Foreign languages for kids

July 8, 2009 by Monica
Filed under Fun & Learning

left to right? Find a video at the end of this post

Learning one or more foreign languages is a concern for most people in the current globalized world. For us not native English speakers, learning English is usually the main priority. I agree that English is useful. So useful that most of my reading is in English even if my mother language is Spanish.

However, I believe that learning any language as a kid is as useful as learning English or any other “popular” language as French, Spanish or Chinese.

photo credit: bagaball

For kids, learning a new language is usually a lot of fun. Just listening to new sounds and playing to repeat them, inventing new similar sounds and pretend they’re talking in “Chinese” or “Italian”.

I’ve been told by “experts” that we shouldn’t talk to our kids if our accent in the other language is not perfect, because they’ll pick our “wrong” accent and will never be able to “overcome” it.

Then I wouldn’t talk to my son even in my native Spanish, which is obviously not perfect. Here in Ecuador our Spanish is mixed a bit with Quechua, some grammar and vocabulary is unique, and other native Spanish speaking people from abroad might have trouble understanding 100% of our casual conversations.

So, should I go learn perfect Spanish before daring to talk to my son?

If you ask me, I’m not affraid of him picking my accent and grammar mistakes (that could obviously been corrected by him in the future). I just mean to share my joy of learning to communicate in other languages. He’ll take care of the grammar and pronunciation later on.

In the same way I’m not affraid of reading outloud to him an English or French book, or to translate something into Japanese upon his request. I do dare to sing in my very broken German, and even in completely unknown languages like Indonesian.

Once in a while we enjoy visiting Mama Lisa’s site and look for a song from a country we’re interested in at the moment. This is our #1 resource for children’s music and rymes from around the world.

The other day I found my friend Dina from Indonesia on Facebook, so we learnt and recorded this song for her. It was a lot of fun