Sunday, November 9, 2008

A group blog it is! Bilingual couples

As I was cruising through my favourite blogs, I headed to Cancun Canuck, read her post on languages, followed the link to Fned's blog, and well, here I am!

In our home, I speak English and French, with English being my mother tongue, my son Mike speaks English and French, again with English being his mother tongue.  My husband Gerald speaks only English, as does our daughter, Meaghan.

I grew up in northern Ontario and attended a french immersion school.  This is a school for anglophone children where they are submerged in the French language.  Along about grades 2 or 3, you end up with a child who is bilingual.

I continued on in french until high school when I attended an English school.

Mike was also in french immersion until grade 5 when we moved and put him in an English school.  At this point however, he was already bilingual and we've both kept our french.

We speak to each other occasionally in french, but because Gerald and Meaghan are both English-only speakers, we continue to speak English primarily.

Now you may wonder why we didn't choose to put Meaghan in french immersion as well.  I regret the fact that we didn't.  I really wish we had.  But it boils down to the same reason we took Mike out of french.  When we moved to this house, there were no french immersion schools within walking distance.  Simple - geography.

Meaghan will be in grade 4 next year and will begin french lessons in school.  At that point, Mike and I will both be speaking a lot more french in the house, because I want her to gain as much french, and have as much exposure to french as possible.  I guess that's my guilt speaking and me trying to make up for the mistake of not putting her in immersion from day 1.

As for Gerald.

I really think there are some people in this world who cannot learn a second language.  Seriously.  I speak 2 and am learning a third, Mike speaks 2, Meaghan is learning Spanish and French with me (even though she sometimes gets the two confused - she'll say oui or si).  Gerald...  poor Gerald can't seem to retain anything he learns in languages.  Or so he says.  The past 2 times we were in Mexico, he picked up as much Spanish as I did, but refuses to admit it.

So, maybe he's lazy.  Maybe he lacks confidence.  Could be anything.  

We are a bilingual house - or at least half the house is - but we continue to speak English predominantly.  Why?  I really think it's laziness.  It's just easier to speak the language we all understand and speak easily, instead of challenging ourselves to learn.  Maybe I should quit speaking English all together and force Gerald and Meaghan to learn a little more!

9 comments:

Fned said...

Hi Beth!!

That's so cool about immersion schools!! I wish they had the same sort of thing for adults wanting to learn a foreign language... something like "immersion offices" *lol*

As for Gerald not learning Spanish, maybe it's not a question of laziness but more a question of being afraid of making mistakes in public? I know a lot of people have trouble learning a new language because they are afraid people will laugh at their accents or grammar mistakes. And so they understand quite well the language but lack the confidence to speak it in public.

Although I do agree that sometimes it's just easier to speak in the language everyone understands than spend hours trying to build coherent sentences in a foreign language, dictionary in hand. A lot of bloggers mention this in their posts.

Thanks for participating in the Group Blog. It's been really interesting reading about other couples/families' experiences with bilingualism/multilingualism!!

Fned.

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