Tuesday 12 February 2013

Wordeaters

Much to the little bugs' delight, we've recently acquired an iPad. I've been busy looking for apps they would enjoy and that would also be language related. I've found a few for French (details coming in a later post) but Russian-language apps are harder to come by.

The only Russian-language one that seems to have any success so far is Wordeaters (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wordeaters/id490622258?mt=8).

This app involves dragging Russian words that float across the screen into the mouth of the head that has guessed the right meaning (or vice versa) and the word is eaten up. It's pure translating, but both Dragonfly and Bee play it from time to time, so it seems to be sufficiently entertaining and it certainly helps them work on their vocabulary and reading skills. The word is also read out so they hear the correct pronunciation.

The app also works with English-French, English-Spanish and English-Russian but we haven't tested these combinations.

Has anyone come across any other good apps for kids that use Russian?

Saturday 9 February 2013

The power of the community language

We went to lunch with some friends today. They are both Russian, live in London and have two children. They all speak Russian so it was great for our children's Russian to have an afternoon of playing in the language: although we have a few Russian friends, very few of them have children who won't automatically slip into English with other children (and many have children who don't speak Russian at all).

What was interesting was that they make a particular point about speaking Russian to their children: they forbid the use of English at home and also constantly remind each other to stick to Russian as otherwise they find that they slip into English. So even when everyone in the family speaks another language to start with, English creeps in and seems to gradually take over!

This highlights the challenge for bilingual and trilingual families: if English (or whatever the community language might be) tends to dominate when both parents speak the same other language, this is even more the case for families where each additional language is only spoken by one parent. So well done to all who manage to keep multiple languages going!