From: ahmed@dsg.cs.tcd.ie (Ahmed El-Habbash)
Subject: Re: He's finally arrived
Organization: DSG, Dept. of Computer Science, Trinity College Dublin
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1993 14:20:35 GMT

In <C0JnvE.D2y@imag.fr> oueichek@gram (Ibaa Oueichek) writes:
>  Congratulation for you and for Aziz. May G-D bless the new born babies and
>give hem a better life than we had.

Thank you very much, and I hope same to you, soon.

>  As a side question (this one can be a subject for a debate), does anyone
>among our fellows s.c.a readers have an experience with teaching their kids
>how to speak our natif language (Arabic, of course) at the same time with
>the environment language (in my case French). I know that kids are very
>good in learning languages but should i start to speak French with him once
>he starts to pronounce words or should i wait ?. I'm really interested because
>my son has started to pronounce some words and i have no experience in this
>field (well, this is our first son, maybe once i have the 10th i'll be enough
                                                          ~~~~~~~
>experienced :-)).
>  Thank you for your help, and agains 10000000000000000000000000000000000
>MABROUK.

In fact in my case, this was the six'th child ( Masha'Allah), and I hope
to have more experience soon, Insha'Allah. 

I think one should start from the beginning with the language that could
be under threat. The local languge which is the language of the country
where you are living, will come naturally to the children and you don't
need to waste your effort on that.  The children will be exposed to your
native language only during the short contactcs you do with them, and
for a short period in the early stages of their life, but after that
they will be exposed to the local language most the time; through media,
contact with other children, school, ..etc., and you will also find yourself
talking to them some times with the local language (French).
So, I think, if they lost the chance of aquiring some feeling and some
vocabulary of the native language at the early stages, then they may not
have that chance once again without difficulty.

I noticed that the first three of my children, who were born in an
arabic country, they speak english much better than Arabic, although
they go to a special national school, which teaches Islam as a religion
and teaches Arabic language as well, they memorize by heart a good deal of 
the Quran, and we help them at home.

The other three who are born in Ireland, the first one speaks English
better than Arabic, the second speaks Arabic since he has not been
exposed to the other language seriously, yet ( he is one and a half
years old), the third cries in Arabic only ( she is 10 days old), Ha.

So this is my experience, and good luck to you.

Ahmed.

>  Now back to our regular "cultural" debates :-). Did i say something wrong ?.
>--
>Sham(u) ya tha (s)seif(u) lam yaghib(i) | Ibaa Oueichek. oueichek@imag.imag.fr
>    Ya jamal(al) majd(i) fi(l) kutub(i) | IMAG, INPG.
>Kablak(i) (t)tareekh(u) fi thulmaten    | Grenoble. 
>    Baadak(i) staula ala (sh)shuhub(i)  |
>					
-- 
Ahmed I. El-Habbash, 
Department of Computer Science, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland.
Tel: office: +353-1-7021524,  Home: +353-1-937402.
	
Newsgroups: soc.culture.arabic,talk.politics.mideast