My son is now 6 years old if you count age the way they do in the US of A. When he was first born I was super gung ho to teach him Korean and have him grow up bilingual. When he was a mere 3-months old, we went to Koreatown in New York City where I bought all manner of Koreaspeak language aids: Hangeul puzzles, word books, flash cards, you name it. I put Post-It Notes on everything in the house with both the English and the Korean word for it. I was committed.
At first it seemed to work well enough and it was quite the novelty to have him show off his Korean words for friends and family. It even got to the point where I had to provide his pre-school with a short list of Korean words that he used regularly so the teachers would know what he was talking about.
Sadly, my commitment to my son's bilingualism went the way of Seven Card Stud and the proverbial Sunday drive. I lost motivation, it was hard to keep the Korean up with the amount of English he was learning, and there was nobody else besides me to help. My only Korean friends at the time suggested I put him in their church's Saturday Korean language program. I came up with all kinds of excuses not to do so. My primary reason against it, if you can believe this, was that the church was too far away. Google maps says the distance is 8.6 miles (13.8 KM). Pitiful.
Anyway, what's done is done and my son has forgotten all but a few words of Korean. Of the few Korean words that do remain, you'll most frequently hear him refer to his manpart as his "gochu." (Imagine the confused look on the faces of the other first graders at recess when those thugs Donovan and River are trying to convince my son that it's called a "wiener" and my son insists it's a "gochu.")
My sweet angel of a daughter recently finished potty-training. After a particularly successful visit to the toilet she proudly announced: "Daddy, I went pee-pee on the big potty and wiped my own gochu."
What have I done?
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7 comments:
I think it's very dubious whether teaching kids a language they will never use is possible. English is an exception because there are lots of opportunities to be exposed to English words. Your kids, I presume, are never exposed to Korean culture.
In my extended family, we speak three languages (Urdu, Punjabi, and Pashto). Everyone speaks Urdu all the time, but my mom and her family like to speak Pashto sometimes, mostly to gossip. They've tried teaching it to kids, but it'll never work, because there are no opportunities to speak it.
White Rice, your commitment to teaching your son Korean is very admirable. I especially enjoyed the last anecdote about your daughter referring to her private part as "gochu". haha...very cute.
Something like bilingualism, I have realized, can never be forced on children. This type of topic is of particular interest to me as I have a degree in linguistics and I've studied these types of examples for years. As Adeel points out, not having opportunities definitely contributes to the lack of retaining it, but more importantly is the interest the person has in the language. I'm the youngest of 5 children (Korean family), the only child who was born in the USA, yet I'm the only one who speaks conversational Korean because I had a strong interest in learning it. I took classes in college and worked in Korea for a couple of years. My siblings...they don't even know the difference between the different greetings in Korean and they were born in Korea. But then again, my siblings have grown up with mainly non-Korean friends are all married to non-Koreans now.
If your child has an interest in things Korean, he (and your daughter) can always pick it up again and learn when they are older. By the way, just curious...are you Korean? The children's mother...is she Korean? Without any kind of environment where the child hears it all the time will be difficult (as Adeel has pointed out).
Sadly, my two have emphatically rejected their Korean heritage for now. They're probably absorbing some of what their mother says, but they won't be fluent anytime soon.
Adeel, I don't know about 'never' using a language, but certainly learning a very infrequently used language is possible in children. And LastnameKim, while 'forced' is a rather strong way of putting it, bilingualism can certainly be foisted on children. As someone who had French foisted upon him as a child in a very un-French part of Canada, I know this to be true first-hand. My mother simply enrolled me in a French immersion program offered by the board of education. It is just a matter of having the complete environment provided to make it so. And from the child's point of view, it was just the way it was to me. I wanted to communicate in the environment in which I found myself. That meant learning French, so I did. Now I was good at it, and had an affinity for it, and eventually enjoyed the advantages it provided me. And my brother didn't, so when my mother eventually came to us and offered us the choice of continuing, I did and my brother did not. But I knew plenty of children who were not offered such a choice and still learned the language despite not really being interested. Do my classmates and I use French now? Not many of us. And I can only speak for myself when I say that, although I was at one time fluent, I cannot claim it now. Yet my French comes back quickly when I meet someone who speaks French and I take the opportunity to use mine. It's not impossible, it just needs probably more support than one person can simply muster on one's own in order to accomplish it.
@LastnameKim: I am a white American. Wife is the same. And I live in a smallish town where I have next to no Korean friends. There are very few opportunities for me to practice Korean. Even fewer for my precious offspring. I still debate with myself on how badly I want to try to create those opportunities...
I think it's way cool that despite having had no Korean heritage by blood (but certainly a Korean connection nonetheless) you were trying to teach your child Korean even though you weren't in Korea. You could still give it a go.
chiming in late but I can't help but smile at this post. Kudos White Rice for even trying! The thought is what counts, right? If not, the gochu comment makes it all worth while
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