Friend told "just allow your son to forget Polish" by school.

No. The UK doesn't have an official language - which is why there are Gaelic, Welsh and Irish medium schools which treat English as a foreign language. I have a friend who went to a school where the language used in school and in the playground was Gaelic, not English - in fact, although she can perfectly well use English, she is first and foremost a Gaelic speaker.

The fact that English differs between the Home Nations should tell you everything.

They also grasp and speak greek very quickly.Slavs seem very intelligent.

WTF? Who told about teaching kids other languages in an English school?

I will still insist that a teacher who works with children of various origins should know the difference between language acquisition of a five-year-old and foreign language learning of a twelve-years-old. And really, a 45 minute-long lecture at a college is enough to explain teachers-to-be that such small children can learn to speak two languages with no harm.


Well, actually, in case of a kid at the age of five, it is.
A child at this age is still not perfectly fluent with his/her native language and still picks it up. If the child is exposed to another language, s/he just picks it up the same way.

Makes me wonder who is british through and through?
David Miliband, Sasha Cohen?
Is it enough to be british when you have been born and rised in UK ?

And I'm not suprized. Tell your friends not to speak to their child in English at home. It's none of the schools dam buisness what language he speaks at home. When It comes to learnig language kids under 5 are like sponges and the child speaking Polish at home will not affect his English at all. For his Polish to be natural and fluent it's important that his parents speak to him/her only in Polish. He will learn English easily enough as he is surrounded by English speakers whenever he's out of the house!

My little boy...although not speaking anything that's coherent yet....understands both languages. I only speak to him in English and my wife to him in Polish.

[quote=Cardno85]Supposedly if you speak a second language to your child they are likely to pick up on any mistakes you make. So it is better to speak your first language with the child.

Children are sponges. They are able to learn both languages without accent, confusion, it increases your ability to learn (smarter).. I think it's truly a disservice not to have children learn as many languages as possible and continue to reinforce their heritage and culture.

A couple I know adopoted two twins from the Ukraine, 12 years old, the new parents are 62 and 56. I'm very troubled about their approach to teaching the children English..They DO NOT want the kids speaking Russian. The kids came to my home on Sunday and "the mom", asked that NO Russian be spoken to them. They have called the orphanage and they actually taped the conversation so they could secretly have them translated? I don't think it will confuse or delay their ability to learn English.

A bilingual child in my experience always picks up additional languages quicker than a monolingual one.

Sickening. They wouldn't DARE suggest this to an Urdu or Swahili-speaking family, because they know what would happen!


Poles are an easy target because we are white. Race-relations laws clearly don't apply to us. There's no way I could get away with saying something about Asians, like what that ****** Giles Coren said about Poles, and keep my job and probably not even my freedom, that's for sure!

Speaking mainly Polish before I started school didn't stop me from learning English, or from learning three other languages later on. Stopping children from learning a language, at the age at which they are most easily able to learn, is idiotic.

And yes, I know that they need English more than Polish if living in the UK - the child will pick it up easily enough anyway!

Definitely keep learning! Psh, I wish I had learned in the first place. I had a grandma who lived w/me and spoke Polish to her sister when she would call. I wish I had asked her to teach me a thing or two :(

Jihozapad


I agree full heartedly. From personal experience, my son's kindergarten teacher embraced diversity, loved sharing all cultures to class and encouraged children to be bilingual. Amazing teacher! At the end of the day, he even has the kids say good bye in as many languages as possible (the kids know atleast, 10+ ways to say good bye: on their own.) He has a Doctorate and stresses how important it is to speak as many languages as possible. Children, have no inhibitions. It's harder to learn as an adult. Foreign Languages are required in schools as a prerequisite to graduation. Colleges require it and it is such a bonus later in life. His teacher even sent two versions of information home in English and in Polish ( I think that's shows respect) The school news letter has it in two languages together (Spanish..why this was singled out?) Lastly, He was given a book in Polish and asked to have it translated, he always asked how to say many words.

Where do we initially pick up our language skills? Where did you learn your ABC? Mine was all at home, if the child isnt speaking English at home, then how is he to improve? Or should to the school be teaching him English? IMaybe some Poles should club together and open a private school, that way there wouldnt be a problem :0)


It would seem so? Sasha BC is part Welsh by the way, so he's at leat half British, personally I prefer to be called English...since any goat and camel can call themselves a Brit these days...

ShelleyS, there's every indication that this child will _need_ Polish in the future (considering how much family he probably has there and how many Poles in Britain don't stay there forever no matter what they may say). Telling his parents to let him forget Polish is not serving his best interests in the slightest.

And linguists have known for a long time now that kids mostly learn from other children (the parents are important but kids aim their language at other kids). I know parents in Poland trying to make sure their kids know some other language and how hard it is given that the language of the playground trumps mom and dad's language (even when mom and dad's language is pretty prestigious).

My recommendation (as a professional linguist and language teacher) is for the parents to speak Polish to him (and make sure he answers in Polish) while encouraging his acquisition of English from friends and school. As long as he's around mostly English speaking kids he'll be dominant in English (which helps at school) while still retaining full fluency in Polish (which he'll also need).

Finally, a Professional..Good advice!

Yes exactly. My friends assumed they were helping by encouraging him to speak English all the time. Now they have decided to have "English time" at home so for an hour or so a day they all speak in English, this benefits them all. Personally I thought that was a good idea. The rest of the time at home they speak in Polish.


This is absolutely correct. He is going to need Polish now and in the future as the majority of his family are in Poland. My friend reminds me that they speak to family members in Poland more than once a week via Skype so of course they need for their son to remain speaking Polish. Not only that but as they visit Poland a few times a year their son would be isolated from his family if he could not speak Polish any longer.

They have asked for an explanation from the school but I feel they'll get nothing more than a small apology and a letter saying it's not the school policy but the teacher may have mis-read the situation...


Precisely. It would be on the next news headlines and all over the next days papers.

Then let him learn Polish when he goes back to live in Poland, or at least make English his first language, at present his life is in the UK and whilst Im sure in LIR's day it was easy to teach the odd kid who didn't speak English when they arrived for their first day at infants, in the present day situation it is becoming almost impossible for teachers to cope!

Im all for children learning another lanaguge, but I do think that they should at least speak one properly before they learn another!

Unless he makes that choice as an adult he's not going back to Poland to live. They are settled here.

As for his English, as I stated before, it's very, very good, better than his Polish even. The issue is not about him not knowing or not learning English, it's about his parents being told to forget his Polish, which he needs.

Young children are unable to differentiate between first and second languages, as they do not catagorise this the way adults do. They simply see language as a means of communication. If a friend is speaking english they will speak english, if another is speaking polish they will speak polish.

It is only adults who have these barriers not children.

Agreed. I have seen this many times with kids who speak English and Polish. They don't really care which language they are chatting in as long they understand.


Also agreed.

A child as young as 2 can pick up a foreign language fluently if they are in a host country with no stress at all. Don't listen to some of the "plebs on this site". The child will speak two languages fluently with very little assistance.

Even older children only need 6m to a year to become fluent, provided they are living and going to school in a host country.

I see no problem.

I may learn Polish. I find it necessary to learn my enemies tongue.

The parents should speak Polish to the kid. Exclusively Polish and not a word of English. If they try to speak English, and if their English is so and so that's where the problems my be. The child is likely to mimic the parents' errors. That won't happen with Polish because there is nothing to mimic since the two languages are vastly different.

My 20 year old daughter is perfectly bilingual. After her second year in a Canadian University she went to Poland for a year to study there. In Polish. To Canadians she sounds Canadian. To Poles she sounds Polish. There has never been any drawbacks caused by her bilingual upbringing and education. It actually helped her with her English.

See, a language is not just a bunch of words and grammatical rules but a whole system of thinking that may vary from one language to another. Those variations often allow speakers to attain the level of expression that is out of reach to people speaking only one language.

One difference between UK and Canada is that here in Canada a teacher would not even dare to suggest a child should forget his/her parent's native language.

You sound like you were describing me there :)


In the UK, you're only allowed to be racist to white people, so Poles are fair game.

If a young child is put in the situation where they have no alternative but to learn the language, it forces them to use parts of the brain, that would otherwise lay dormant. It allows them to dig deep into the resources and build up coping mechanisms which equips them very well in later life.

Also bilingual children are able to speak 3rd and 4th languages so much easier, without the complications and barriers that non-bilingual children have.

The same place all other children whose mother tongue is different. In the playground at school. I never speak to my son in Polish and I never will. That doesn't mean that he won't hear me speak Polish, because he does, when I speak to his granny or if friends are round for dinner.

However, I do make grammar mistakes in Polish, as my Mrs does in English. I don't want to pass these same mistakes on to my son, so I leave the people who are fluent Polish speakers to speak to him in Polish and I, the fluent English speaker, talk to him in English.

The boy, who this topic is about, is in an English school surrounded by native speakers speaking English. He will soak our language up like a sponge. If he learns bad grammar, coupled with none native pronunciation at home, this in my opinion could actually hold him back.

mafketis

Hopefully you keep your identity, even when in foreign lands. It is very important.

I'd say it'd be the parents job to enforce His learning of Polish at home. He can always pick up English from TV/Radio/friends etc. In time He will grasp it, especially with consumer goods like kids toys/consoles all in English format in the UK.

That's the real crux of the matter.


In a situation like this, the parents should be looking to improve their English and learn with the child.


Racism is racism whichever way it goes or do you find you get more attention if you play the victim ?


That will hardly help his parents integrate though will it.

Of all the people who have been playing the "victim" since mass immigration started (i.e. just after World War II, not 2002), Poles are probably close to the bottom of the list.

No matter what do not stop speaking to this child in Polish. My Polish friend here in the UK had a child many years ago and she asked our advice to which we told her to speak Polish to him. The rest of the family and friends were English. This child is now an adult with a child of his own and he will speak to the baby in Polish too. Who ever said to "forget the Polish" was not a very forward thinking person. No matter what, the world is changing and a second language can be nothing but an asset. The trouble with some teachers is that they are stuck in their own ways and cannot think too much about the future. Children are cleverer than they are given credit for. Unfortunately my father never spoke to me or my siblings in his native Polish and at the ages of 50+ we are trying hard to learn a little ourselves. We have successfully visited Poland now 3 times and we have been amazed how well the Polish people manage to speak English and although our attempts at Polish have been met with a smile we have always felt that our attempts have been appreciated.

Didn't mean to go on so much but hey children need anything that in today's climate is an advantage to them.

This is not a racist issue it is a failing on the English education system which is failing to understand about languages and how important knowledge of languages is. Infant schools are not catching on at all.

Some English teachers are getting help from Polish bilingual helpers but it isn't enough. There needs to be a closer look at this.

Please remember that the welfare of the child is paramount and that squabbling resolves very little. Forgetting Polish would be wrong. The strive towards bilingual status would save a lot of hassle in the future.