14 January 2014

Say it in German, mommy!

This is a video of my oldest son, Ben. This is back in 1995 and Ben was only 2. Because he was our oldest, he really was the linguistic guinea pig. Ben spoke only German and we started to be a little concerned that maybe his English would suffer. We were living in Texas at the time and I started calling around to the 'experts'. I talked to one linguist, in particular, who told me that my children's English would suffer and that they would learn neither English nor German nataively. She made me nervous enough, that we tried speaking more English to Ben for a while.

Here in this video, you can see me narrating in English. When I ask Ben a question in English, he gets annoyed and says something like "nur deutsch sagen". ("say german"). He really preferred to speak in German and didn't like it when we switched to English. German was his language and he felt much more comfortable with it. We didn't keep up the English very long, as I realized that I shouldn't change our whole approach just because one "expert" had an opposing opinion.




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Bilingual Baby Dream Team

Going on 20+ years of raising our bilingual babies...
I'm so grateful for a sweet husband who was willing to give this whole experiment a try and and that he was willing to speak German to our kids, even though his German exposure had been limited to a few semesters of college German. It's been one of the most fun and rewarding things we've done. The fact that our family speaks German has given us our own identity and helps the kids feel like they are a part of something special. And anything that helps your family feel special and connected is a good thing.