Bilingual Kids

[toonssia]

Hi there!
as a tunisian french mum bilingual myself I would be glad to hear about your experience.
Does your kids speaks tunisian? mine does well she's only 21 months but still she does her dad isn't tunisian but I have the advantage of being the mother and I really understand why we call it mother tongue

Well I know that most of couple here the man is tunisian (no Kris and Hajer I am not forget you how could I) so I was curious to know if they teach tunisian to their kids?

Once again sorry for the writting is not good I am not a native speaker!

Have a nice day

[Kris]

I am at work in Norwich and Hajer is in Tunisia at the moment opening our new office for the last month so my worry will be can the baby speak to me :-(

MMe and Hajer both agreed that we will only speak to the baby in our language after my Turkish friend told me that this worked well but the child took a little longer to speak than other kids.

[ROULLA]

Asselema Toonisia snowahelek sha allah lebeeis.
My children are also mixed they are half Tunisian and half greek.
My daughter understands greek but can only speak arabic as with my son he knows how to speak greek when he wants to but feels really shy in Tunisia to speak i think that he understands more, i speak more than my kids and i can assure you that even though i get by bymself whilst in Tunisia i really dont think that i am that good, would love to be able to speak without it being broken.

[kellyc]

Hi Ya,

I cant relate as havent got children of my own yet! But I have a friend who lives in Sousse who is married to a tunisian and she has a 4 year old boy who is lovely and he speaks good arabic, the thing that I love most is his mum speaks in English to him, his dad in Tunisian. He is so clever already and I remember when he was telling me about his school and said to me 'my dad helps me at school' he then said to his mum in arabic what he had said, he uses bobba to his mum and dad to English people. I envy children as they can adapt so well to languages, my fiances 16 year old niece is my teacher for Tunisian! and she has taught me so much. I just love the language though I need plenty more lessons

[pej]

This is the way they recommend here too, that each parent speak to the child in their own language, if you want the child to be bilingual. So, Kris, make sure someone holds the phone up to her so you get your chancce!

[Kris]

They do but she tries to eat it at the moment

[pej]

ha ha, oh well, she will try to put anything and everything in her mouth for a while to come!

[toonssia]

Well glad to hear there are some kiddies around here!

Kris try to learn tunisian along with baby lol! dont worry about english as she'll learn it anyway being the tongue of the country she's living in! though I've heard about the story that bilingual talks later I dont really agree I think that like for every step each kid has his own rythm (teething, walking, talking...)
Roulla your tunisian sounds great ;-)
Kelly inchAllah you'll have some of your own!
Pej you're right about each speaking his own language but as I have 2 myself I am now introducing her with the second (french)! She's so cute saying "see ya" "hellowwwwwww"

So I am just taking it easy talking to her tunisian and french her dad's talk to her algerian and berber hopefully she'll be fine. As we are both not living in a country speaking our language it is a bit tough...

[toonssia]

Forgot to ask about your kids boys? girls? how old?
Kris I guess it is a little princess maybe younger than my 21months one?
Roulla where do you live?

[pej]

if I may says o on behalf of Kris: take a look in the phote gallery on this site, he posted pics of Sarah when she was just born... not so long ago! I myself have no children, I have been married for over a year but do not live with my husband yet because of visa taking a while to get and other complications... soon inchallah!