We got a letter from the town the other day saying hello to N, offering us 20 free garbage bags (as in the official garbage collection ones that you normally have to pay for) and asking what religion she has and what her mother tongue is. Religion was easy enough, but the language question inspired Reto to pop down to the town hall (which is just around the corner, so it was no big deal) and ask. Apparently she isn't allowed to have two native languages, so R chose english. Which is fine with me.
We've decided to go for the one-parent-one-language approach with little N, which is to say, I speak english with her and Reto speaks swiss german. As well as that, R and I are making a sort of half-hearted effort to only speak french between ourselves, partly so that N is exposed to that language as well, partly so that english doesn't become the dominant household language, and partly so it's easier for R to remember to speak german with her. I say half-hearted because we never really remember to speak french, or if it gets too confusing we always swap back to english. I went to a talk a while ago on raising multilingual children, and it seems that consistency is the key, as well as a clear division between each language, so it seems we really should be making a much bigger effort.
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3 comments:
We do one-parent-one-language too. Or we did, until Small Boy hit kindergarten and started speaking Swiss about 90% of the time and forgetting his English. Swiss German is very much his dominant language, so we've recently been experimenting with both parents speaking English in the house.
Free garbage bags! Way cool, we didn't get those! (We also didn't get asked about native tongue)
I think the native tongue question was something to do with potential schooling options in the future, which was why Reto chose english - choosing german might have limited our choices somewhere down the track (although assuming we'll still be living in Fribourg in 5 years is assuming quite a lot..).
We do one-parent-one-language too. And childcare gets the third one...
Léo seems to cope perfectly well and eventhough we are talking French to each other, his German seems to be keeping up. English is his best language though...
Have a bit of faith in your little angel. She will do great!!
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