04-20-2015, 11:29 PM
I'm grateful for all you joining the discussion.
However it seems to get converted to language dispute which was not the main point.
Just to make things clearer, we are from the eastern Europe, we speak english well, way much better than many people around us in Quebec, and to me it looks like someone of you understood it that we try to speak to local people in our native language. We do speak in our native language at home and between each other in public only if we are alone, almost as Viewfromthe42 has suggested. We want our kids to preserve the lanuguage skills so we first teach them our language, they are too young yet and hardly speak the primary language, not mentioning english or french.
In order to eliminate assumption that people might be suspicious or feel discomfort about us speaking in a foreign language behind their backs, let me just use the most recent case as an example. We came to the largest local park on weekend and noticed that it's filled with local jewish community members only. I literally mean that there were nobody but them, meaning local people preferred to go away, though we haven't seen any reason as they were just playing and spending time as any other normal people. We do not belong to this community and don't know their language, but we did not feel any discomfort of staying there for 2 hours - the kids had fun that's all we needed. Once they all left one local couple with two daughters had come. Their kids look bright and happy. My eldest kids was looking at the gooses behind the fence when one girl of his age joined him. All he did he turned to her and told 'Look, it's a goose!'. Just because he still does not understand that people round him mostly speak in a different language he told it in our language. At the very same moment the smile had disappeared from the girls face, parents grabbed her and the little one though she was eager to stay, and went away pretty fast. Just because my kids told that. It's sad and not a single case from our experiense.
But please let's not turn this to language dispute as I mentioned at the beginning. They are on their homeland and might have some reasons. My point is to make sure that on a new place my family will not experience that kind of an issue, and to make sure my kids will have friends.
However it seems to get converted to language dispute which was not the main point.
Just to make things clearer, we are from the eastern Europe, we speak english well, way much better than many people around us in Quebec, and to me it looks like someone of you understood it that we try to speak to local people in our native language. We do speak in our native language at home and between each other in public only if we are alone, almost as Viewfromthe42 has suggested. We want our kids to preserve the lanuguage skills so we first teach them our language, they are too young yet and hardly speak the primary language, not mentioning english or french.
In order to eliminate assumption that people might be suspicious or feel discomfort about us speaking in a foreign language behind their backs, let me just use the most recent case as an example. We came to the largest local park on weekend and noticed that it's filled with local jewish community members only. I literally mean that there were nobody but them, meaning local people preferred to go away, though we haven't seen any reason as they were just playing and spending time as any other normal people. We do not belong to this community and don't know their language, but we did not feel any discomfort of staying there for 2 hours - the kids had fun that's all we needed. Once they all left one local couple with two daughters had come. Their kids look bright and happy. My eldest kids was looking at the gooses behind the fence when one girl of his age joined him. All he did he turned to her and told 'Look, it's a goose!'. Just because he still does not understand that people round him mostly speak in a different language he told it in our language. At the very same moment the smile had disappeared from the girls face, parents grabbed her and the little one though she was eager to stay, and went away pretty fast. Just because my kids told that. It's sad and not a single case from our experiense.
But please let's not turn this to language dispute as I mentioned at the beginning. They are on their homeland and might have some reasons. My point is to make sure that on a new place my family will not experience that kind of an issue, and to make sure my kids will have friends.