Dear Diary,
My daughter does not speak her mother tongue and we often get criticised for this to the extent that people are telling us how to bring up our children and question our parenting.
We have tried to encourage it in our house, but both my husband and I speak English at home and she has been going to nursery from a really early age. I understand the importance of retaining our heritage but she really refuses to speak to us in our language despite understanding it, but comes home speaking French.
I do however feel a sense of pride when parents of children who only speak an Asian language talk of how difficult their children find settling into nursery. My daughter settled in find because she could communicate!!! Touche!!!
I feel that bilingualism is only effective in households where the mother tongue is strong, either by living in a exteded family household where grandparents are speaking it or where one parent only speaks in the mother tongue.
We have been advised to send our three year old to Saturday school so she can learn how to speak her native language. However, I am also thinking that she has enough to do and isn’t her native language English – this is what we speak at home.
It does make me sad that she cannot communicate with my grandparents but hell, my gradparents have lived here for over 40 years and cannot speak English. They cannot communicate with some of their grandchildren let alone great grandchildren.
I do feel we are responsible for the loss of our language, however, my husband and I come from households where English is dominant so it isn’t all our fault.
Bunty
The Chatterjis Blog 