hello alistair how are you today welcome to all ears english
thank you very much lindsay it's an absolute pleasure to be here i'm doing great yeah this
is fun i'm excited to have you on the show today and to have our listeners kind of tap into your
knowledge and life experience guys today on the show we have alistair budge from the podcast
english learning from for curious minds great and today alastair we're going to talk a little bit
about raising kids in a multi-lingual household so tell us your story we're also going to learn a
little bit of what we can learn from multilingual kids so what you guys our listeners can understand
and kind of take on as your methods about what kids do i'm so excited because kids definitely
learn languages in a totally different way from adults don't they alistair uh i think they
certainly do but i think there's a lot of things that we adults can learn from kids yeah so tell us
your story first of all tell us about your family where do you live you know what are you guys up to
sure so as you might be able to tell from my accent i am originally from the uk from just south
of london but i i met an italian lady um and got married and moved to a tiny country called malta
which lots of people ask me where is malta um some people think it's part of italy some people think
it's part of spain it is in fact its own country and it's uh just directly south from sicily
um to the south of italy uh right in the middle of the mediterranean wow yeah yeah i've been
here for five years now um and i have a little a little boy he's two and a half years old and um
we are bringing him up bilingually so i speak english to him and my wife speaks italian
and he's he's two and a half so he's still he's still learning um but it's been a really
interesting experience to see how a child manages two languages and how um just how
amazing kids can be at compartmentalizing things and doing things that we adults find
difficult and spend lots of time learning for them it just comes almost naturally absolutely
you know i've always envied kids in the way they think they're so i think the word is uninhibited
right they're so uninhibited because they haven't even gotten especially at two i imagine your son
obviously hasn't gotten to the point where that self-consciousness comes in right my mom is
actually a child psychologist we should have her on this show so she can tap in to tell us when
when that happens but what did you think when you kind of formed your family how
this would go like what did you expect and then i want to go into your tips here but
i'm curious about that what did you imagine this would be did you think it would be hard
easy what were your thoughts so i um i actually had bilingual cousins growing up my my auntie
um married a french man okay and my cousins were bilingual french and english and i they
were a little bit younger than me and i always thought it was very uh it was firstly cute when
they would you know use a french word in english or english word in french um but also absolutely
amazing because these these four children now have this this fantastic gift of being able to
speak two languages fluently without ever ever studying really um so so i thought if if there's
a way that you can give a child the the gift of two languages rather than rather than just one
what an amazing thing to be able to do um and it also allows that child to be able to connect with
their different cultures in a way that is not so easy to do if you just speak one language i
love that it's so true yeah yeah and i think especially for um for parents um who have
grandparents who don't necessarily speak the other languages it's really important if possible for
the kids to be able to speak the language that the grandparents speak because then you can have
you can have a level of connection that is just um deeper than sign language and
smiles and cuddles and stuff i love it it's so true i mean and also just not to mention that
you're you know the greatest gift you can give a child is not just you know a language and b
language it's the ability to learn any language and if a kid has done that from a very young age
they can now go learn chinese or whatever they need to to keep up with the world economy in
the future that's way down the line but what a wonderful gift that's fantastic
i love that that's inspiring okay so let's get into it so then alastair for our listeners who may
be raising kids in that multilingual household or they may just want to learn a few things from kids
like your child right who have learned how to do this who learn in a different way what are three
tips that you could give them today well let me first just start by saying i'm i'm certainly not
the world's greatest expert on raising bilingual children but i can't but i'm very happy to
to share my my experience and what has worked and what does not work one thing that one thing that
i think is super important and from everything i've read and everyone i've spoken to seems to be
very important is to be consistent so if you have you have one parent who speaks one language they
they consistently speak that that language and to not to not mix things up um and and in fact my my
wife and i have had to get a bit more disciplined in this because previously we would speak a mix of
english and italian to each other and now we have to be a little bit more uh a little bit more rigid
and strict with our own language because otherwise it's confusing to a two-year-old they just just
don't know what's what's actually happening interesting so just to clarify just make sure
i understand so you mean that when you're with your wife in the house and your child's around you
speak in english to her and to him and then she speaks back in italian is that what you mean or
kind of yeah to the child so if i'm speaking to my child i will speak only in english and
if she's influenced him she'll speak only in only in italian even if he responds in
in a different language you respond in the language that you have started i see i see
and then what if he's kind of around and then you two are talking to each other what language does
that end up being it does that is because he's listening right kids are sponges they're always
listening how does that work how does that work so that's an excellent question and we
haven't really figured out a proper rule for that yet because we speak a mixture between the two of
us we speak mainly mainly english and sometimes when he hears me speaking italian he kind of looks
with this slightly strange face he's like what's going on there um yeah and uh
so we haven't got a proper rule for that yet um i think it's nice for it's nice for
kids to know that parents can speak both languages and that they can have that kind of
fluidity i think that's an important thing too yeah i love that well i like that so the first
tip is discipline right and i think that's so important because even though kids are sponges
and they learn in a little bit of a different way not obviously in an academic way i think when it
comes to learning languages setting up conditions and being disciplined is so key so i love that
uh so that's number one so setting the rules you know who what language are you going
to speak to your child and sticking to that what would be your second tip here alastair
my second tip is is more a tip on what language learners can take from can take from from children
and certainly what i've seen yeah with my own channels is to to listen out more for
sounds rather than individual words and let me just explain this um in a little bit more detail
yeah so um i was listening to a podcast the other day uh i think it's called deeply human where
there was a lady who's an expert on accident accidents and pronunciation talking about
why kids often have such um such relative ease at um at pronouncing words and uh kind of they don't
have accents in different languages right um and her theory on this the theory that she was talking
about was because kids are listening out for particular sounds rather than focusing on the word
and if you're focusing on a particular word you're projecting your own idea of how it should be
pronounced based on your native language whereas if you're just focusing on the sound of what's
being said then you're much more likely to be able to recreate that sound and i can tell you a funny
uh anecdote about this is that um uh my wife and i heard a recording of our son speaking serbia
at nursery and i'm not serbia my wife is not serbian no one we know is serbian but he has a
serbian teacher at his um and his nursery at his kindergarten and uh she would occasionally speak
uh words in serbian to him and he was there kind of speaking the back parroting them back
apparently with a perfect accent in serbian amazing and this is him you know like i'm sure
any other child is doing i'm not trying to claim that my son is right but uh but the fact that
this child is listening out for the sounds rather than focusing on the words he doesn't know what
he's saying he's just focusing on the sounds so i think there's certainly a lesson for the
english learners there and people who aren't conscious about their pronunciation uh is
to focus on the sound of what you're actually hearing rather than worrying so much about the
the construction of the word yeah i love that tip and that's a that's a funny story i i would have
been amazed right you must have been shocked like whoa oh my gosh what's happening uh guys this is a
great tip right just to highlight what you said you know when we use vocabulary words and we go
and we listen for them we look for them we're we're like filtering the new language through
our old frames of our own language whereas if we can be more of a kid listening for those sounds is
kind of a more simple way to learn but a more pure way to learn in a way isn't it i would definitely
agree with that yes yeah i love this all right so i'm excited to hear your third tip then
so the tip number three is is also related to um to what language learners can take from kids
um and that's really just to take joy in language um it's it's a really funny thing to see how how
a child could enjoy discovering new words and uh connecting with new sounds in in an absolutely uh
amazing way that he hears a new sound or he is a new word it doesn't matter whether it's in english
or if it's in italian and has big smiles and he wants to he wants to repeat these sounds so so i
think the more um the more language learners the more listeners to to this show can just take joy
in in the process of learning the process of discovering new words and phrases i think that
will be a very important part and people can get a lot of success by kind of being more like a child
in that respect oh i love that that's beautiful i love it and you know this goes along with our
whole idea of connection not perfection because you know maybe just seeking the joy in the moment
of connection is the second step right the first step is the joy in the actual learning to learn
right i mean that smile that comes on your son's face and just wanting to acquire something new and
having a sense of wonder like a kid so that's your assignment for today guys we want to get you to go
out there in the world and find the joy of just learning and you know i think a lot of times if
we're stuck in our textbooks in our rooms this may not be as joyful so that's why you know we want to
encourage you to go out and find new more joyful ways to discover the language not just learn it
i love it so good alistar thank you for these three tips this has been fantastic anything else
that you'd like to share with our listeners as a closing sure so uh as lindsay said i have a
podcast it's called english learning for curious minds you can find it wherever you get your
podcasts spotify apple podcasts or whatever and so if you would like to to listen to that then just
search english learning for curious minds in your favorite podcast app yeah so we want to encourage
you guys to follow alastair show check it out go and enjoy that what do you cover on your show
alistair just give us a little sense of because your topics are are interesting they're different
you dig into all sorts of things in history tell us a little bit about what you cover on your show
sure so the thing to do is to open up your favorite podcast app or just google and search
english learning for curious minds and you should find the podcast there we make episodes on a real
wide range of subjects everything from the curious history of tea through to the real peaky blinders
so i would love for anyone listening to this to go and check that out okay great it was great meeting
you despite the connections all right take care connection yeah exactly all right bye take care