Familingua

Add a Comment

Comment by Chelsea Morales on June 18, 2009 at 9:37am

My husband and I are speaking only Spanish to our one-year-old son, and have since he was born. I am excited that he knows more Spanish than English at this point, but still scared for him to lose it later. I had to work hard to become fluent in Spanish as a teenager, and I don't want him to have to go through that just to be able to communicate with his grandparents (my husband's parents).

Comment by Ana on May 7, 2009 at 11:00am

HI,
I have no idea why I hadn't seen this group before! This is great.
Thanks for starting it Lucile.
We're raising a bilingual almost 2-year old girl in LA. We use the ML@H method, not really because we choose it, but because my husband and I have always spoken Spanish to each other and is our native language. We are both fluent English speakers.
I had never given language acquisition for my daughter a second thought until she was born. Then, I realized it wasn't as easy at it seemed because English is the dominant language and there will come a point where it will be her language of choice. It's inevitable.
I decided we had to work hard at keeping Spanish and our Latin culture alive at home.
That's when I decided to start SpanglishBaby with my friend Roxana, who's going thru the same.
The community of parents raising bilingual kids that is being formed there, reading everyone's stories and struggles have inspired and taught us so much.
I'm heading over to Lucile's group in Big Tent right now. After all, we're on the same mission!
So happy to have found this group.

Comment by Lucile on March 23, 2009 at 12:43pm

MariaD and Daniela,
Good to see that an interesting discussion is starting. I have created a thread to pursue the discussion:
http://www.twittermoms.com/group/familingua/forum/topics/what-language-system-do-you
What language system do you use at home?
I agree with MariaD. In our family, we actually did this naturally.
Daniela, the sytem you have adopted at home is known as "One Person One Language" (OPOL).
Whereas MariaD, you seem to be using ML@H - Minority Language at Home.
These are the two most common language systems.
Daniela, MariaD, do you regularly meet other families speaking the additional language? It is very important to provide opportunities for the child to practice the language with other people outside of the immediate family, and in particular with other children. When I discovered BigTent, I thought it would be a great tool to help bilingual / multilingual families getting in touch with other local families speaking the same additional language. That's why I created Familingua on BigTent ( https://www.bigtent.com/groups/familingua )
This is a very interesting and important topic. I hope we can continue the discussion in the forum and that others will join.
Lucile

Comment by MariaD on March 23, 2009 at 10:28am

Daniela, what I found crucial in the first five years or so was to make sure EVERYTHING we do comes in both languages, but NEVER AT ONCE. So, we read books in both languages, but not the same book in translation. We watched movies and cartoons in both languages, but not the same one dubbed. When you speak, it's important not to mix the two languages within the same conversation - which is very hard for bilingual adults. Computer games, friends, songs, every major interest in life should be represented in both languages.

Comment by Daniela Gatlin on March 23, 2009 at 9:15am

Hi everyone,

I'm a native Spanish-speaker, however, I've been living in the USA for about 14 years. My husband is from Houston, TX and we have an 18 month old daughter. I really want for her to be bilingual, so I always speak to her in Spanish and my husband speaks to her in English. I think she is catching up both language. It is very important for me that she speaks and understand Spanish since all my extended family speaks it. I want her to be able to communicate with her grandparents.

Comment by MariaD on March 23, 2009 at 3:41am

Our family is English-Russian bilingual, living in the USA. Russian is the native language of my husband and I. Our ten year old daughter was born in the States. Russian was her primary language until the age of four or so; now English is her primary one, but she speaks Russian fluently and reads it.

Comment by Lucile on March 20, 2009 at 3:39pm

Hi,
Just realised I could have introduced myself too to start with ;o)
I am a French mum living in London. I have a son who is 3. It is very important for me that my son speaks French and also hopefully has a bit of a French culture. So far, the bilingual education is going well and my son's French is as good as his English.
Indre, welcome to Familingua on TM. Well done for being the first member to find the group! Nice to start getting to know you and well done for raising your kids with Lithuanian as an additional language. Do you know other Lithuanian-speaking families next to where you live? It's always good to meet with other families speaking the additional language in order to provide the children with additional opportunities to hear and speak the "minority" language.
Let us know when your kids start to learn French, I might be able to recommend a couple of educational materials.
Also I hope you can help me promote Familingua, both on TM and on BigTent. On TM, we need to get at least 10 members within the first week in order for the group to carry on. I thought this would be easy, but considering the announcement topic won't appear on TM front page, this might be a bit more difficult than expected. Fingers crossed.
Have a nice weekend.
Lucile

Comment by Indre Ashley on March 19, 2009 at 7:45pm

I have 2 boys and I am always talking to them in my nationality which is Lithuanian.... I also want them to learn French as it is Canada's second language! I think its a great way to expand their horizons!!

Looking forward to meeting other moms who are multilingual!
INdre

Comment by Lucile on March 19, 2009 at 2:24pm

Hi,

Familingua is a group for MULTILINGUAL families.

Familingua's attempted definition of a multilingual families is:
a family where CHILDREN are raised in a multilingual environment, with 2 languages or more transmitted from native speakers
(parents or other family members or carers or the "external community") as a result of natural communication with the children.

Typical members are moms or dads whose NATIVE language is not the main language spoken where they and their children live.
E.g.
- a native French-speaking mom living in the US
- a native English-speaking dad living in Spain.
Parents whose native language is the language spoken where they and their children live can also join (providing their kids are raised in a multilingual environment enabled by their partner or someone else).
E.g.
- a mom whose native language is English, living in an English-speaking country and whose children are raised in a bilingual environment as the dad is a native Italian-speaker;
- a mom or dad in a family where an au pair speaks her/his native language to the children when looking after them.
Other persons welcomed to join are "extended family members" (grand-parents, au pair, nanny, ...), providing they are the native speaker who transmits the additional language to the children.
E.g.
- a French native who lives with a family in Germany as an au pair and transmits her native language to the children.

Familingua's vision is to facilitate the development of local small communities based on a commun additional language (and in most case also sharing a common culture) and meeting up in real life to provide additional opportunities for the children to practice the additional language with other members of the community, including in particular other children.
To support this vision, Familingua hosted by BigTent (https://www.bigtent.com/groups/familingua ) offers the following key features:
- Members can VERY EASILY identify and contact other families speaking the same "minority" language in a specific area with a view to meet in real life
- Members can join a PRIVATE subgroup of LOCAL families speaking the same language in addition to the main language spoken where they live. This subgroup allows to share local information related to the additional "minority" language, discuss online with other local families speaking the additional language about future meetups or other topics of their choice, edit and share a commun calendar for local language-specific events. All of these subgroup's feature facilitate real-life meetups and the development of a local community around a common "minority" language
Familingua also offers the following:
- Forums which can be used by members to discuss multilingualism matters and related topics, share experience about raisong children in a multilingual environment, provide support to each other by encouraging other members, share advices and tips, ...
- Calendars to share events with other members
- ...

If you are a multilingual family, we would like to invite you to join us on BigTent. You need to join the Familingua group on BigTent in order to benefit from the full features such as group calendar, language and location specific subgroups and list of members allowing to easily and quickly identify and contect other members speaking the same language than your family in your area.

Looking forward to welcoming you in Familingua on BigTent soon.

Lucile, founder of Familingua