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Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Bilingualism anyone?

When I was a child I loved to dance and I wanted to go to dance classes. My mom had other plans, however.  She put me in English classes instead and I didn’t like it much.  At one point in my life I had decided I would never speak English! Yeah right!  Well things changed and I ended up marrying a “gringo”, moving to the USA, and writing a bilingual blog, go figure! Now I thank my mom because those classes were a great head start for learning English as an adult, I wish I had learned more when I was a child though.   Now, here I am taking a daily decision since the births of my sons to speak to them in Spanish, read to them in Spanish, and watch cartoons with them in Spanish. It is my deepest wish for them to speak perfect English and perfect Spanish.  I want for them the best of both worlds.  Sometimes it is frustrating, sometimes I forget words in my first language, sometimes I go back and forth between languages without even realizing it! Sometimes I feel English is so dominant in their world that they will never speak perfect Spanish… then my son will use a new Spanish word or will understand every word I say in Spanish, and I relax, feel proud, and happy.

 All this came about because I was watching this morning a video from ABC News with Dr Jamie Wells who was talking about bilingualism, some new studies about bilingual children, and how families who are not bilingual can be with some work, if they would like to be. Here is the link.

 Tell me… what do you think about raising children in a bilingual household?  Do you have any tips or experiences about bilingualism you would like to share? Send me an email or publish a comment at the end of this post. I would like to know what you think.

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