This title is actually inspired by the
Montessori book I’m currently reading and reflects much of what we as a family
have been working on since our arrival back from Beijing.
I must preface this post with some
background on my husband: a passionate learner of language he has (at one time
or another) been proficient in six languages simultaneously, although more
recently has dedicated all of his language-learning capacity to Mandarin for
the last 6 years or so. He never travels to a country without picking up a
phrase book and working hard to bridge the language barrier between him and the
locals; and lets just face it, he just has a gift for language acquisition. The
structure of language and learning language simply fascinates him and it has
been one of his core passions since he started sneaking to the workers’ shed
just to listen in on them speaking Shona when growing up in Zim.
It is because of this passion that one of
Kyle’s main goals for our children is for them to be fluent in Chinese from a
young age. His aim is to provide them with both opportunity and grounding in
the language in the hope that this will give them an advantage in their future
workplace. He feels passionate about them learning an African language too, and
so we already have schedules in place that allow them sufficient Mandarin and
Zulu interaction on a weekly basis and our children are all of 2 years and 4
months! We do this because the benefits of raising multilingual children are
enormous (developmentally, emotionally, culturally etc). As a family we also
have very close ties to both Africa and China – both our children were born in
Beijing and it was the very first language they heard around them after all –
and so Zulu and Mandarin made sense to us. But it’s the principal of
multilingualism that we feel is so important and so we make A LOT of effort in
order to achieve this goal. Or shall we say, Kyle makes the effort to plan how
much time our children need to spend immersed in Chinese/Zulu environments and
I have to make it happen!
Our Chinese commitments currently comprise
of two 2 hour sessions per week for our 2 year old Zipporah with a lovely lady
who plays with her and interacts with her solely in Chinese. We were fortunate
in that Zipporah has understood Mandarin from birth as our nanny in China spoke
to her only in Chinese up till the time we left. When we started taking her to
these Chinese classes her interaction with the language was very passive; she
understood everything that was said but always responded in English if at all.
This was especially the case if I was around and no matter how much I
encouraged her Chinese interaction, she felt that the dominant language around
me and in our home was English and battled to make the switch. She also
originally struggled to understand that the same thing could have more than one
name. On one occasion, while her Chinese teacher was building blocks with her
and reinforcing the names of different colours, she stopped after her teacher said
the Chinese word for green and told her in no uncertain terms - “No, Mama says
this is GREEN!”
Thankfully we have a very persistent and
patient teacher working with her (who happens to be quite strict too) and she
is very good about forcing Xiao Ying (Zipporah’s Chinese name) to repeat things
in Chinese and respond only in Chinese. We have also got smarter about the
lessons and they only take place at her teacher’s home (a completely Chinese
environment) and I am never present. It seems Zipporah is more comfortable with
this deliberate shift and now, after only a month, she is saying more Chinese
words than I have ever heard her, using words appropriately and
interchangeably, and with perfect tone. We are so proud!
Her Zulu lessons currently take on less
structure as we have our maid Gladys 3 days a week and she only talks to her in
Zulu. And although their time together is not as deliberate, Zipporah is
picking up a lot of what she says and knows the appropriate way to greet any
black person she sees without being asked. Sometimes our quest for multilingual
geniuses gets us in quite a pickle though especially when we are not as
proficient in all the languages. One such occasion was when we heard Zipporah
interacting with her cousin and saying something to him that sounded a lot like
a swear word! Kyle immediately assumed she’d learnt it from me, and I denied
ever having used such language in front of my kids (not too regularly anyway).
We worried for about a week as this became a prominent word in her vocabulary,
until one morning I heard Gladys tell Zipporah to put the cereal in the bowl.
The Zulu word for “put in” is “fagga” and in 2 year old speech this sounds a
lot like… well you get the picture. Needless to say we were quite relieved and
I was finally off the hook!
While Zipporah got a lot of Chinese input
in her first 2 years we believe our son Titus is going to have a similar
foundation in Zulu. He and Gladys share a very special bond and she is
constantly chatting away to him. We are so thrilled at the start they are both
getting in these languages, and although it’s quite a lot of deliberate effort
on our part, we are committed to seeing this through for all our children and
believe it to be well worth any sacrifices, financial and other.
I will close with one last anecdote that
happened just today. Kyle took Zipporah to one of the Chinese churches in
Johannesburg this morning, and despite being quite the spectacle as the only
foreign child in the Sunday school class, our daughter was able to follow and
participate in a lesson on the 5 loaves and 2 fish. She was counting away in
Chinese and felt more at home in that class of Chinese children than I have seen
her be in a while. One day we know she will thank us for our determination to
see her submerged in the language, and we so appreciate that she enjoys it too.
Because it’s been all she knew from birth it is effortless for her. Kids are
amazing little sponges and so I suppose the lesson therein is to be deliberate
about the ‘water’ you choose for them to soak up and watch in amazement when
they do it with such ease.
5 comments:
Great blog post Meryl. I can't wait to have you on my team at BrainBoosters. You will be such an asset.
Most inspiring. I am sure that both your children will be grateful to you one day.
Best of luck to you both in your endeavors.
Very cool... maybe our kids can exchange languages one day... a little Thai for a little Mandarin:) Looking forward to meeting your 2 lovely kids:)
Hi Meryl
I am raising a little Malawian boy - one of our abandoned babies @ Barnswallows Baby Shelter - and have a dream for him: that we might connect with someone who will teach him Mandarin!because I believe he will need this some day. He is a special needs child - Fetal alcohol syndrome, ADD, cp, etc etc etc. Any ideas to help me to get this going? he is 3 years old.
Hi Rene, lovely to hear from you and very inspired by your desire to give your son a skill that will really benefit him in the future! There are ways to go about this, and I am very keen to help, so please send me an email with your details and I will be in touch. Rgds Meryl
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