Comments on: Feeling weird using your home language?

By: MeganLouise

MeganLouise — Fri, 10 Nov 2017 06:34:00 +0000

Reading this article makes me immediately think of the upbringing of my mum. She was born in Spain and moved to Australia when she was 4 years old, so her first words and communication was all in Spanish. Upon moving to Australia she then was immersed in Aussie society and was exposed to English, which she learnt at a fairly quick rate due to the critical period still being strong at her age. However she never spoke Spanish at school infront of any of her friends and only spoke it at home. She has explained to me that this was because of the fact that she felt “weird” being the only bilingual in her class and didn’t want others to judge her. She now (as an adult haha) has no issues with speaking Spanish in public or near friends because as she grew up she realised the importance of keeping her L1 strong.

By: MB24

MB24 — Fri, 10 Nov 2017 05:02:00 +0000

Shiva, thank you for a great post. My son attends, and next year my two daughters will attend, a public primary school in South Australia where 61 nationalities are represented. From my observations, the school talks the talk about being inclusive of the experiencies and different languages spoken among its students, yet on the whole, as you state, practice linguistic and cultural mainstreaming. There is simply no structures in place within the school for the maintenance of a home language.

By: nawaraj bhandari

nawaraj bhandari — Thu, 09 Nov 2017 05:57:00 +0000

I do have the experience of this situation. When the community of the group of my friends talk and enjoy in our language, other people look at us differently. They make us feel wired. It is essential that we should speak English when we are in our workplace, school or college but when we are with our group of friends of our same country we too should speak our own language. Australia is a country where people of different language are living which should be preserved.

By: nawaraj bhandari

nawaraj bhandari — Thu, 09 Nov 2017 05:23:00 +0000

By: lokendra khadka

lokendra khadka — Wed, 08 Nov 2017 13:30:00 +0000

reminds me an incident often happens to my Uncle’s son who was born in Australia but his parents are from Nepal. He, 9 years, speaks Nepali language rarely but mostly prefers to speak in English as he was nurtured in an English speaking country. His parents try to teach him Nepali language but he does not pay attention to learning Nepali. his parents are worried about his ability to learn national language. When he speaks Nepali, he gets confused and uses wrong words and then other people around him laughs. It creates a sense of comic but its really a serious issue as bilingual skills embrace greater significance in the life.

By: Meera Panthee

Meera Panthee — Wed, 08 Nov 2017 09:49:00 +0000

I have actually seen my nephew in Australia who is third grade student. His upbringing and nurturing in Australia has helped him build his strong accent in Australian English and his academic strides are excellent as well but the way he communicates with his grandparents is a bit weird as he says, ‘I’m Australian, I speak in English.’ The feeling of hatred is somehow mixed in his voice. I believe, he has to learn to respect Nepali though English language is used for communication.

By: Xi Yang

Xi Yang — Sun, 05 Nov 2017 05:01:00 +0000

In reply to X_C_X. I share the same opinion with you. I think it is necessary to speak English in certain occasions, we should speak English when we are in the classroom as we are learning English, also we should use English to communicate with people from other countries since we are in Australia and English is recognized as a second or global language for the foreigners. However, when we are with our friends who come from the same country in a causal or daily conversation (for example, a Chinese speaks Chinese to his/her Chinese friends in the street), I believe that we have the right to speak our mother tongue.

By: Sara

Sara — Mon, 30 Oct 2017 07:32:00 +0000

Those children in the dialogue sounds similar to my reaction, attitude and motivation when l was 8-13 years old. I remember three factors influenced the lack of interest, my father was the teacher, a few of my siblings were placed in a class level above me and could not use the language outside of the home environment. Especially at that age where social factors and identity is so important to migrant families influenced by the ‘’monolingualism’ of English in schools and children not so much part of an ethnic community at school or extracurricular activities. Keep up this great work.

By: TDV

TDV — Fri, 27 Oct 2017 05:54:00 +0000

Thank you for your interesting post. I totally agree that it is very difficult to teach children both English and their home language. And I also agree to the point that we need to concern about children’s attitude of learning their home language. I am living with an Indian family. They have two daughters, one is 7 and one is 8. While the younger one can speak Indian, the other can not. I asked their mom why the younger can not speak Indian, she said that because she did not want to learn. According to this story, I can conclude that children’s attitude is one of agents impacting on learning their home language.

By: V.ca

V.ca — Fri, 27 Oct 2017 01:14:00 +0000

This happens quite often for many of my cousins in different parts of the world! I have cousins in Thailand, the USA, and here in Australia who no longer use their home language. At a young age, they were indeed taught about them but because they rarely use it outside of their house, they forget it easily. Especially the younger ones among us, they can’t even understand the language anymore. This is quite sad because I can still see Chinese children usig their home language outside but Filipino kids? “English is the most important.”

By: Ulfath Sadia

Ulfath Sadia — Wed, 25 Oct 2017 22:17:00 +0000

Thank you for sharing this interesting topic. It is very true that in Australia or any other native English speaking countries the bilingual parents struggle to maintain their native language legacy with their children. It is because the kids are surrounded by an English speaking environment and use of the home language sometimes makes them uncomfortable. I often see the parents asking their kids to speak in the native language buy the children do not listen as they feel uncomfortable. I feel that parents should actively participate in communication in HL with the children as HL is equally important as English is.

By: Khalid

Khalid — Mon, 23 Oct 2017 08:12:00 +0000

I agree with your ideas. Preserving the HL of migrants’ children is an important issue, and it should be considered by not only the family but all social structures around it such as schools, teachers and even local people. However, explaining the importance of protecting HL for children is quite difficult as they need to learn English in order to engage themselves in the new society where they will create their friends and their lives. Children could understand this importance of bilingualism effectively when it comes from various parts, as you mentioned, and they will have the reason of speaking and using their HL in some situations.

By: Hayu Austina

Hayu Austina — Mon, 23 Oct 2017 06:48:00 +0000

Thank you for bringing up this topic. It is very interesting when you mention that both parents and children are active agents in perceiving the importance of maintaining HL especially because there is often a gap between parents’ value and children’s value about HL. I think parents need to build active communication with the children to know how they feel about speaking HL and parents need to create positive atmosphere to use HL with their children. This can be done through several activities such as introducing home country’s food, songs, and places. Parents can also set up activities in which children can interact in their HL to their community such as picnics or calling families who speak the HL.

By: Katherine Douglas

Katherine Douglas — Thu, 19 Oct 2017 05:26:00 +0000

I enjoyed reading this article about Home Language maintenance. I think the example of children feeling embarrassed about using their HL in public is interesting. “Because I don’t want anyone to think I’m weird,” shows that a child feels he/she must conform to the Australian standard of using English. Non-conformity is a vital part of everyone growing up – if everyone was the same, how boring that would be?! I think parents can help their children embrace their uniqueness as they grow older – by using both their HL and English, and emphasising that their child’s HL and culture is a unique and precious gift to offer other people – now and in future.

By: Nancy

Nancy — Thu, 19 Oct 2017 04:57:00 +0000

Thank you so much for sharing us such an interesting study. My friend moved to Australia with his family when he was around 5 years old. We communicate in our HL despite the fact that he barely speaks and understands HL. Once I told him that “I can speak English and it is easier for us to talk in English. Why you insist on using our HL to communicate”. He said he loved our HL and wanted to find someone to practice HL since he does not have any friends who speak the same HL as him and more importantly, his parents neither sent him to HL school nor spoke and taught him HL. In this case, lack of exposure to HL and lack of parents’ language attitudes and investment attribute mostly to my friend’s low level of HL proficiency. Needless to say, both parents and children play a vital in maintaining and preserving HL in bilingual context.

By: Kris Nguyen

Kris Nguyen — Tue, 17 Oct 2017 08:47:00 +0000

After reading this article, I have a few opinions in mind that might be useful or interesting for every to think about. I have two cousins whose parents are Vietnamese and were born in Japan. Their parents were “boat people” who came to Japan with very limited Japanese, or I can say zero Japanese. Although the two girls were born in Japan, from one to two year old, their first words were some simple Vietnamese such as “ba” (dad), “mẹ” (mom), and “ăn” (eat). However, they started to pick up Japanese very rapidly since they had been surrounded by Japanese people, in school, in the neighbourhood and in their daily life. What I want to point out here is that the way the two girls develop their Vietnamese is vastly different from each other. Kanna – the older sister, is very fluent in her HL – Vietnamese, but Suzu – the younger one is not quite good. The similarity here is that their parents use 100% Vietnamese at home, but somehow Suzu prefers to speak Japanese to her sister. The reason why Suzu does such thing is that to her, Vietnamese is really hard to learn, and she cannot get the tones and intonation correctly. On the contrary, her older sister Kanna is tremendously interested in Vietnamese as she is willing to speak to their parents in Vietnamese, watch Vietnamese shows, make Vietnamese jokes (sometimes bad jokes) and she feels that being able to speak Vietnamese as a second language is a blessing. She sometimes jokes about talking bad about people in Vietnamese in front of Japanese is really convenient and fun. From this, my point is that each child has their different views on speaking their HL and that we should encourage them and inspire them to speak HL. It might be imperfect HL, but through the HL, they are able to keep their heritage and the culture from where they are born.