved after I left school) on a day-to-day basis. I agree a lot with your point about how being bad at Mandarin is so taken for granted that the kids don't feel so bad about themselves when their peers are often also doing badly. Also, doing poorly in one subject is not as 'damaging' to one's self-esteem as doing poorly across the board because one's command of English is poor.

When The Bun enters school in Geneva, he will be schooled in English and French. No idea how we're going to cope returning to the SG school system later on...

[dreamlaughlive]

Wow that's quite an adjustment for Bun! The good thing is little kids are like little sponges, they learn very fast...