Teaching Little Kobold to be multilingual

English:

(Translation in Indonesian could be found here)

Hello dear Steemians...


Today I'd like to show you the first result of our effort to create a polyglot Little Kobold.
The world is getting smaller, the border is getting thinner. Globalisation doesn't only mean the exchange of goods between nations but also exchange of humans so being able to speak more than one language is definitely a big plus point in one's competency.
Growing up in a binational family or simply in another country should be a big advantage for every children because it gives them the opportunity to learn at least two languages at the early age.

It's widely known and proven by various educational researches that learning foreign languages since toddler gives the higher probability to let a person master those languages in native speaker levels. It's not gonna be easy I know, and I know that not every childred are gifted with special talent in linguistic so that not everyone would be able to master some languages in intermediate levels.
However one should at least put some effort to try it first. Indeed we are not suppose to force children to be bilingual if they are not especially interested in languages. But isn't it really regrettable...if our children couldn't even have a proper conversation with their grandparents from the other country? Their grandparents are much older, so it simply makes more sense to expect the younger one to learn the foreign language and not reverse. I think, to the level of understanding what the speaking partner said should at least quite possible if we are persistent enough. (Unless there is an exceptional case with the child, which hinders it to learn another language of course).

So far I have learned that the practical trick to train toddlers learning two languages is to apply the "OPOL" technique. OPOL stands for "One Parent One Language". So we are doing that at the moment. @jaki01 speaks German and I speak Indonesian with her.
Only when there is 3rd. party among us, or when we are speaking with each other then we would speak German.
I would speak German with her as well despite the daddy's absence, if we are in the public places and other people are trying to hold a conversation with her (most of the time old ladies love doing that ^_^ ).

Before our Asian trip last month our little princess haven't spoken any German word at all except "Mama/Papa", but she has understood us.
Even when I told her to dispose her own used diaper to the bin, she did it too. She is now 1,5 years old and some children in her age have normally spoken few words already.
However I have read that it's rather common if bilingual children start to speak later than those growing only with one language, so I didn't have too much worry yet.

My family in Indonesia dote on her so much... and perhaps it was thank to them that little Kobold has started to speak Indonesian during our visit last month.
Yes, Indonesian is her first language to speak. She could recognise some animal names and body parts rather well in Indonesian.
The interesting thing is that she prefer to say "Auto" instead of "mobil" which means: car. No matter how many times I correct her, she always says "Auto" then laughed happily.
Recently she had spoken a bit more German words, for example few days ago while I was getting prepared in the bathroom before going to the Steemfest event suddenly she came in and said:"schön".
So sweeeet...

There is nothing can compare to the feeling when your 1,5 years old baby suddenly smiles to you and says that you are pretty while doing your make up/dressing up.
I nearly couldn't believe my ears so that I asked her again whether she meant that it was really the mommy being pretty and she nodded vigorously few times, grinned widely and said "schön" again.

My ego was rising up so high 😁😄😝💜😜.
At another occasion I picked up a nice dress for her and asked her again similar question and she responded the same way again so it means that she really understand what "schön" means.
But the funny thing was, whenever I told her to say "cantik", she insists saying "schön". After observing for a while it seems as if she just chooses to say the words that are probably easier or shorter to say for her...
She seems to inherit our laziness indeed, even in speaking she is so lazy, so sparingly....
Energy and effort saving hahaha.
I need to work more to let her understand that she should differentiate the people she speaks with, cos not everyone could understand her language 😅😜😝.

Btw, since I have been trying to upload the video in DTube but kept failing, finally I must use my YouTube channel again.

The video about little kobold showing off her Indonesian vocabularies could be watched below:

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And as a closure, I'd show you two snap shots taken from one of our stroll between the corn field.
You can't see any plants anymore on the field because the harvesting period has just been over.

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That's it for today and I'd see you again with the next story from our Asian trip.
Thanks in advance for your upvotes. :-)