Children Learning Languages

Given that over 800 million people have Chinese (Mandarin) as their native language, followed by 450 million people speaking Hindi and around 320 to 350 million earth inhabitants who have Spanish or English as their mother tongue it comes as no surprise that today’s school rate a second, third or even fourth language as important.

Children learning languages

Having learned to speak 6 languages, you might think this came easily due to growing up with a mother whose mother tongue is French and a father whose mother tongue is Italian. It might come as a surprise to hear that they did not teach me those languages. Growing up in the Swiss speaking part of Switzerland my parents decided to stick to one language, being the one that was spoken all around us to avoid confusion in their children’s brains. Knowing now how easy it is for children to pick up different languages I would have happily opted for all three at the same time! Growing up I always heard different languages spoken in my family so I was used to the different sounds and I guess that makes the brain wired for them in the first place.

Languages in School

In school at the age of 6 we were taught to read and write in German. Both of those languages, Swiss and German, are part of the Germanic languages and therefore relating to each other. Given that Swiss is a spoken language only and written material mostly comes in German it is an obvious and logical choice. Swiss can be written but there are no rules and numerous spelling options due to the vast number of different dialects.

Switzerland has four recognized national languages: Swiss, French, Italian and Romanish. In the past when I went to school it was expected to at least speak one other language spoken in Switzerland, so we learned French. Now they have come to understand that the rest of the world and especially the computer world do communicate in English, therefore the third language has been replaced by English, starting as early as grade two at the age of seven. If I think about that it slightly shocks me to remember that at my time English was an elective in year nine! Luckily I enjoyed learning languages and opted for the world language.

By the age of 15 I was already speaking 4 languages. Sounds impressive, doesn’t it? Not necessarily if you realise that Swiss, German and English are all part of the Germanic languages and therefore interrelated. French was the first Romanic and non-phonetic language and therefore a bit of a challenge being used to Swiss and German being phonetic. Phonetic languages represent the sound of the speech with a set of distinctive symbols, each designating a single sound and therefore easy to spell.

In year 11 I choose another elective: Spanish. I literally avoided Italian, probably in an attempt to punish my father for not teaching me in the first place. Spanish is yet another Romanic language and therefore closely related to French. In the end I learned Italian when I was at University and the only challenge was distinguishing it from Spanish as they literally sit next to each other on the language family tree.

Keys in learning a language

From my experience as a German teacher at Sydney University I found that this is one of the keys in learning a language: willingness to experiment, to speak out loud, to imitate and to immerse yourself in the language, be it with tapes or in the country itself. If you allow yourself to imitate other accents you are well on the way to mastering languages.

Want to know more? Have a look at my blog.

Nathalie Himmelrich is the founder of ‘Reach for the Sky Therapy’ on Sydney’s Northern Beaches and specialises in ‘relationship related issues’. She is working with individuals and couples using techniques ranging from Counselling, Neuro Linguistic Programming to Journey Therapy. She supports clients in their personal growth in a supportive and professional environment.

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