015: Jonathan Ervine | Father’s Perspective On Language Acquisition

Bilingual Kids Rock Podcast: Raising Multilingual Children, Multicultural Living, Growing Up With Multiple Languages.

Jonathan Ervine – is the creator of Dad’s the way I like it – a website on what it means to be a dad and how dads are represented in the society. He resides in North West Wales with his wife, son and pet chicken. He is also a lecturer of French at Bangor University. He can speak English, Welsh and French, though he is not a native Welsh speaker.

We talk about his family language portrait, how he became bilingual and speaking Welsh. We also talk about raising his son bilingual, what system of bilingual learning do they use and the challenges of speaking a non-native language to their son.

In this episode of Bilingual Kids Rock podcast:

00:30 Introduction to bilingual parents connect

2:13 Introduction to Jonathan Ervine – founder of Dad’s the way I like it

2:58 Discussing Welsh and Scottish language

3:57 Jonathan’s bilingual story and career

5:09 Reasons to raise his kids bilingual (particularly in Welsh)

6:34 Difference between the north and south Welsh language

7:40 Who speaks the Welsh and English to their kid? The system they use to raise their kid

8:58 Ways on learning a non-native language and speaking it to your child

12:00 Discussing the durability of speaking Welsh

16:19 Signs of understanding for both languages for Jonathan’s son

17:49 Challenge of speaking Welsh to his son

20:39 Minority Language: Welsh or English?

22:53 Literacy in Welsh language and schools

26:00 Exposing his son to speaking French

26:43 Living in France

28:52 Challenges of raising a bilingual child

30:17 Football or Soccer – and its relation to podcast

32:00 Running a podcast in Welsh

33:01 Advice for parents looking to raise a bilingual child

39:37 Closing remarks

Items mentioned in this Episode:

Bilingual Parents Connect

Being a parent in Wales

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