This is what bothers me recently, as I dont have kids myself but hear from my friends: Polish kids who start school stop speaking Polish, don't want speak Polish, mix languages and generally are confused. Have you observed this with yours? Did you send your kids to Polish schools (Saturday school or classes, not mainstream I mean)
We started meetings for kids in Bristol so that they would have more contact with other Polish speaking kids. What's your experience?
Justyna i work in a secondary school and we have two Polish children here and i think more in the primary. I'm trying to learn Polish so that i can speak to them but i'm finding hard as there are no lessons for English learning Polish plenty for the other way around. I thought it would be nice for them to have someone to speak to if the had any problems but i think by the time i'v learnt to speak Polish they will be fluent in English.
I work with adults who would like to speak Polish (private tutor) if you are interested :) . Still, I think there are kids all over UK who will loose the ability, sooner or later, especially if one of the parents is not Polish, it must be very difficult to rise kid to be bilingual
In a bilingual family, Polish in this case, the children will become fluent in the spoken language if the Polish parent speaks only Polish to them always (at least it works for other languages :) ). Meeting other Polish speakers will be good for them also, though they might start playing together with other kids in english!
I made sure that my husband was going to speak Polish to our daughter, even before she was born. He spoke Polish to her up to the day he died. She was only 14 mos when he passed so I'm not sure how much she retained. When she started to get more vocal, at about 18 mos I think she spoke a mix. Now that she only hears English from me (I am learning some Polish) she has lost almost all of it. She does come out with some Polish words every once in a while. At the local Polish church they have a Saturday school, but it will be a few more years before she can go. She does have some Children's music CD's in Polish & she loves to listen to them all the time.
Her Godfather does speak to her in Polish as well as my husband's Aunts. The Aunts children understand Polish but hardly speak it. That's normal with any bilingual family, especially when the children hit school age.
I worked with a guy (he was English) many years ago his wife was Dutch and at home they spoke Dutch with the kids and at school the kids spoke English - if you want your kids to learn the lang, then speak at home, ensure that your partner learns so both of you can commuicate with the children in the chosen lang.
Hi, I know a family, Polish mother, French father, living in England. Father speaks to them only in french,mother only in Polish, went to school, and by the age of 8 were also fluent in English. topoftheir classesnow at age 13 and 14 and also top in Japanese and Germanwhich they're learning at school.
The cleverest kids I know.. Makes their brain work from an early age. By the way, summer hols alternately in Poland and France, and recently in Germany. I was brought up bilingual as well, Polish and English and was top of my class in French, Spanish and Latin. Worth thinking about..
Hey ! I'm 19, live in France, my mother is Polish and my father is French. When I was a child my mother used to speak to me in Polish, so I was fluent (or almost as I was very young) in both languages : Polish and French. But at school i mixed both languages and my friends laughed at me, so I stopped speaking in Polish (unfortunately).
Today, i speak only a little Polish (i'm trying to learn more though ;) ) but it's not an easy language, LoL. I think there is a good point in all that : it's that today i love languages, i had no difficulty to learn English, i can speak also Spanish, a bit of German and Polish, and I'm trying to learn some Swedish. It's gonna be a real good thing for me when i'll start working the fact of speaking many languages ;)
So, if i had a piece of advice to give you, it's just to try teaching Polish to your kids or kids of anyone else. I don't see anything dangerous with that. ;)
i always wish i was brought up speaking another langauge. My polish relatives quick speaking it a while ago i assume. I think my grandfather new a little polish (at least the curse words) and when it got down to my dad and his brother and sister none of them speak it, my dad knows one polish phrase and that's "Kiss my ass" so i'm assuming thats one of the only ones that got used a lot. haha. I wish i could get fluent enough in Russian (sorry guys, not many Polish courses around here) that whenever i get married and have kids i could speak it to them all the time. I'm still progressing alot (especially with the grammar) and hopefully by that time i'll be pretty good at it. I really want to learn polish, its hard to find people to teach it though.
i know a guy who has some friends where one of the parents is from Italy or spain (I think) and one is from Germany, and one will ask a question in spanish or italian and then the kids will answer in english and the other parent will respon in german. they are all trilingual!!! That just blows my mind. America sucks on the foreign langauge thing. None of my friends i grew up with speak another language fluently. I'm so jealous of bilingual children! haha
Good for you, Artur! Unfortunately, in America, or at least in the school district I grew up in, a foreign language is not required....fortunately I took French (had to be different...lol); unfortunately I didn't retain it (can recognize written French, but verbal....pfff). I believe the younger they start learning, the easier it is for them to retain.....it's never a bad thing to be able to communicate in multiple languages......wish I was fluent in another language....
most schools where i live don't start teaching foreign language until junior high or high school, and usually its two years and bad teaching. I took spanish for 2 or 3 years and all i can remember is "Yo tengo gozo gozo en mi corazon. Donde?! En mi corazon, Donde! Enmi corazon...etc etc" a song. And Yo tengo ______. pretty much all i remember is Yo tengo, gozo, and en mi corazon. and donde.
I think if i can find people who know russian i can get pretty good at it, i'm not too horrible at it now, and i watch alot of movies and listen to alot of music and podcasts and stuff in russian, but i want to practice talking too.
Actually, when i was in first grade a guy would come into our class and teach us some french, but it didn't last long. I wish they kept that up, i could be fluent in french now if they did!!
In Jersey, ironically enough it was where the Poles lived, the school curriculum was much tougher and foreign language was taught from first grade. Here in PA, its not taught until highschool.
Language is a living thing. You don't use it - you lose it. I can still read Russian, but I can not speak or understand it (some words maybe). I used to be quite fluent in French- not any more...but I'm happy, I can keep Polish and English alive. :)
yeah, i'm gonna try my best to keep up with russian. I have a few books. And they are slightly above my level in reading, which i think is good, it'll challenge me to continue learning. But i want to find some people in my area to practice with, but there are hardly any!
I'm fluent in French...Je parle bien le français étant donné que je suis né en France et que je vis en France depuis dix-neuf ans...but I think the reason is that i'm French, i think it helps :p LoL
i speak fluent english, german and spanish.... i used to speak irish (which is not anything like english!!) but i lost most of it over the last 2 years :( ... i also started to learn russian =) but at the moment polish intrigues me more =)
