preserve my children's English

I hope you'll find enough friends to get together with, but another thing you can do is watch TV/DVDs/whatever with them.

Our current favorite is "The Cat in the Hat knows a lot about that" :-)

kattt wrote:

We are a Hungarian family but we live in England for qutie a few years. My children were born here and they speak a very good English of there own age (3 and 6). We are going to move back to Budapest this summer and I am looking for a community/institution/group of friends where my children could practice English not to forget it.

I've got almost the same problem but the other way around as we are a British-Hungarian couple and we live in Hungary. I'm finding my kids Hungarian is far better than their English and that's not very good as they struggle to communicate with me. We speak English at home though, not Hungarian (my Hungarian is useless anyway). You can send me a PM (personal/private message) if you want to know more.

Thank you for your reply. Szocske, we do watch English DVDs, but they should practice the language more eg. I think they need to speak and communicate. Fluffy, so you also want your children to practice English in Hungary but if our children met, they would speak Hungarian Do you go anywhere where they speak English?

kattt wrote:

... Fluffy, so you also want your children to practice English in Hungary but if our children met, they would speak Hungarian Do you go anywhere where they speak English?

Yes, I didn't think of that but Mrs Fluffy said the same. We don't go anywhere to practice as I don't know of anywhere. We also use DVDs and we can also access British TV over the Internet, so we watch UK TV some of the time.

I have a lot of trouble over this language business. My daughter (almost 6) always speaks in Hungarian with my wife. If my daughter is talking to me and she struggles in English because she cannot find the words, she always asks my wife to translate for her as Mrs Fluffy speaks excellent English. I have to keep reminding her to let my daughter work on it herself as we know she can do it if she's given some time to think. I keep wondering if I am being unfair making her struggle but on the other hand, it's a lifetime skill which she should not forget.

The only other way I think to practice is probably the international school system but to be honest, it's probably not worth the money (unless someone else is paying).

I know of Hungarian speaking kids (educated originally in Germany) who are schooled in Hungary at a German speaking school but always talk Hungarian socially between each other, even though everything in the German speaking school is taught in German on a daily basis.

It seems to be the default mode that one language is more dominant, despite the environment being something else.  My own language skills include German, Dutch and French of varying degrees of competence which I learnt at school and in work.  It's all a bit bizarre for me and not being bilingual, I don't know the real answer about how to preserve it.

Yes, that's true, one language is dominant. I don't mind if it is Hungarian, I just want English not to be forgotten... But if you always speak English with your children, they gonna speak it at the end, that's for sure.

kattt wrote:

Yes, that's true, one language is dominant. I don't mind if it is Hungarian, I just want English not to be forgotten... But if you always speak English with your children, they gonna speak it at the end, that's for sure.

One aspect which is not that good is that they've all got very pronounced Hungarian accents. I also know some other bilingual kids and they've all got accents as well. I find that quite strange but Mrs Fluffy says it's because she's got an accent and they've learnt it from her. I wonder if your kids have English accents when speaking Hungarian or Hungarian accents when speaking English? I expect not.

We do have some laffs (northern english: laughs) about it. Sometimes I hear Mrs Fluffy talking with the kids using English verbs used in a Hungarian sentence with Hungarian grammar! Mrs Fluffy says sometimes it's just easier that way!

We also sometimes share bilingual word play jokes - using English or Hungarian words and their different meanings together in the same sentence. We do it both languages. All mixed up to make the joke.

Maybe it all helps somehow!

Hosting British couchsurfers traveling with kids is an option to bring in variety.
If you are comfortable with the whole idea of course.
(I can fully understand most people are not in the right situation for it, no need to explain if you feel you are not.)