08-01-2010 om 12:12 by Sueli Brodin

I was idly chatting in French with my daughter Naomi after her judo lesson when another little girl asked: “What language are you speaking?” This is a question I’m often asked, especially by children. Is it because they don’t recognise the language, or because they would rather expect us, in keeping with our Asian features, to speak an Asian language instead of French?

I explained to her that I always spoke French with my children because I was French. The little girl, of Asian origins too, smiled and said in perfect Dutch that she also knew Vietnamese. She even said a few words in Vietnamese for me, but when I asked her which language she preferred, she replied without any hesitation: “Dutch”.


My daughter Naomi at judo practice

A few minutes earlier, I had been exchanging New Year wishes with a French man in the hall who also speaks French with his children. Funnily enough, I had asked him the exact same question: “Do your children feel more comfortable speaking French or Dutch?”

He too had answered that it was definitely Dutch. He explained however that he always insisted that they stick to French with him and that he was quite happy with their progress up until now: “So far so good,” he said with a smile.

I’ve been worrying about the subject lately because my own children seem to have decided to stop speaking French with me. They know that I understand Dutch and don’t seem to be bothered anymore to address me in a language which requires more effort. Understandably, one of their big problems is their lack of vocabulary. They simply don’t know the words to express everything they would like to say.


My children reading Dutch comics during our summer holiday in France

It’s a topic I often discuss with foreign friends who are also raising their children bilingually, because we’re all going through similar, more or less successful, experiences.

One Polish friend whose children were born in France has registered her children in a scouting club across the Belgian border in French-speaking Wallonia, so that they get to practice their French with other children.

An American mother said that she lets her children speak to her in Dutch and that she doesn’t worry too much about it, because she knows that as soon as they’re in the US for the summer holiday, her children pick up their English “in no time at all”.


My children learned to play "Jeu de Boules" with French children during our last summer holiday in France

When I once commented with a Swiss German mother that I had noticed that my children would wait for their father to come back from work to really start talking and sharing stories – in Dutch of course – she told me that in order to prevent this as much as possible, she had instituted a new rule at home: “No more Dutch at the dinner table, only Swiss German for the whole family.”

As for me, one thing at least is certain: as much as I can help it, I want to avoid repeating the same type of educational blunder I made with my first child, when I would interrupt and correct him every time he would make a mistake in French. I only realised that this might actually be counter-productive when I heard a language specialist on television warn against this habit, because it gave children the impression that their parent was not so much listening to what they were saying as to how they were saying it. This, he said, could create frustration and eventually cause the children to stop talking to their parent altogether, because they simply wouldn’t find it an enjoyable experience anymore.


My daughter Naomi speaking on the phone with her French aunt

A more subtle, helpful and efficient way to deal with language errors was to simply repeat the children’s message by using the correct words, he advised.

But there are still questions that I haven’t solved yet: What must I do when I see my children struggling to find the words in French? Should I help them with the words and ask them to repeat them afterward? Wouldn’t this feel terribly unnatural and overly didactic? Or should I just let them speak Dutch? What is more important at the end of the day: that they speak French, or that they speak to their mother?


My son Tim and his Dutch school friends

To be honest, I also must admit that I have mixed feelings about the whole subject. I see the positive side of my children fully mastering one language and feeling completely comfortable in it. This is a relationship I don’t quite have with any language, not even with French, which I only learned at the age of four, after Portuguese and English.

I find a special satisfaction in seeing my children play, think and dream in Dutch, and in listening to their soft Limburg accent which makes it sound even more authentic. I often catch myself envying them.

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