Today I wanted to share my experience about raising bilingual child and how important it is for mixed marriages, where spouses are from 2 different countries.
When I was pregnant with my baby girl (hmmm…not a baby any more…she is 1.5 years old now) I started thinking a lot about teaching her Polish and how hard is going to be while living in US, in English environment.
I started reading a lot of books and researching online. It is very important to me that my daughter knows my native language. My husband and I (and now Natalia) visit Poland every year. I want her to be able to talk to all my family.
I started talking to her in Polish while she was still in my belly…reading books and listening to Polish lullabies. Once she was born I was talking to her pretty much only in Polish. My husband did not mind it at all. He was very happy that Natalia has such a great opportunity to be bilingual pretty much from the day she was born…
I still speak to her in Polish. Sometimes, if we are around my husband’s family, or anybody who does not know Polish, I would talk to my daughter in English. She is only 1.5 years old, but talks a lot already. We could have conversation together and she would respond to me in Polish, but respond to my husband in English. It is amazing how smart and intelligent kids are…First 2 years are actually the most important ones for the language development…So we should really start talking to our kids in our native language from the very beginning. My daughter has no problem with understanding either Polish or English. It is such a great gift and I also noticed that she is very brave and confident, which later I read that bilingual children pretty often are very confident later in life.
Natalia talks to her grandparents in Poland all the time through Skype. They are so happy that she responds in Polish. Teaching your child a different language than the one she/he hears around his hers/his environment requires a lot of work and patience, but is well worth it.
I think that maybe at one point my daughter will prefer one language over the other, but I decided that I will continue talk to her in Polish and I’m sure that one day she will be really grateful.
I can recommend great book to all of you who have the same situation. It is in Polish unfortunately and I was not able to find copy of it translated into English. The title is “Przeżyć dwujęzyczność. Jak wychować dziecko dwujęzyczne“(“Surviving bilingualism. How to raise bilingual child.”) and it is written by Bogumiła Baumgartner. She talks about different situations (places, parents, emigration, immigration…) and I have to say that this book really motivated me and helped me to stay focused in teaching my daughter Polish.
If you know about an English book like that and you have read it, please let us all know.
Do następnego razu… (Till next time…)
Comments:
Charles:
I always wished that I had had this opportunity to be raised completely bilingual. My grandmother though never shared the Polish language with her children, she and my grandfather used the language to speak in secret, so it was really lost in our family. When I was little, I asked to learn some from her and she taught me some things which has helped me as I learn as an adult, but still, it would have been nicer if the chain wasn’t broken as it was.
Kuba:
I was raised by my parents who spoke no English. This was in Denver Colorado. I spoke Polish until the 1st grade at 4.5 years of age. Then English. The nuns at the school were Polish as was the priest. I did not learn proper Polish all the grammar but have no trouble understanding and speaking it in Poland.
Margaret:
My mother was Estonian and my father was Polish. They spoke Russian together,which I could understand, but never made me speak it. I would answer them back in English. I grew up with Polish, Russian, Estonian and English languages, and have always wished that I could at least speak Polish or Estonian.
jonpgh:
OMG my daughter’s name is Natalia, she is bilingual, but now 31 years old and we are like your family. She has been back to Poland almost every year since birth. She speaks Polish without an accent. She knows more Polish than her father (ahem!) who studied it in a university. She speaks it like a native. From the time she was born she thought there were two words and expressions for everything because my wife spoke Polish only to her while I spoke English. We think that this ability to switch languages when she was young helped her become fluent in Spanish and French as well. Keep it up, she will be happy that you did.
jonpgh:
We also have a Polish niece living in Holland and her Polish son and Dutch son speak both Polish and Dutch with a smattering of English too, as most Dutch natives know well. I read somewhere that just before puberty, children’s brains are like sponges, after puberty no so much.
Beatriz:
My husband is Polish, and I am Spanish. I speak Polish more or less because I took classes, and from visits to his family. We live in US. We are having the same search about trilingual education (dad speaks Polish, mum speaks Spanish, they learn English with teachers, friends and environment)… doctors say is possible!! Wish us luck!!
Theresa:
I was raised that way. Sorry I did not teach my children. Amazon has several books in English about raising bilingual children.
Spedycja:
Thanks for this blog 🙂
Nerijus:
Very good, what you also need to do is to find a peer group for your child where the use of Polish is pretty much the normal thing, otherwise it will come to the point then child will prefer English to Polish [no matter how good it is] just to enphasise his/her personality other yours.
Melissa:
My husband speaks – when he is at home – to her in Polish. I insisted since I am already talking to her in two languages. Why two? Well, I am not fluent in my mother’s language but enough to get by and I mixed them up with English. Does she understand us? Oh yes, even if she doesn’t really talk too well at the moment.