• Home
  • Our Shop
  • About Us
    • About MKB
    • Our Shop
    • MKB Board
    • Editorial Board and MKB Administrators
    • Our Contributors
    • For Bloggers: Join MKB
    • Books and Products from Our Members
    • Cultural Resources
    • Contact Us
  • Product Promotion Services
  • Blog Hops & Series
    • Holidays Around the World
      • Martin Luther King Day
      • Chinese New Year
      • Purim
      • Passover
      • Easter Around the World
      • Ramadan
      • Hajj (Eid al Adha)
      • Rosh Hashanah
      • Day of the Dead
      • Diwali
      • Hanukkah
      • Christmas in Different Lands
    • Heritage Months
      • Black History Month
      • Women’s History Month
      • Asian-Pacific Islander Heritage Month
      • Middle Eastern and North African Heritage Month
      • Hispanic Heritage Month
      • Native American Heritage Month
    • Blogging Carnivals
    • Creative Kids Culture Blog Hop
    • Global Learning for Kids
  • Resources for Raising Global Citizens
  • Privacy Policy

Multicultural Kid Blogs

For families and educators raising world citizens, through arts, activities, crafts, food, language, and love.

Multicultural and multilingual fatherhood

June 19, 2015 by Jonathan Ervine

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

To mark Fathers’ Day, I thought I’d reflect on what multicultural and multilingual fatherhood is all about. As the dad of a son who’s recently celebrated his second birthday, I’ve got to say that this is something that I’m still in the process of figuring out. However, my wife and I have certainly tried our best to expose our son to different languages and cultures.

As I mentioned in one of my first ever posts on my own blog, my wife and I have been bringing up our son using both Welsh and English. We live in an area of Wales where the majority of the people speak Welsh as their first language and our son is likely to go to schools where he will be taught in Welsh. As neither of us is originally from Wales, this has brought with it certain challenges.

Reading our son a Welsh language story about Dilys y ddafad (Dilys the Sheep).
Reading our son a Welsh language story about Dilys y ddafad (Dilys the Sheep).

It would have been much easier for my wife and I to have decided to just speak to our son in English, but we decided to think about what would be best for him in terms of both his schooling and being able to mix with other children in the area who will have grown up speaking Welsh as well as English. This has taken us both on a bit of a journey. I started learning Welsh after moving to North Wales in 2007 to take up a job teaching French at Bangor University. Now, using Welsh, English and French on a daily basis is a part of my work that I take for granted.

Having said that, Welsh is perhaps not the easiest language to learn. Indeed, it takes a while before most learners are able to pronounce the name of a local village that claims to have the longest name of any place in the UK. Some places easily roll of the tongue, but this isn’t really true of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. Nevertheless, pronunciation in Welsh is a lot more regular than it is in English.

You just pronounce it the way it’s written… 🙂

Bringing up our son with both languages predominantly involves me speaking Welsh to him and my wife speaking English to him. That said, my wife has also been helping to make sure that our son grows up with both languages by going to a parent and child Welsh class and we’ve both taken him to family events that have been run in Welsh or both Welsh and English.

Our son tends to say quite a lot more in English than in Welsh, probably because he spends more time with my wife than with me due to our respective work arrangements. However, he managed to count to ten in Welsh before he’d managed to do so in English. In addition, there are certain Welsh words that our son regularly uses when he’s speaking English. These include chwarae pêl–droed  (play football) and pili-pala (butterfly). This has led to him confusing some our relatives by coming out with phrases such as ‘I want to chwarae pêl-droed’.

Despite being just under five months old at the time, our son was intrigued by French food on our trip to Brittany in 2013
Despite being just under five months old at the time, our son was intrigued by French food on our trip to Brittany in 2013

As our son grows up, we’d like to exposure him to lots of different cultures, countries and languages. Although he may not remember it, we went to France with him on our first family holiday when he was just under five months old. This summer, we’ll soon be heading back to France and it’ll be fun to see how he responds to the food and hearing a different language. As he grows up, I’d love it if he learned to speak French too although I don’t want to put pressure on him and will probably wait until he’s speaking more Welsh.

We have tried to exposure our son to food from a variety of different places, which has worked fairly well so far. As I’m from Scotland, I am very pleased that he has already had his first taste of vegetarian haggis and that he seems to like it. I’m also hoping that he’ll inherit the love of Indian food that my wife and I share, but we’ve been careful not to give him anything too spicy. He used to be quite keen on lentils and currently likes rice and popadoms, which is a good start. He’s also keen on Chinese food, especially noodles and tofu.

I think we may still have to do a bit of work on his chopstick technique yet..
I think we may still have to do a bit of work on his chopstick technique yet..

As he grows up, I hope that our son gets a taste for all sorts of different cultures. I’m not sure that he’s inherited my love of French films yet, especially as he slept through almost all of Oscar-winner The Artist (…although he was under two weeks old at the time). However, he has watched some early Lumiere brothers films a good few times (…mainly because they’re quite short and one of the most well-known ones features a train). I guess it’s a start!

 

 

 

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailby feather
The following two tabs change content below.
  • Bio
  • Latest Posts

Jonathan Ervine

Jonathan Ervine is from Scotland and lives in Wales with his wife and son. He speaks English, French and Welsh and blogs about topics such as bilingual parenting, babywearing and fatherhood at his blog 'Dad's the way I like it'. You can follow him on Twitter at @j_ervine.

Latest posts by Jonathan Ervine (see all)

  • Let The Summer Games Begin! - August 5, 2016
  • Multicultural and multilingual fatherhood - June 19, 2015
  • Football’s World Cup – more than just a game - April 4, 2014

Filed Under: Multilingualism, Native and Indigenous Cultures, Parenting, Teaching Languages, UK Tagged With: bilingual, English, French, Welsh language

Subscribe to our mailing list

* indicates required

Follow Us!

Follow Us on FacebookFollow Us on Google+Follow Us on TwitterFollow Us on PinterestFollow Us on RSSFollow Us on Instagram

Anti-Bullying Resource FREE Download

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

Grab Our Button!

grab button for Multicultural Kid Blogs
<div class="multicultural-kid-blogs-button" style="width: 200px; margin: 0 auto;"> <a href="https://multiculturalkidblogs.com/" rel="nofollow"> <img src="https://multiculturalkidblogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/button-take-3.jpg" alt="Multicultural Kid Blogs" width="200" height="200" /> </a> </div>
Multicultural Children's Book Day Co-Host

Archives

Copyright © 2023 · Lifestyle Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.Accept Read More
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT