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When your child speaks a language you don’t
- DavidSJ 12y agoYour children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. ... http://www.katsandogz.com/onchildren.html http://www.katsandogz.com/onchildren.html
- StevePerkins 12y agoJust curious why you chose to truncate a few lines away from the finish, rather than simply pasting the poem in its entirety? Was it because the last few lines take a vaguely-religious turn, and you thought the audience here would be hostile? I have no strong opinion either way there, I just find the edit interesting.
- DavidSJ 12y agoIt's not because I thought the audience would be hostile, but I don't like those last few lines (mainly because of that turn), and think it's a better poem without them. Do you think it's better to leave it intact?
- true_religion 12y agoI'd agree with you. The last few lines add a completely new agent and change the meaning of the poem.
- le_lenny_face 12y ago>change the meaning of the poem What? Those lines are the poem!
- ohjesusthatguy 12y agoIn the short time I've been reading HN, it's become clear that its readership likes to think of itself as more enlightened than the average mouthbreathing yokel. It doesn't mean they don't have their own orthodoxy, though, and religion is one of those things We Don't Acknowledge Around Here. Hell, I'm an atheist and I would have added the last lines anyway[0]. Of course, he didn't attribute the poem to the author anyway so we're supposed to imagine he wrote it, right?[1] [0]http://www.katsandogz.com/onchildren.html http://www.katsandogz.com/onchildren.html - the first thing I ran across, but at least the author's name is on it. EDIT: hey, he finally did the same google search I did! [1]http://nedroidcomics.tumblr.com/post/41879001445/the-internet http://nedroidcomics.tumblr.com/post/41879001445/the-interne...
- DavidSJ 12y agoI included the link in your zeroeth reference in my original post, well before anyone had replied. I had no intention to take credit for the poem, and assumed most readers here were smart enough to infer authorship from the link I included. Please, a little more charity in interpretation and a little more attention to detail would go a long way in keeping discourse friendly here.
- ohjesusthatguy 12y agoSays the guy editing poetry because he doesn't agree with the sentiment. Sure, I'll go easier on you next time.
- DavidSJ 12y agoI omitted the last few lines while including an ellipsis to indicate I had done so, and including a link to the original so people could see the full poem (as well as authorship) for themselves. I don't think I changed the meaning of the part I quoted, so I think the omission was fair, though I was conflicted about doing it since there really were only a few more lines remaining. Your accusation that I deliberately didn't name the author in order to take credit was false and assumes bad faith, especially given that, contrary to your assertion, the link to the full poem with named author was in my original post. I haven't seen a retraction or apology from you for that assertion despite its demonstrable inaccuracy, nothing but the assumption of bad faith and hostility. It's possible to express disagreement without either, which is what has generally made Hacker News discussions great. You can disagree with me without assuming every possible bad thing about me, and with a good faith desire to reach common understanding. I'll let you get the last word since I don't want to turn this into a flame war, but please be civil. Take care.
- joshuacc 12y agoI don't know about StevePerkins, but since I identified the last couple of lines you pasted as derived from The Book of Psalms[1], the poem already seemed to have taken the religious turn. :-) https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+127%3A3-5&version=NIV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+127%3A3-5...
- melvinmt 12y agoUhm.. the book is titled "The Prophet" so I would think "that turn" is core to the message of the book.
- jobu 12y agoThanks! Great poem, and in many ways I see it in my kids. On the flip side I sometimes feel like this as a parent: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=3659 http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=3659 (minus the last two panels)
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- KFW504 12y agoIt seems there may also be an additional (and potentially larger) cultural element here that goes beyond language, though it would be less pronounced at such an elementary age. Further, it would be interesting to explore how this family's experience maps to first-generation American families in the US.
- e40 12y agoI kept waiting for the payoff from the title. It never arrived. It's not the language her daughter speaks at daycare, it's that she's at daycare. That's the cause of this. Same thing happened to my son and he went to an English-speaking daycare. They grow apart from you, for a reason.
- revmoo 12y agoNo kidding. This article just ends. Very pointless
- emodendroket 12y agoYou found yourself smiling and nodding at daycare teachers who were saying things you could understand less than half of?
- Spearchucker 12y agoI'm German, and speak that with my son. My son's mother is French, and she uses that with my son. She and I speak English when we converse. He goes to a bilingual French/English nursery school, which has mostly French expats' kids in it, and (happily) four kids that also speak German. We never really discussed this when my son was born - it just happened, because doing it any other way was alien enough to not enter our heads. Seems to be the norm in Europe. Yes, I struggle with French (his mum's German is pretty reasonable). I have a secret weapon though - I'm also native-fluent in Afrikaans, which I use when I scrape a shin, drive angry, or tease. Being fluent in three languages never seemed like a big deal - my mother spoke seven. It is a big deal when you speak to a Brit about it, or to an American. I guess when you're used to chicken, beef might seem a little odd.
- solve 12y agoThat babies can learn multiple languages with ease is a surprise to no one in the world. Only surprise is that education systems around the world continue to waste so many years of people's lives trying to teach them additional languages when they're teenagers, instead of having done the bulk of the work when they were babies, the way that nature's been doing it successfully for tens of thousands (or more) years.
- TazeTSchnitzel 12y agoWhat works for babies does not necessarily for adults. L1 and L2 acquisition are quite different.
- lordnacho 12y agoI'm the kid of parents who didn't speak my nursery's language, and the parent of a kid who also speaks a different language at nursery. It's really not a big deal. They may speak a little slower, but they get it. I was a little worried a few months ago when my kids wasn't speaking well, but it's come on very suddenly. One thing I think about is immersion. When I was a kid, there was only one TV station, and it showed stuff in Danish. You couldn't get away from learning the language when you spent all day speaking it with other kids, and then going home and watching TV in the same language. Nowadays, you can get TV in just about any language you like. I wonder if it makes a difference.
- ekidd 12y agoMy wife is a native French speaker, and she's always spoken French to the kids. Unlike the author of this story, I've never really felt like I was getting left behind. Before the kids were born, I spent a while studying an Assimil course (a fine course, from a French publisher, for people who like to learn mostly through osmosis with some notes). Afterwards, I plowed my way through 450 pages of a French non-fiction book, understanding maybe 75%. So when my wife started speaking French to the kids, I could kinda-sorta follow. Several years later, I decided to improve my French. I forced myself to speak it as much as possible, and I read another 10,000 pages (about 40 novels' worth). I also bought DVD box sets of easy series and watched them straight through. Happily, my brain decided, "Oh, so it's French or nothing. Better learn some French, then." Today I watch French TV and read French novels without much trouble. I can converse with French preschoolers, but adult conversation is a bit tricker—my spoken vocabulary is more like that of a bookish 9-year-old than that of an educated adult. On a good day, this doesn't slow me down much. I could probably work as a programmer in French, but I'd have trouble negotiating a consulting deal without more immersion. Ironically, I currently speak French better than my kids do, because I get more exposure. Given the right environment, the brain seems to adapt.
- LeonRobrotsky 12y ago> Given the right environment, the brain seems to adapt. In high school, I had a German immigrant, fresh out of college as an instructor. The moment one stepped into that classroom to the moment one stepped out, nothing but German. Hell, it didn't stop there. If you tried to talk to him at all, in or out of the classroom, he wouldn't acknowledge you unless you spoke to him in German, and he would only speak German to you. Strangely enough, the German students were the only ones capable of holding conversation in a foreign language. I graduated in 2008, haven't 'used' German in 7 years, but I still find myself thinking in German every once in a while. Immersion (even for ~50min, 5 days a week) is easily the best way to learn. I don't know why anyone wastes their time with anything else. EDIT: Hah, I just remembered how he never cared that we talked to each other during class about whatever, just that it was in German, not English.
- DasIch 12y ago
- mmaldacker 12y agoIf you want to read up more on this, look up third culture kids. The wikipedia page is a good start.
- gclaramunt 12y agotl;dr: being a parent is totally different from what you plan to be as a parent (and that's actually awesome)
- ColinWright 12y agoThe military have a saying: No plan survives contact with the enemy. Seems appropriate.
- mathieuh 12y agoI suffer from the opposite problem: my mother speaks a language I don't. She is French, but despite giving me a French name never spoke to me in French while I was growing up. She'd speak to her family in French, but never to me or my brother. I've studied to B2 level on my own and managed to osmose a fair ability to distinguish words and sounds, but I'll never be able to get the native-level fluency I could have. It's something we both regret.
- magic_beans 12y agoI could never understand how this is possible. If you have a child, wouldn't it be natural to speak to her in your native tongue? I would NEVER speak to my child in anything other than English, even if I lived in France, if only to avoid propagating non-native grammatical errors.
- amyjess 12y agoReminds me a story a friend and former coworker told me. She's of Cambodian descent, and whenever she has to talk to her mom, her mom can only understand her English if she affects this incredibly thick Cambodian accent. I always found that interesting, having to put on a fake accent so people can understand you.
- mrrrgn 12y agoIt's the same for me in French. I can understand Americans (who have a thick accent) much more easily than natives. I think it's because my brain can tune into the palette of sounds produced by Americans more readily. Some sounds that are very distinct to natives sound the same to me; it artificially inflates the number of homophones I have to deal with.
- pluma 12y agoKindergarten isn't day care. Kindertagesstätte (or KiTa for short) are day care. Kindergarten is equivalent to pre-school.
- jkot 12y agoI know this situation too well. It gets worse when child is asking for pacifier, favorite tv show, playground etc. Also child does not pronounce clearly, and its very hard to understand for non-native speaker. I wonder why author had not learned German in advance, they had almost 2 years time. English speaker can pickup German in 5 months, very similar and easy language.
- te_platt 12y agoI have a friend who grew up in a home where her mom and grandma spoke to her only in Spanish and her dad only spoke to her in English. She was surprised when she went to Kindergarten and her teacher spoke English. She thought Spanish was what women spoke and that English was for men.
- tsuyoshi 12y agoI am American and my wife is Cambodian. We live in a Cambodian neighborhood in the United States. We have a daughter, born in Cambodia, who is now 4. I speak to her in English and her mother (and everyone else in the neighborhood) speaks to her in Cambodian. Until she started preschool last September, virtually everyone except myself talked to her in Cambodian. Not too long ago, she asked me why some person (I think it was a waiter at a restaurant) spoke English and not Cambodian. For her, everyone spoke Cambodian, and then some of them also spoke English. I tried to explain that in America, most people actually speak English and not Cambodian. After that explanation, she kept asking "is this place America?" everywhere we went for a few days.
- jedc 12y agoI know a German couple where both parents speak English and German. (Though the wife is much more comfortable with English than her husband.) The way they interact with their daughter is that the father always speaks German to her, and the mother always speaks English. At one point, the mom had to tell her daughter that "you have to have daddy read you that book, because it's in German." :) It's working pretty well so far for their daughter; she's certainly comfortable and fluent (for her age) in both languages.
- mootothemax 12y agoShe thought Spanish was what women spoke and that English was for men. I know a woman who grew up in Germany, and whose parents spoke Polish at home. As a child she was convinced that German was for children, and Polish is the language you speak when you've grown up.
- frooxie 12y agoGeneralizing from a single case can be tricky. I read this somewhere: "I had a friend growing up whose mom is white and dad is black. Apparently when he was little, he asked his mother why white people had vaginas."
- laurentoget 12y agoAs a parent of a bilingual 18 month old, my experience is totally different. I speak english most of my day at work, my son speaks english at daycare, and we speak french together at home. When I get to daycare he immediately switches to french and this feels like we have a shared secret. I left a CD of french songs at the daycare and they play it when he needs soothing. I think this boils down to the fact that I think of myself as an immigrant, not an expat.
- mipapage 12y agoI'm going to share this in case someone finds it useful... I am Canadian and married to a Spanish women and living in Spain. While my son started out sponging up both languages, he eventually took off in Spanish and left English behind. In order to have some form of relationship with him I had to speak Spanish with him. People would lecture me, "oh, give him that gift of English" or "how can you not be speaking English to him?". Now that he is older and has discovered the Internet, he has a need to learn English. And he's learned. I'm sure it was there all along, he went from not speaking English to speaking it in about two weeks. My wife and I would speak English around him, and sometimes I would speak English to him, but it really wasn't until he needed to, like the child in the OP story, that he learned English.
- emodendroket 12y agoYeah, unfortunately kids get pretty clever about this and resist doing language acquisition that isn't necessary.
- mipapage 12y agoWhen I came to Spain a lot of (Spanish) people would give me the "why do we need to learn English?", and then the market crashed. To this day I interact with younger folk who continue this line of thinking; the ones who leave and learn English and find work are going to be much better prepared...
- emodendroket 12y agoWhat I mean by "necessary" is "necessary to a child, for his day-to-day life." Very often kids pick up that Mom and Dad understand (at least to some extent) the local language too and then stop picking up whatever the second language is. Anyway, at least Spanish people are speaking one of the world's most widely used languages... I think the top four are Chinese, French, Spanish, and English, but don't quote me on it.
- ccozan 12y agoThis is almost OK. Wait until you have twin boys, like me. They are 20 months now, grown at home, no day care ( KiTa as in Germany ;Kindergarden is later on). They don't speak, but very few words with a meaning ( mama, papa, apa ). But! Here it comes: they speak between them and communicate using a almost invented language. The language is so strange, because is based on using the same word ( twin 1 uses 'bahdi', twin 2 'budji' - approx phonetic rendering), repeatedly but changing tonality, like in cantonese. It's really amazing to see how they can talk each other and coordinate while playing for hours using this language, me and my wife feel we are completly left out :).
- jskonhovd 12y agoI did the same with my twin. It's quite common from my understanding.
- rm445 12y agoFascinating - do you remember it? (As opposed to being told about it / vague memories-of-memories). Are there any remnants in how you communicate with your twin now?
- munificent 12y agoIdioglossia, very common among twins: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idioglossia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idioglossia
- neurotech1 12y agoIn the 80s there was a group of Russian girls (almost identical, sisters or cousins) that spoke to each other in a strange language. They didn't responded if someone spoke to them in English. It turned out they spoke Russian, but the words and pronunciation young kids use at home is very different to what they teach as Russian in America from textbooks and language tapes. It took a native bilingual Russian speaking doctor to figure out that mystery.
- luxpir 12y agoI can speak two other languages fluently, but I live in England and neither of those two other languages are native. As such, my infant son rarely hears them. I know others in my situation who have given up, resigning themselves to being able to help with language homework. I'm tempted to push on though, much like the (possibly misguided) attempts of a man to speak to his son only in Klingon for the first three years of his life in the 90s. I have already accepted that the result will be along the lines of my son having a passing familiarity with the sounds and basics of the two languages. Better than nothing. -- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon_Language_Institute#d.27Armond_Speers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon_Language_Institute#d.2... // http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/7.08/mustread.html?pg=8 http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/7.08/mustread.html?pg...
- Spearchucker 12y agoFar be it for me to suggest to another how to raise their child. If it were up to me I'd so totally stick with it. The insane pace of development in these early years will never happen again. Another language is another life. The mind is also very good at adaptation, so anything you teach incorrectly today will auto-align/correct when your son is older and experiences that culture for real. What you're doing takes courage. Respect.
- luxpir 12y agoThanks for the encouragement. Did you do something similar yourself? I'll give it a bash, I think, based on your words. Just think of the influence that comment might have had on his future life if it does pay off. Thanks again! Edit: I see from further up the thread you've got a complex situation of your own underway. It's great when you've two native languages at home because English seems to always be an easy third to pick up.
- dmacvicar 12y ago>Viennese daycares—known here as kindergartens—have a very long Eingewöhnungszeit—literally translated as “getting adjusted period” or "acclimatization." Dropping your kid off on Day One while she shrieks "MOMMY!" is looked upon as child abuse. I went over this in Germany (living here since 10 years) and it is just ridiculous. During my second child "acclimatization" after seeing a mother in tears and making progress for her absence in intervals of 5 minutes each day, I realize this long "acclimatization" period was for them, not for the child.
- aklein 12y agoMy 18 month old daughter has a full time nanny who has spoken to her only in Spanish (at our request) since she was 3 months old; my wife and I speak to her only in English, and we don't speak any Spanish. It's been really fascinating to see what my daughter chooses to say in Spanish instead of English: always agua (her first word), siéntate ("sit"), mas ("more"), wacala (spanish slang for "yucky" - for poop)... other words, she can interchange depending on who she speaks to. Sometimes I can't understand her, and can't tell if she's trying to tell me something in Spanish, or her diction just isn't good enough yet. I suspect it's the latter, I think she's already adept enough at recognizing mommy and daddy don't speak Spanish...
- dmacvicar 12y agoMy children (ages 5 and 3) were born and raised in Germany. We only speak spanish at home. They both went to day-care very early. Today they speak like natives. When they play alone or between them, they do it in german, and while I defend myself in german quite good, he corrects me all the time, especially with the right pronunciation. Sad true is, lot of people, including educators are ignorant about multilinguism. They did at some point ask me and my wife to speak german at home with them because they were behind with the language. I will not even mention stupid ideas politicians have had about the topic.
- nzealand 12y agoI don't understand the authors point of view. My toddler is teaching me Spanish. I am not being left behind, I am simply catching up.
- scobar 12y agoThe sentence, "The truth is this: I think Noa is raising us as much as we are raising her." and the paragraph it heads really resonated with me as a parent of a young child. Upon seeing the title, I expected the article to be about the unknown languages infants sometimes seem to invent. We speak two languages to our son, but my wife and I both understand each language quite well. Our son was very vocal as an infant, but less than half of his words were English or Portuguese. He's nearly three now, but he'll still use some of his invented words to unnecessarily lengthen phrases. I imagine this is to mimic adults who express themselves with more words. He may believe that longer phrases are given more consideration as he tends to do this more often when making a request with a small chance of success, like asking for another treat after being told he can only have one.
- gingerlime 12y agoMy wife is Japanese, I'm Israeli, and we both live in Berin, where our son was born. We talk to him in our native language, and between us in English. He goes to the Kita, where they speak only German... He's still fairly young (17 months), so doesn't really talk much, but we can spot a few German words (Ja! Nein). He does seem to understand Hebrew and Japanese when we talk to him, and says one or two words in Hebrew (Aba, means Dad) and in Japanese (Wanwan, means Dog). We're very curious on how things will evolve from here. It's very likely that his German will be his strongest. But we're sure he will understand and can speak with us. Our biggest hope is that he can help translate German for us though ;-)
- blackkettle 12y agowanwan is the sound the dog makes (like ruff-ruff in English). wan-chan is a colloquial term for dog. [just to be a nit-picking ass].
- gingerlime 12y agoI'll make sure to tell it to my son (and my wife!) so he learns things the proper way ;-)
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- needacig 12y agoDoes anyone else think it kind of shameful that the author could live in Austria for 12 years and still speak such poor German? Now you can't understand everything your child is saying. Congrats.