ON RAISING A BILINGUAL CHILD (18 – 24 MONTHS)

Since my my first post on raising a bilingual child, the language development within our home has taken a huge leap forward. Over the past six months, we have gone from a child who uttered just a couple of words (month 18) to a child who now (almost 24 months) consciously speaks Serbian to her Serbian mum and English to her English dad. How did we get there?

Harder than it seemed

Before I continue, I want to mention something I was not aware of before Klara started speaking. Deciding to raise a bilingual child in the environment such as ours (English father, English speaking country and nursery) is on occasion a terribly hard and lonely project. Also, if not careful two languages in the house can create awkward situations and a divide between parents; so to anyone in the similar situation I would suggest ‘Handle with care!’ and ‘Never stop talking with your partner about the subject!’. So let’s get going…

Magic at 18 months

By the time Klara turned 18 months she had a fairly good understanding of what we were saying to her, however the words she spoke did not extend far beyond Mama and Tata. From month 18 though her rate of learning and speaking suddenly accelerated and she even started referencing words that were more intangible, like ‘more’ and ‘again’ … but in English!

Balancing the language input

This was all happening in April/May during the lockdown when the nurseries were shut. At the time Klara was spending, by far, the most time with me (her Serbian mum), but English still seemed to get absorbed into her little head much more easily. So I tried to think of positive ways to turn this around a little bit.

Talking & explaining

Intuitively, I started explaining to her that ‘more’ and ‘again’ are words in English and that their counterparts in Serbian are ‘još’ and ‘opet’. If I just continued saying Serbian words in the English speaking environment, I thought at some stage she would say ‘What is mama on about?’. Whereas if I explained why I am using these words she might be more receptive to them. And guess what, it worked!

Blending in in Belgrade

She started saying more words in Serbian, but it was not until we went to Belgrade (month 21 – 22) that I realised she could actually communicate well in Serbian with her Serbian family and friends.

Switching languages depending on who she is talking to

What followed in month 22, completely unexpectedly, was that she started talking to me in Serbian and to her father in English. My favourite example of Klara applying the so called ‘one person, one language’ rule was when we were all together and Tom hugged me (something Klara doesn’t approve of at all). She first said ’Tata beži’. Tom then asked for an explanation, she turned to him and said ‘move Tata’.

I’m amazed

She is now back at nursery, so unsurprisingly her English vocabulary has grown a lot, but I REALLY cannot complain as she surprises me with new Serbian words on a daily basis (she knows what ‘sataraš’ is for example). Also, the other day my jaw dropped when she said ‘Napolju pada kiša’ (Serbian for ‘It’s raining outside’) getting the cases correctly.

Thank you, Family!

It was actually my mum and brother who helped me recognise that my time and ‘work’ with her are definitely paying off and that her Serbian language is really good. I am very proud, but sometimes with Serbian being the minority language in our family, I feel I joined a race that I am destined to lose.

Dominant language

A few months ago, while queuing to enter a supermarket, I met a lovely lady who suggested from her own experience that a mother tongue is not the language the mother speaks, but the language education is done in. Sadly, I cannot argue with this.

What makes our situation more challenging is that my husband doesn’t really speak Serbian. In hindsight, I should have tried to teach him Serbian before we had Klara, but at the time I couldn’t have cared less. And now it seems a bit late.

Monolingual husband in a bilingual household

Tom is, as any other ambitious father in London, busy. There is no way he would have time to take Serbian grammar book and enrol private lessons. I strongly believe that the only way he would start understanding and maybe, just maybe, speaking a bit of Serbian is by being subtly forced. This is why I started speaking more in Serbian (and translating less into English) when the three of us are talking. At first this seemed unnatural, but once I explained my rationale to husband, he was fine with it.

I will persevere!

I will continue with my efforts to raise Klara bilingual. This is something I believe I could dedicate my whole career to as it involves a lot of time invested, perseverance and love.

How I increase Klara’s exposure to Serbian

As I did with the previous post on this topic, I’ll finish with the list of activities I found helpful to bring Serbian closer to my child:

  1. Regular FaceTime with Serbian family/friends. By regular I mean daily;
  2. Considerable collection of books in Serbian: Stories mainly pre-bed and activity books (stickers, colouring) mainly AM;
  3. Pevaj sa Sandrom! We still do not play cartoons to Klara, but songs sung in Serbian fit perfectly into our post-nursery routine. We are big fans of YouTube channel ‘Pevaj sa Sandrom’ – if you are not aware of Sandra then check her out, Klara and I are big fans (Tom too!)
  4. Role-play! We role-play scenes from coffeeshops and grocery store mainly at this stage and I can see from the look on her face how much she is enjoying it;
  5. Spending time in Serbia has proven to be by far the MOST beneficial for Klara’s progress with Serbian.

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