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handabear — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 04:35:34 -0800

Anybody familiar with a series of trilingual Vietnamese folk storybooks that were written in Vietnamese, English & French? I'm searching.. When I was a kid, my great-uncle had collected a series of books (more like very large pamphlets - they were roughly the size of an a4 sheet folded in half and bound by staples) that were of Vietnamese folk stories and fairy tales and they always had an illustration on one page and the story written in Vietnamese, English & French on the opposite. From what I remember, the illustrations were never in color. I think they were either simple line drawings done on a solid color background or they were block print. The illustrator may be a famous Vietnamese artist because I've seen the art in other places but never discovered the name of the creator.

Sound cool, eh? My uncle eventually gave these books to me but I foolishly gave them away when I was a teenager. I'd love to get a set of them again. Any clues??

How many languages should my kid have to learn?

PuGZ — Sat, 06 May 2006 23:24:42 -0800

Polylingualkidsfilter: (Hypothetical) I'm a Fluent English/French speaker and my wife is a fluent English/Mandarin speaker. Living in an English-speaking country (Australia), in what language should we speak to our kids? We're both of the opinion that knowledge of a second language is a wonderful skill that no one should be without. In this environment, we curious as to whether our kid(s) would benefit from speaking a LOTE (Language Other Than English) at home and English at school.

Unfortunately, I don't speak a word of Mandarin, nor does she speak a word of French. Could we realistically speak to our kids in our respective foreign languages and would it be beneficial for them, or quite the opposite? Would speaking to your father in French, your mother in Mandarin and your friends in English give you an incredible advantage over your peers, or would it only serve to confuse you and would you end up with less-than-stellar literacy in all three languages?

Thank you for all your input, Mefites. :-)