I have been recently thinking about how many parents out there are blogging about raising their children being able to speak English and Russian languages. And it turns out there are not that many of us. So, I decided to share with you what I have found out.
On Bilingual Monkey, a Russian native mom encounters new sides of her own culture and laughs with her husband as they see their son trying to juggle Russian and English. It's too bad that she stopped contributing to it.
A 6 year old on http://spasfam.blogspot.com/ has recently decided that he loves Russia and all things Russian. The family has no native Russian speakers, but is willing to support their son's interest. So far, it seems like his motivation might be able to get him at least some knowledge of culture and basic words.
Irina McGuire seems to use the same method like myself - One Parent One Language. At this point, her son is about two years old and can differentiate between Russian and English, name parts of the face in both languages, and even mixes both languages together when building sentences (which is not a bad thing; the child is just experimenting to see what is proper in which interaction). That gives me hope that some day Sasha will reach this level, as well.
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There is an update on Sasha's vocabulary. I have also added the English vocabulary page that proudly contains one word.
When I have been to Portland visiting my friend from Buryatia and her bilingual son I was surprised when I was asked to speak Russian with ther son. His mum always talked to him only Russian, he was four years old at this time. Though he responded in English to my Russian. Then I saw him in Buryatia with his grandparents who spoke only Russian with him during two months and he could respond them Russian too. So, I'd like to add that for a bilingual child it seems to be important to change surrounding and languages to improve his conversational skills.
ReplyDeleteI understand that it must be quite difficult to raise a bilingual child but I am sure you will be successful! By the way, do you and Greg still talk German at home? I think it's a good way to teach Sasha to speak German too.
'that' seems to be a key word. Two years ago I was visiting my nephew at Christmas and he was about 2 years old. My sister is "Auntie Heather" and I was "Auntie That."
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