Hunglish.orgDeciding on whether or not to teach your children Hungarian? Are you living in Hungary and want to start building a bilingual family? Here are a few hints as to how.
Written by Natalie Jaro
Are you debating on whether or not to teach your child Hungarian? There are a few different approaches for families in Hungary wanting to teach their children both English as well as Hungarian. Consider how long your families stay in Hungary will be and realize that it generally is a 4-year long commitment to reach basic speaking skills and much longer if the goal is complete literacy. Each family will pave their own way on how to go about teaching these skills; however, here are a few of the most common approaches.
There is the OPOL style of learning, otherwise known as the One Person, One Language way. This is when the parents or caregiver speak only in one language; this is by far the most used system although it does require some ‘language supplement’. For instance, children will eventually need additional resources if they are to learn to read and write in Hungarian. This support can come by way of playgroups, other family members, and a nanny or from just living in Hungary. The child needs to hear the second language at least 30% of the time in order to learn a second language with ease and will learn it best if exposed in the earliest years of language acquisition. A second approach is the Minority Language at Home (mL@H, mLaH, mL@H) also known as the foreign home pattern. In this technique the minority language is spoke at home while the majority is learned in the community and with everyone else. If taught early on, the child will hear and interact in both languages. Children may not catch up with his or her peers in the majority language until around the age of five, roughly speaking, in preschool, but will catch up within 6 months generally. A school immersion program is also an alternative where the child speaks the second language at a certain location. This can by far be one of the best ways for a child to learn as children try very hard to understand and speak with their peers. Immersion schools are known to be a wonderful resource with an academic level comparable to regular schools. Children are generally recommended to attend a minimum of full three days per week or five half days. Preschool is a good time to start an immersion program. Starting or joining a playgroup is another valuable way to help children become bilingual.
A question often brought up by parents and concerned relatives are ‘Is learning two languages going to confuse the child?’ The answer is no, the child may go through periods of mixing the two languages up but the child will eventually separate the two. Language delays may be characteristic of a two language learner but are not a concern as this will resolve. Less confusion will occur if the child knows what to expect, say, the mother speaks in one language and the father speaks in the other. The child may be more skilled in one language over the other. Current research suggests that bilinguals are better at some specific tasks such as language games. Bilinguals can think in two languages and do not have to ‘translate’ one from the other as originally thought. Some kindergartens and preschools in Hungary have ESL courses within an English speaking school while others integrate both Hungarian speaking teachers as well as English speaking teachers into the classrooms, look into these popular schools to find out more about their specific approaches for teaching Hungarian: A-Z International Centre for Children, Greenhouse Óvoda Preschool, Happy Kids International Preschool, “Winnie the Pooh” Nursery and Kindergarten, English Garden Preschool and the Eszterlánc Hungarian-English Montessori Kindergarten.