This sentence came out of Daniel’s mouth tonight.
And I promptly corrected him: ‘Ek drink net gou my juice klaar’ At which Etienne corrected me of course: juice – sap. And I rolled my eyes. As you do.
We send the children to an English school and they speak Afrikaans exclusively at home as it is our home language. In principal it’s a fantastic idea and it certainly worked for me as people often comment that I don’t speak with an Afrikaans accent and I went to an English pre-primary school.
My question is this:
How much should we correct him? Should we just muddle along and quietly correct him (which we try not to do too often)?
Any parents in the same position that have some suggestions?
It’s how we learn our language. Am sure our parents corrected us too. There’s a time and a place for it.
You can “correct” my mirroring the correct sentence back. “Ja, ek sien jy drink jou juice/sap klaar.”
I usually do correct by mirroring as I think i’s the best way to learn, we hardly ever correct in a very direct way. That sentence was just so wrong in so many ways!
My husband is english speaking, I’m Afrikaans & James is in a school where it is perfectly half half. At home we speak English exclusively, although we do use the Afrikaans word for certain things, like ‘broodjie’. I don’t see a problem with that but one thing I *do* correct (every time) is grammar. In my opinion that’s the most important thing & a teacher actually told me to do that, purely because the more he hears the right thing the more he’ll remember it.
James doesn’t mix his languages too much though, only when he’s speaking Afrikaans & he doesn’t know the right word he’ll say it in english, so then I’ll casually also suggest a word.
Hope this helps you 🙂
Ps – I would not have corrected ‘juice’ 🙂
LOL, we also usually talk about juice, not sap.
I think you should carry on and correct them as they make mistakes….how else do they learn
Very true!