A question of language- what would you choose ?

[CC1981]

I learnt Kannada' date=' English and Hindi - in that order. Hindi was the 3rd language. We have a similar dilemma ar home. wifey's mother tongue is Telugu. Mine's Kannada. We speak Kannada, Hindi and English at home. My kid picked up English as he learnt it in the day-care. We were at odds as what to teach him first. But he couldn't pickup any of Kannada, Hindi or Telugu. We didn't enforce him so much, we talked in our language - he responds in English. We were ok as long as he understood our language. But the kid doesn't want to talk in our language. Some dads and moms go to the extent of not responding to their kids unless they speak their language. Guess, we were not that totalitarian. But the kid takes the easy way out and won't learn to speak. Now, when we visit India everybody tries to speak in English to the kids too. So, he never gets to learn to speak the Indian languages.[/quote'] Thank you- atlast, someone from a near-identical scenario. Frankly, teaching kids multiple language here is a chore. One aspect of our society is that we are very social and sports-active in the youth stage. Kids have all sorts of group-activities, little leagues, sunday leagues, music camps, etc etc. that it is hard to focus on languages and the rest of the academics as well as do all these kid things.. IMO, a large difference in our societies and the distinct advantage of the western society is the nurture of kids : by being involved with a large group of people in a year to year or team to team basis from a very young age leads to amazing levels of social cohesiveness and inter-relatedness here, which is very much lacking in the indian socities, where children have a more introverted upbringing ( even the extroverted ones- how often do they do stuff with out-of-moholla kids or kids outside their 'gang of friends' ?) With an eye to that, the language scenario does pose a significant problem. Thankfully (or hopefully) i am not going to have to think really hard on this topic for a long long time. :hatsoff: