"Easy" Does It!!!!

We have a friend whose native tongue is Spanish.  Her kids (now grown with children of their own) eagerly wanted to learn Spanish.  But she corrected them and corrected them (and quite often in public!).  If they pronounced "ajuanta" (withstand) like "ah-uan-tah" (which is correct) - she would say "No, not ah-uan-tah, it's AAH-uan-ta".  So, her kids would try "AAH-uan-ta", but that also wasn't "correct"  to their Mum (and no pronunciation ever would be; she changed it because she couldn't stand anyone speaking Spanish as PERFECTLY as she did).  "Ah-uan-tah!" she would say (which is back to the original pronunciation) and her kids would repeat "Ah-uan-tah!" - but no, it was never "correct" ENOUGH!!  This same friend would say "my kids DON'T WANT to learn Spanish!"

When her kids even attempted to speak Spanish she would let them know in no uncertain terms that they had "accents like gringos".  Well, guess what happened?  Not one single kid or grandkid speaks Spanish or wants anything to do with it.  I can still hear her kids saying the word "mamon" (meaning idiot) and being corrected to pronounce it MAH-mohn.  They would try so desperately to say "MAH-mohn" just as she had said then she would change it to Ma-MOHN.  There was no pleasing her.  So sad, too bad - HER loss for being such a stubborn woman.

When our daughter attempts Spanish - we let a lot "slide" so that she'll build up some confidence.  Trust me, there will be others in this world who will correct her pronunciation, but for us the important thing is that she trusts us enough (not to keep CORRECTING her!) to TRY to speak Spanish.  Because of this, she won 2 prizes in Spanish this past year.

So, if you have a gift of language to offer to your children - be it Hindi, Russian, Spanish or Arabic.....give them a little "slack" in pronunciation and then they will make the effort to study and learn more.  If you CORRECT them over and over again - they will give up; simple as that!