Welcome to 'Bridging The Linguistic Gap'

This blog will follow my attempts to teach myself and my children Hungarian. I am half English, half Hungarian and have longed to speak the language. Now is the time.

Maybe I've gone a bit crazy or got a bit over enthusiastic one day -when I decided to do this, but I really do think I can ... teach myself and also teach my children to speak Hungarian and connect with a part of our identities that is usually hidden.

keep your language alive... Speak it, Read it, Keep it - this is the slogan for my online bookstore - Mother Tongue Books. My store sells bilingual children's books, you can visit at the link below.

So now it's time to stop telling everyone else with a foreign connection to develop their mother tongues and start doing it myself.

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Friday, 12 March 2010

At last!

Ok, so the logistics of getting us all speaking Hungarian is not going to be easy and once again I've had to re-evaluate how it's going to work. 'm beginning to doubt if bilingual is possible but certainly learning some to get by will be.

I took d to the language class last week as hubby needed a break and s was unwell.They stayed at home. It was our first class and within five minutes it was obvious that it was too advanced for her. well, it is an adult class that had started a few months ago. I could just about keep up with the basics I had, so she had no chance. But dutifully she stayed the whole 2 hours.

So, the new plan. I will go to the Hungarian class myself - one lifelong ambition realised? - check. Finally, I can't believe it.

D & S are going to have lessons at home each week. Hopefully in April the Hungarian group is starting a children's class for beginners which d could join. S will have to wait until he is 6 but we could continue with lessons at home for him till then. Hubby will learn if he wants to but will have to organise his own way, with us all helping him.

So, there we are all sorted. for now. In about a year and a half we will actually all be ready to attend the Hungarian group as a family, but until then we'll need to master more of the language.
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2 comments:

  1. Lauren Wayne21 March 2010 at 02:37

    Sounds like a plan! It's so interesting to watch your journey. My husband has zero interest in learning German formally, from bad experiences in language classes in school, and he's self-conscious about speaking it in front of others. But he's been picking up a little here and there in his own way. I wish we could have a solid family-wide plan like this, though.

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  2. Mother Tongue Books23 March 2010 at 06:45

    Hi Hobo Mama thanks for your reply.
    Sometimes I feel like this is just my plan and the rest of the family are just humouring me in the hope I'll get bored or find it too hard and give up. But I know for sure that when I hearing either of them telling others about it that they feel really pleased to be doing it. It's just difficult at first and as hubby said he feels like a fish out of water - but so do I and I know it will change.

    I do admire your determination.

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