Does anyone else want their future kids to be bilingual?

[rwd716]

Ditto to the whole teaching my kids two laguages at once.

[Killian]

Of course, I would love for my children to be multi-lingual. Could you consider yourself a good parent if you wanted your children to constricted by a lack of knowledge of a second language/culture. It would be expanding your child's horizons, and looking out fo their future.

[SupaKrupa]

To be "truly bilingual", the kid would need to be immersed in both languages and there aren't many societies which use two languages frequently so it might be difficult. You'd need to use that 2nd language with him/her a lot while they're still very young. And to answer the question, I'd love for my kids to have anything I didn't

[Cooney]

I certainly hope any of my future children will speak as many languages as possible, be that 2, 3, or a dozen. Even if it's not full billingualism (which as some folks have pointed out, is tough to pull off in the USA), at least a working knowledge of other languages that allow them to travel, understand other cultures, and see the countless connections that exist between one language and the next, suggesting we're not as seperate as we'd like to think.

[Jess]

To me this goes without saying..... And who said it's you the parent that has to teach them, you don't want them to be limited by what you know, do you?

I think that in this society we live in we are better off knowing more then less, therefore my kids will be exposed to anything and everything that I would consider is in their best interest. Be it language, cultures, sports, news, education, etc..... I will never force them though, but I will try to make them understand how important this is.

[fsquared]

Originally Posted by SupaKrupa

To be "truly bilingual", the kid would need to be immersed in both languages and there aren't many societies which use two languages frequently so it might be difficult. You'd need to use that 2nd language with him/her a lot while they're still very young. And to answer the question, I'd love for my kids to have anything I didn't

Actually, bilingualism is more the norm than the exception worldwide. In, say, many places in Africa, there's your local village language, a surrounding regional language, the language spoken in the capital, etc. and you learn all of them out of necessity.

There's a very nice book called "The Bilingual Family: A Handbook for Parents" by Edith Harding-Esch and Philip Riley outlining a variety of strategies and so forth. We have tried with our kids but, as others have noted, without multiple speech communities, it's very hard.

[Tye]

I will probably expose my future kids to different cultures at home, and by traveling across Europe on vacations. They will get plenty of French at school.

[O Rly]

Well, people talking in more than one language is really common in Europe, it's actually not normal if you don't know at least one second language. But that's here, not the US... I know Latvian and English and I'm learning French, German and Russian (hate that language). Anyway, If you go to The Netherlands people there speak an average of 3 languages... like in most smaller countries.

[Tye]

Originally Posted by O Rly

Well, people talking in more than one language is really common in Europe, it's actually not normal if you don't know at least one second language. But that's here, not the US... I know Latvian and English and I'm learning French, German and Russian (hate that language). Anyway, If you go to The Netherlands people there speak an average of 3 languages... like in most smaller countries.

Are you learning all three languages at once?

[B_M_E]

Since I am already bilingual and if I want my kids to be better than me then being bilingual is a requirement for them.