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Expatriates in London: how to successfully maintain the French culture of your children

2022-12-22T14:48:14.871Z


OUR ADVICE - Some French families who have been living abroad for a long time notice a loss of their language and their culture in their child. However, the double culture is shaped from early childhood.


Refusal to answer in French, even refusal to answer at all, foreign accent to be cut with a knife, syntax errors, hesitant grammar, approximate spelling.

The children of French people living abroad, especially those educated in the local system, sometimes have a very approximate mastery of the French language, to the point of worrying their parents, who are sorry for the loss of their language and their culture. in their offspring.

With children immersed in Anglo-Saxon culture both at school and in daily life, parents quickly realize that the challenge is not to acquire English but to retain French.

Transmit, but how?

"It's an effort"

We consider it an enormous opportunity and an asset for our four children to be bicultural and bilingual.

The English school

and everyday environment takes care of the English side.

Our mission as parents is to ensure the French side

.

It is important because it is our identity.

If we don't pass it on, who will?

explains Sophie, a Londoner for 15 years.

It's not always easy and it's not because we speak to them in another language for a few years that children will become bilingual and stay that way.

It's a long process

confirms Ranka Bijeljac-Babic, psycholinguist, member of the INCC-University of Paris Cité-CNRS and president of the Bilingues & plus association.

It's an effort.

The language of the school will dominate at some point

,” warns Stella Bataille, founder of Club Petit Pierrot.

Read alsoVisas, “sponsors” and English tests… How French people manage to settle in London

This bilingualism and this dual culture therefore require special attention.

Each family has its own strategy for…

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Source: lefigaro

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