Afrikaans for kids in Australia

[Navigator]

Thank you Robyn! Baie dankie!! I really enjoyed your post and I take my hat off to you. Afrikaans means so much to the average Afrikaner, and I take my hat off to you for not only supporting your husband, but learning our language, and exposing your daughter to it. It is part of her history, a proud history that she can look back on one day, able to read more about it in her "own" language.

[Guest natalie3]

My little girl is only 14 months now..she will probably be 2 when we arrive in oz..my husband is afrikaans but we speak english at home..of course ouma speaks afrikaans to our daughter but in all honesty i dont see the point..i speak 3 1/2 languages and have found my german to be far more helpful at the strangest of times than afrikaans.

I think my child will benefit far more from learning mandarin as a second language in oz than being fluent in afrikaans and struggling along with the mandarin...

I have noticed time and again how some afrikaans children cant speak a word of english by the time they are 7!..i find this ridiculous as at that age i could speak english,afrikaans,slovak and xhosa!..yes i lost the xhosa and my slovak is very poor...but i "replaced" it with vocational german ...which is handy indeed..

I think any south african is doing their child a serious injustice by thinking "hulle kan engels by die skool leer" ...same with the english kids learning afrikaans..your child arrives at school at the age of 6 and has to literally start a new language from scratch...

I think in the end one must decide what benefit that language will be in your new country ..long term and whether the language is widely used internationally..i feel french and mandarin are definitely the way to go!

Obviously if you have a strong love for your "afrikaans culture" then sure..teach them afrikaans as a home language..thats a cultural thing in my view..we are not so "vas" on our culture (im not afrikaans!)..and at times my afrikaans is better than my husbands!...

[boo]

Even in SA parents find it difficult to decide what language to teach our kids. When my eldest was born we spoke about it alot and actually decided it might be best to make sure he speaks English, but then Afrikaans came naturally although we read a lot of English books. Also Moms and Tots could only fit us into the english class and it soon became clear that my son had absolutely no difficulty with the spoken language changing constantly. He started watching TV mostly in English but still spoke Afrikaans , although some of his first words were English, if I remember correctly. Then suddenly he changed over and I only heard Afrikaans from his mouth, but then again an English "maatjie" would arrive and he would say, without thinking: "come". Then his brother came along and he teaches him Afrikaans, but when Gizmo's English daughter comes over he teaches her English. So after thinking about it long and hard, even after considering going to Australia, we decided to put him in the Afrikaans class when he goes to school. He will pick up English when he needs to and we will help him if that is necessary.

Also, by the way, when my sister-in-law left South Africa for Greece, her little girl was three and I think she was speaking mostly Xhosa and some Afrikaans. She apparently struggled a little bit when she went to a Brittish school, so they helped by speaking English at home in the beginning. She is now 10, speaks Afrikaans, English, Greek, Arabic and French I believe. On holidays in South Africa we are teaching her to read in Afrikaans because she wants to!