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Old December 9th 07, 02:18 AM posted to misc.kids.moderated
Karen
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Posts: 58
Default baby sign language and bilingual kids

Our daughter is now almost seven months old. She is increasingly trying
to communicate with us by utterances or gestures, which we usually don't
understand. So we would like to start teaching her sign language. The
question is - which one? We are both German but live in England. So for
her it's German at home and English at nursery, and we hope that she
will grow up to be perfectly bilingual. Should we now use signs from
British or German Sign Language? DH and I know neither, so the learning
experience for us will be the same.

My initial thought is to use BSL for the following reasons: (1) They
might start using it in nursery eventually (they are "looking into it").
(2) She lives in Britain and is more likely to meet British deaf people
than German ones, should she choose to continue with the language. (3)
There is a lot more material available on BSL.

But we will use these signs while speaking in German. Will it confuse
her language if the signs aren't German? I.e., will she never be able to
learn proper sign language if we are giving her mixed messages now?

Don't worry, we don't have a career as a sign language interpreter
planned out for her; if she's anything like her parents, she'll have
very different interests, and we'll encourage her to find her own way.
With high probability, she'll forget the signs once she's speaking. And
I doubt that we'll take this to the level of a complete language (making
her trilingual) rather than a collection of words. It would just be a
shame to mess up an opportunity, and I know a couple of bilingual kids
whose spoken languages are messed up because their parents handled it
badly.

What are your opinions? Any language experts out there? Or can you point
me to a website, newsgroup or forum that could provide information on
this issue?

TIA,
Karen