Like many of you, when I was little we had no cable television. All we watched were the Maltese and Italian channels. Therefore we were exposed to English, Maltese and Italian.
I learned Maltese at home, English from my English cousin who lived next door, and Italian solely from watching Italian television. All of you remember the Japanese cartoons we watched translated in Italian. Little did we know that we were learning three languages at such a young age. Nowadays, our children are only watching American programmes. I did a survey to see which languages most Maltese kids are learning.
Nearly all Maltese kids speak English. Only a few Maltese kids will not speak or understand any Maltese, and nearly none would speak a third language, even after studying a language for 5 years at secondary school. There were also kids speaking their parents' mother tongue. But that's about it. That is so worrying. Who is going to work in places in the tourism industry? Already in my job, we are not finding local youths who can speak foreign languages like French, Italian, Spanish and German. Is this coming from us parents? Are we telling our kids to focus more on the other subjects to find a better job and put the languages aside?
We don't always learn a subject to use for work in the future. Were there subjects at school which you never ever used in your life? Of course, maybe 3/4 of them. What would be the advantages of learning other languages even if you are not going to use it at work? You can communicate with tourists in your own country. When I go abroad, I always feel more advantaged than other people coz I can communicate with the locals there. So for travelling to different countries, languages are very important to ask for directions and if you have a complaint at a hotel. For example when I got arrested in Switzerland, that was convenient! Yes! I couldn't leave Switzerland, coz I left my passport at the hotel in Aosta, Italy, while we went to Switzerland for a day. The policeman asked for my passport and since I didn't have it, he ordered me not to leave the country. So I was stuck in Switzerland for a few hours until my husband drove all the way back to the hotel to get me my passport. It's a good thing I spoke French coz I could explain to the policeman what had happened, since he didn't speak a word of English.
What if our kids get a job opportunity in a foreign country? Speaking the country's language is always much easier to settle. Or they work for a company in Malta owned by foreigners? Or else have a job where they get to travel a lot?
Maltese and English are definitely a must for us Maltese. Speaking only Maltese would be very limited. But speaking and understanding Maltese is also a must if you are living in Malta. If my kids didn't speak Maltese, I would be afraid people would make fun of them and my kids will not understand them. We need to at least speak English as well to communicate with foreigners.
English and Maltese are easy to learn here. But what if we wanted to teach our kids other languages? What would help? Showing the kids videos on Youtube in the languages you want them to learn, at a young age, is very good. My daughter says the numbers in French the same way she heard it on one of her toys when she was only 2! So that definitely helps. Till now, I have never visited a country where I didn't speak the language, but Jaimee didn't speak all languages of course. So before we go on holiday, I teach her lots of phrases, which I know she is going to use. She writes them down the way they are pronounced. Then when we are abroad, I encourage her to talk to people. Like in restaurants, she would ask for the bill, menu, water, a highchair etc. She can also greet people that we meet.
Starting a new language at the age of eleven is already late. And there's a big difference between learning the grammar of a particular language and speaking it. So whatever you do you have to practice the language. And when you stop speaking the language for a long time, you will also start to forget it.
I feel that language barriers can sometimes be very annoying and speaking different languages helps you make lots of friends from different parts of the world. So we should give languages a bit more importance.
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I agree 100%