We have a Pooh Bear counting dvd that we only play in French and dd loves it. I want to get her some dvds I can play for her in Spanish, but was wondering if it would be confusing if I got her Pooh ones in Spanish? Should we keep Pooh Bear as French speaking and only play Pooh dvds in French, and get other stuff to play in Spanish? Or do you think it doesn’t matter?
I think that it would be fine. If anything it would let your child hear the different sounds of Spanish. We switch between languages a lot, and I’ve often wondered too if I should even be doing that.
Given that many dvds have more than one language on the same dvd, it is quite usual that we listen to the same dvd in multiple languages. I think if anything, it helps the child make the connection between there being different ways (languages) to say the same things, name the same objects. Which is one of the strong points of raising a child bilingually: they learn that a table is not “table” but rather an object with different names, one of which is “table”
Also, I tend to use my son’s loves to attract him to different languages. We rented Bob the Builder at the library in French (also had English on same dvd so we listened to them both alternating) and he loved it, so I got him Bob in Mandarin. He might not have been so fascinated by a Mandarin language cartoon if it wasn’t Bob, which kept him glued to the screen. Same with Dora now. He now can sing a bunch of the Dora songs in Mandarin.
And he had started to reject books I read to him in French (No speak different mama, no like French), so I got a couple Dora books at the library, even though I think they are crappy as far as literature goes (they make much better interactive dvds, and he asks me to read them 3 times in a row, twice a day without complaining it is French.
So if your kid loves Pooh Bear, I’d say, go for Pooh Bear in Spanish! Even get a multilingual dvd if possible, and you get two for one!
I love this topic because I’m multi-lingual myself. I’m one of those people who can recall vividly as early as 1-year old. most of the things I remember most were when I was 4 years old, when we moved from canada to the philippines.
I remember clearly how I switched from english, to tagalog, to visayan and never got confused. I knew exactly when to speak those three different languages. sure sometimes i found myself speaking in tagalog using a visayan accent once in a while but I always knew how it’s supposed to sound. No, I’m not one of those “gifted-and-talented” exceptions to the rule. You should meet the kids I grew up with, normal, and multilingual. Remember, everywhere else outside of the almighty USA, most people speak more than ONE language.
Even speaking in English with my friends was in a different accent as speaking english with my teacher. Children who are multi-lingual just know when to switch and it doesn’t take much analyzing like adults do! Never let anyone convince you about the “confusion” issue… chances are, that person grew up with only one language and didn’t know any better.
My son is 4 months old and when we speak to him, it’s all in tagalog. when i speak to my wife, it’s in english. when we we use sign language, we do both. when we watch dvd’s or read books, we do it in english, french or spanish. my wife is fluent in spanish so, she gets to speak and sing to our son in spanish, i take care of french and italian and boy, he responds really well regardless of the language.
Good Luck and don’t worry!
pidong thanks a lot. Your comments give me great relief since I was afraid that I was pushing too much for my grandson to learn languages. So far he is just starting. We are peruvians so everybody speaks spanish but I speak and read a lot (every time he visits almost 3 times a week) to him in english. Al preschool he is the only one that says the animals in english since next year (3 yr) they will start talking them in english.
My daughter reads to him Winni Pooh in french and everytime he sees her (unfortunately not too often) he asks for that.
He likes an italian book about animals that comes with CD (i dont speak italian).
I am plannig on getting some chinese DVD and was afraid ir was too much but you help me a lot. I am convinced that even though he ios taking longer time to speak, he is learning all the languages.
I have to make my son read this review. He is somewhat afraid that it will not work.
Thanks again.