The child is a mix of Chinese, Irish and French.
He has been sent back to China for a few months to learn to speak as he could not speak any languages until three. The speech therapist said he was too confused at home.
He can speak Chinese pretty well now. However he always responds back in Chinese when we speak English or French to him.
Any cheap English/ French class for kids? Or a programme? Or apps?
Thanks very much.
yes totally. No boundaries if they're not recognised….just let him learn. music is a great path to sound sensitivity.
my 4 year old daughter can converse in mandarin, Cantonese and English…with no hesitation… she replies in the language she spoken to.
she watches a lot of Cantonese programs as well as mandarin. like pegga pig in all 3 languages. if you guys have never seen it, watch pegga pig in Scottish it is absolutely hilarious.
I think pegga pig is the adults only version. Peppa pig is better for the littlies.
hahaha oops
Haha, will have to look for that.
Yes, my daughter has stumbled on Peppa in Spanish and some random Russian bear cartoon???
that Russian bear cartoon masha and the bear is the 6th most watch youtube clip
from wiki
As of July 2017, one copy of the video "Recipe For Disaster" has received over 2.3 billion views on YouTube, making it the site's sixth most viewed video of all time. Moreover, the official YouTube channel of the project – MashaMedvedTV – is consistently ranked among the top five most popular YouTube channels in the world.[10]
she will get to ones called Ryan's toy review and Ania and elsia… if not already
Oh god not Ryan!
my 4 year old daughter can converse in mandarin, Cantonese and English…with no hesitation… she replies in the language she spoken to… and she can play the piano. chinese pride win!
The child is a mix of Chinese, Irish and French. ..
3some ??
lol xx
poor excuse from your speech therapist, but totally understandable. its great that your child is growing up in a cultural environment with lots of language. soon your child will have to master english, which is difficult enough. focusing on grammar and vocabulary should always be seen as a strength in any language. There is a lot to gain from learning multiple languages from a young age. Pronunciation is a massive struggle for all three languages.
I'd encourage you to read to your child every night habitually. take turns reading books in french and chinese, and always link it back to english. the focus should be on language being a communication tool, and communication is very important. If you manage to find the same book (i.e. the very hungry caterpillar) in all three languages, you can use that as a base to link the vocabularies (apple, pomme, pinnggou).
If you need language skills for your child in french and chinese to impress your family, dont aim too high so early. your child will have excellent skills in communication far into the future. It is important that your child can recognise the difference between the two languages, so they develop interest and curiosity. Start with teaching self-introductions, colours, food (fruit and vegetables) and slowly progress through vocabulary based on topics, slowly hinting at the grammar needed to link the two. If your child ends up changing education in either country, immersion will get them language skills.
Resource: im currently teaching english internationally, and self-studying a second language for over 2 years now
Let the kid grow up ;-)
French can be learnt from ten or twelve yo, if the kid wants, ne pas?
Over ambitious mother perhaps? Just asking straight.
This is really cool.
Kids gonna be set for life.
Chinese, Irish and French
Be sure to teach him Gaeilge
Don't worry about him only responding in Chinese if he understanding what is being said to him in English or French. If he understands then it is more about getting him used to understanding about different languages and that people don't all speak Chinese, English and French.
He'll get it. Just keep talking to him (and with him) in any language and provide a context. E.g. take him to the park and point at a tree and say "look at the tree" or point at a bird and ask "what animal is that?". If he responds in Chinese correctly then do a light laugh and say " you responded Chinese that is actually a different language to how I asked."
Also get him into a playgroup. Let him socialise. He'll pick up how to use his English pretty quickly.
Source: kids English teacher in Japan for 4 years, psychologist and parent with 3 kids
Hope he doesn't learn fake french
Is that the same as alternative French?
It's chinese counterfeit french
lol
Like fake news
What a wonderful culturally rich environment you are able to provide your child.
Exposing children to different languages at an early age not only teaches them different ways of communicating, but extends their learning strategies. Research proves this and is one of the reasons that schools in Victoria offered second language choices at Primary school level.
Brains are like sponges and can easily absorb and learn new languages up till the age of 12 and then it gets harder.
Understanding a different language always is a step before being able to produce a meaningful sentence. Any language starts off with single words which eventually are put together into meaningful sequence.
If I visit France I can get general idea of meaning as it is over 50 years since I studied it with difficulty. Making up a sentence to use is soooo difficult and finding the right word can be hell.
Read books, sing songs, watch videos, use apps in all three languages. You could even find a school that teaches French in a bilingual setting. There are 2 such government schools in Melbourne, Camberwell Primary is one.
It is good to get the basic rhythm and understanding of the languages while they are young. Usually bi lingual children will revert to the most used language of their peers and environment as they want to be the "same"as everyone else in their world. The other languages are still embedded in their brains and can be revived as the need arises. My dad thought I should have learnt Mandarin over 60 years ago but sadly there were no schools teaching it then
I feel deprived that I can only speak English but lucky for me it has become almost universal in large cities and google translate can be a traveller's friend. Your child is lucky to have such committed and patient parents.
you can not speak another language, because you didn't learn, not because you come from a singular cultural background.
There is nothing wrong with English, it is still the dominating in almost everywhere.
If you want another language only for some convenience, then stay in that place for a few months.
dont torture your child please
You don't enjoy any useful skill until you get good at it. It's not torture if the long-term benefits outweigh the short-term commitments.
I agree, I don't believe natural bilingual speaking. You need a stable knowledge base to start , a second language is always hard, need tons of time to study.
Gosh this kid is only 4 years old!!! If it was my kid, i would just let them enjoy their childhood rather than forcing them to learn something (unless they really love it - some kids are into languages!).
Dont worry, your kids will turn out ok even if they only know english :)
It's not force if it's 'immersion'. That's how little kids learn — not through 'learning' but through immersive 'using'.
If you enjoy your childhood you won't have that opp to learn more when everyone else is playing! The time to run is when everyone else is still crawling and enjoying life. While you can enjoy life later on (me, now) it could also cause other issues related to lack of play.
It's the typical Asian upbringing of kids where parents tries to compete each other to see who got the smarter and more successful children. I bet your childhood upbringing is also not a memorable one. Poor kid..
I'm part Asian and I don't remember a lot from childhood, but one thing was for sure, instead of friends and playdates I had tutors. Later on I'd study teaching and do placement, and wow does everyone seem slow, it does make things sometimes harder when you think they're going to slow and aren't allowed to push. It depends what you want for your kids: to have a great time, or to be academically better than everyone else.
Just let the kid be, he/she will pick up the language they are comfortable with. You can shove language apps and foreign Youtube channels down their throat and it won't help.
Just bemused you sent a 3 or 4 year-old back to China simply just to teach them Chinese, mind-boggling what you people do
Tiger parents at it again
Well, I suppose this (profanity) up has happened today, and has been happening everyday for the past seventeen years.
About seventeen years ago my wife and I adopted a baby from an Asian American family. While we knew very little details, basically what happened with them is that we learned they were too young for children. I made very little inquiries as (they seemed embarrassed/I didn't want to pry). I was just excited to have a son and couldn't have cared less about the parent's history, besides their current and future well being. So as long as they were healthy and willing to gift me with their child, I really did not go too much into their histories. This was my major (profanity) up.My wife and I choose to adopt this baby because we felt for the parents and anyone that has been through the adoption process knows that it is much easier to get a non-white baby than it is to get a white one (which is (profanity) up IMO) and we wanted one NOW and didn't want to be on a wait list.
Anyway we adopt this beautiful, loving, affectionate and incredible baby. It's truly love at first sight for all of us. Around about eight months we start to feel a little bit of guilt about not raising him in his on ethnic culture and given that we live in an area with a major Chinese population, it would be very easy to introduce him to his roots. So for the next seventeen years we do everything we can to honor his ethnicity. We send him to Chinese language courses and by five he's fluent in Mandarin and English, he gets an "adopted" by a Chinese aunt and uncle (they taught him cultural things and celebrate certain holidays and take him for dim sum every couple of weeks). We've been taking him to China every two years since he was eight. We weren't trying to force him to take up his culture as an "other" in our family, but we didn't want to rob him of it or completely whitewash him either. We try and be PC as possible and we thought we were doing the right thing.
He's the best thing that has ever happened to me and my wife. There is not a day were I don't just look at him and smile warmly. I love him.
Anyway we are filling out his college apps/financial aid applications and doing that whole thing. I go to my home office and go through some files and find his old adoption records. I'm not really paying much attention to them and then his biological parents surnames pop out and basically punch me in the face. His parent's last names were PARK AND KIM. (profanity). (profanity). (profanity).
For those of you that do not know, those are Korean last names. My son is not Chinese. Not even a little bit.
He's Korean.
I suppose I just assumed it because we live in an area on the west coast where there are a lot of Chinese immigrants and Chinese-Americans have been living for generations and generations. I don't always assume every Asian is Chinese, but I did assume this for my son. Now I have a seventeen year old Korean son that thinks he Chinese. Now that I look at him, he looks INCREDIBLY Korean in comparassion to all of the photos of Korean men that I have just googled. Very square jaw, less hooded eyes, very broad build. None of this ever crossed my mind. I've dedicated nearly two decades to helping my son be close to roots that aren't even his. I realize that I've just been (profanity) up. I feel like a complete (profanity) to the nth degree. I'm that dumb liberal white (profanity). (profanity).
I have yet to disclose this to my son or wife.
I honestly don't even know if I will.
TL;DR: Assumed my son was Chinese and I've spent his whole life playing homage to his roots, he's Korean.
***** QUOTED FROM A FACEBOOK POST
😳
***** QUOTED FROM A FACEBOOK POST
Cool story bro!!
Refuse to read your essay.
TL;DR: Assumed my son was Chinese and I've spent his whole life playing homage to his roots, he's Korean.
Thank you for this summary. Now why did you write the rest if you could have said it in one sentence?
read it all, and I, for one, actually found it quite amusing hehe :p cheers
TL;DR
Where did you send your kid to China for a few months? Can you give me the address?
Lol.
Chinese people often send their kids to China for up to a year when they're born, to let the grandparents raise them / take care of them for a while.
It's more of a cultural thing, they don't really retain much Chinese if they're born here. Once they go to school, they kind of lose it.
Only half in jest, mate. If there was a Chinese immersion school near me I would definitely send my kids there.
It seems strange that there are language immersion schools for French, German and Japanese, but not Chinese, at least where I live (Brisbane).
Because there is pointless to send your kids to learn a man-made language, it's heavily used in political propaganda.
Cheap day care
Sounds like you just shipped your kid off by themselves and only at the age of 3..damn. Considering he was made to speak Chinese for however long I'm not so surprised that his answers are in just Chinese. Maybe 'ship him off' to France next and then to England so he learns proper English ;)
My 3yo niece speaks 2 languages very well, she replies in the language she is spoken in, she can also be a translator for her grandma.
The key is not to mix languages when speaking to them, they'll get confused.
You can set a day for Chinese, set another day for French, another day for English. Or have one person only speak Chinese to him, another only speak French, etc. This makes it easy for the kid to know which language is which.
this is the funniest thread since a very long time!!! HAHAHA OMFG
It always amuse me when people say their child (or person) is mix this and that ethnicity making it sound like they are some exotic cocktail. The reality is their ethnicity and gene make up does not matters, it is where they grow up matters and will define them.
don't think they are trying to imply/insinuate that they are exotic or anything, maybe they just trying to give more details :)
Well the modeling industry says mixed (the desirable ones) can result in an exotic cocktail!
Also certain mixes will give you an advantage in life, well there's on in particular here that I can think of.
White & White or Chinese & Indian? :p
In modeling it's asian x white, and indian x white.
The later I'm referring to is even a hit of indigenous blood. A girl I knew (interestingly also a vegan, one of the preachers) used it to her full advantage, while she didn't look it at all.
@anastasiastarz: Interesting stuff about modeling.
Yeah, there are always plenty of people that jump on a bandwagon and ride it for all it's worth if they have the possibility, but don't even acknowledge the basis for it. I guess it's human nature… We see FREE, and look for a way to get it.
Now, to go make some models… :p
They'll pick English up regardless if they live in Australia. Try to instil a love of reading in them and send them to preschool or sign them up for team sports if you're worried.
As for the other 2 languages, just speak them more/exclusively when you're at home otherwise they'll never pick it up as well as they will English. Try not to speak English at home. Possibly enrol them in Chinese language classes later on if you want them to be able to write in Chinese too.
Playing them tv shows in different languages will help, as will foreign news, etc. when they are older if you want to expand their vocab. When they are old enough, start some extended family group chats and get them to communicate in the same language so they keep it up.
My 5 year old speaks three languages. I consistently speak one language to him, wife another one and English he learned from childcare/school. He can read/write two languages fairly well.We identified a mild stuttering issue at the age of 3 and was okay after few months of therapy. Let the kids learn as many languages as possible and they learn pretty quick. I guess every child is different and if you find issues involve speech therapist etc early enough to iron out issues
I grew up in a German kindy (first 4 years - no one spoke English including the teachers), moved to a Spanish school (5 years) before moving to Singapore (Chinese/ English) and lastly Australia (English). I can definitely empathise with your kid. In my opinion, I feel that new languages are very hard and confusing to learn as a kid and takes heaps of patience. Besides discussing this with the experts (i.e. paediatrician and speech therapist) further, perhaps creating a fun and safe learning environment would help (e.g. cartoons). I had a very negative experience studying Chinese and it completely turned me off learning it.
Wait a minute, mix of Chinese English French? Can someone conceive from 3some??
OP never said 3 equal parts of each…
It's good to get the kid exposed to as many languages as possible. At 4, he's still in the 'first language' acquisition critical period and even if he's not speaking very much, he's absorbing the languages and will be expressing himself in those languages sooner or later. Like many have said, if he stops using one or more of the languages later in life, he will no doubt lose it. That said, being exposed to so many languages from an early age helps to build a muscle memory for the exposed languages' speech patterns and tones.
Source: I have a LOTE and TESOL teaching background.
At this age (below 5yrs old) mere exposure is probably the best thing for him. If you want to learn French, be like a Frenchman.
He will most likely pick up English from being around people here.
Source: Studying psychology
Speak to a paediatrician not an ozbargain group.
Children whose family speak multiple languages at home often start speaking later than children who are only exposed to one language.
You've taught him bits of 3 languages - well done.
Probably try to program him
Poor kid, sent away because his parents are confusing him. If he's struggling to speak you'd think if he'll be educated in Aus you'd focus in teaching him how to communicate with teachers and peers first.
Swedish family ?
There is a free app called Duolingo, available in both Apple and Android platforms. They have self learning courses of many-many languages, including French. I don't know how suitable is it for a 4YO tho'.
Finding a mono-lingual person helps. If the kid knows that the other person cannot speak Chinese, then they just use the language of the other person.
过段时间适应了英文环境不就好了，不知道这有什么不正常的
Don't speak English with them, if they live in Australia they will get more than enough English at school, tv, outside!
My parents speak all kinds of languages being from Malaysia but I only speak English because they only spoke English to me :(
After my parents migrated and lived here for 10 years or so, they've been able to speak only English at home. My youngest sibling hates language school and doesn't see the point in learning our language. I was a bit sad since I can't discuss things in our language in certain situations.. but at least he understands what we're talking about/discussing haha. Though he'll talk back in English XD.
I'm bilingual. My parents and I went on holiday for a month (to celebrate my 4th birthday?). As I child, I was confused between multiple languages…I had speech problems and was often mute during primary school. Stick to two language for now (English or Chinese/French) and you can slowly incorporate the third language later on. You can send them to a language school if you want, it helps meeting/being with other friends to converse.
I'm often mistaken as an international student with fluent english skills haha. I'm in the process of learning Korean and Japanese.
Don't waste the talent, send him to football academy because as far as I know, kids from multiple backgrounds always end up becoming a pro footballer.
fellow work mate is Vietnamese and his wife is Japanese and have a mixed 4yo, His viet is rubbish according to him and only speaks english to his wife and 4yo while the wife speaks nihongo. the kid speaks very well since i recall at 2yo english,japanese and viet.
vietnamese was picked up from his parents side.. Kids at young age picks up everysingle thing, copy and repeat, but then again some kids get confused just like big kids like me lol
"How Could I Please Teach a 4 Year Old English and French"
You can barely speak English yourself.
Hence the request for help perhaps?
I have trilingual kids, I have to admit they started talking late, at 3.5 y.o. But in 3 languages!!
The key not to confuse the child is separating the languages and carriers, for example mother speaks to him English only, father uses French only, grandparents speak Mandarin etc.
I can speak 3 languages and 3 different dialects but set my kids to learn at 2 as I don't see any benefits of learning the rest.
But always wanted to learn French and Japanese language as they are so polite when they speak.
Bonjour, aui revoir, oui, non, merci. well thats my french limit and always thought detoilette means toilet.
I think cartoons are the best option, specially cuz most cartoons are made in different languages. Like if u watch sesame street you can find it in english spanish and so on. That is what I am using with my son btw
Our son is 4 and can speak 3 languages fluently. He didn't speak until 2 yrs old. We have a Moonbox which our son watched a lot of Chinese kids programs.
I think that helped a lot.
Our daughter is 2 yrs old and cannot speak at all. She is confused with the tri-lingual environment.
We have seen pediatrician and am waiting to see speech therapist. Daughter is not as interested in the Moonbox.
So at the moment we only speak one language with her. She will pickup English when she goes to daycare next year.
Not sure what better plan/tools is available?
Please note, 4 year old level of 3 or 4 languages doesn't mean a lot. Kid needs a knowledge base.
Yes, we are teaching him as well.
He can count to 100, count backwards, count by 10s. Do simple maths.
He knows his letters, can write his name, read the first 3 Fitzroy books. We are now teaching him various sights words & writing his name in Chinese.
We are also teaching him about dinosaurs, space & planets, plants.
He does swimming and we plan to start dance lessons.
He didn't like piano or any other musical instruments.
He is doing well, but we have concerns about his younger sister (2 yr old).
She is a bit more delay than he was.
We are not sure on how to speed up her progress.
Not sure if it's been said already but my 4yo learns French and Japanese words in her Preschool. I'm not talking about coming home talking it in sentences but it really threw me for six when I picked her up from preschool the other day and she said "Konnichiwa daddy". Preschool sure has changed since I went there :)
Wow I never thought about that! So need to ask some of my multilingual friends :)