Learning new languages

[Alienhats]

Hi, I am new to this board and this is my first post. My son is diagnosed with aspergers and my husband isn't officially diagnosed but he feels he is an aspie. Anyway, we are from different countries, after living in my husbands home country for ten years we moved to mine. My son was 7 years old then. (And his little brother 5.) After the move he became very interested in English and now he is fluent and speaks better than me and my husband. But since he is not interested in my language, even after going to school for almost 4 years in this country he still can't construct sentences in basic daily talk. Also, he is forgetting his fathers language and speaks mostly English. What can I do? He is super bored at school. No one taught him English, he amazingly learned all on his own, even his spelling is perfect! Why can't he learn my language too? Or at least not forget his first language? I feel like it is impossible to make him learn anything he is not interested in. I just don't know how to "make him interested". Any thoughts?

 

[SingaSong]

I'm a bit confused. What language(s) have you spoken at home, both before and after your moves? What language do they speak at your aon's current school and is that the main language in the place you live (eg a person might send your child to a French medium school in the USA but around/on tv them they will hear English and possibly Spanish.

 

[Ylva]

There are several options:

* Give him time. Most people don't keep the same interest from when they are five throughout their childhood.
* Find out what's cool about English. Apply that to you and your husband's mysterious mother tongues.
* Find some sort of course that teaches those other two languages. From English.
* Expose him to the relevant languages through movies, music, audiobooks, anything he likes.

Surely he understands your language, even if he doesn't speak it. You have to admit, though, that English has the easiest grammar ever. And it's applicable to just about everything.

 

[Alienhats]

Thanks for the replies, the languages we speak are Norwegian and Turkish. But he was exposed to both since birth anyway, since we lived in Norway he was mostly speaking Norwegian back then. Now he mixes in English words all the time. He goes to public school in Turkey, everybody speaks Turkish except at home there is Norwegian.

 

[Ylva]

I only spoke Norwegian until I was thirteen. Then I came across a Fantasy series of which only the four first books had been translated. There was only one thing to do: not "learn English", but "read the fifth book anyway". If, for instance, he likes The Little Prince, or Roald Dahl, try reading the Turkish translations for him; if, equally hypothetically, he loves pokemon, let him watch the Turkish dub.

To put a positive spin on it, maybe he grows up to be an English scholar.

 

[Progster]

Does he have any other 'special interests' apart from learning English? If he does, you could find books or websites about his special interest in Norwegian or Turkish, and that will be good incentive to try harder with these languages.

 

[ancusmitis]

Is it possible he is upset about the move? I never did get over moving from Maryland to Tennessee, and that was over twenty years ago. Learning English instead of his parents' languages might be a way of asserting himself in an unfamiliar environment he didn't ask to be in.