About learning for children

There is a lively discussion running on the Homeschooling group at the
moment on the topics of how children learn and how to learn mutiple languages at the same time (easy!)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/homeschoolingch/

Membership is I think restricted to those who are educating their children at home or thinking about it. (The rules of the different cantons vary a lot.)

>Since I want to learn German to speak with as many German speakers
>as possible, I think it sounds like I'll need to learn the High German
>language instead of Swiss. Has anyone used the Rosetta Stone system
>to learn foreign languages? I'm planning on using it to learn German

Quote: "to learn German, some homeschoolers use Rosetta Stone, I think it's good but a bit expensive" Also for French.

Another alternative - "online courses e.g. Oklahoma State University online
German program"

From the group: "I cannot claim to be a language expert...here are some anecdotes which some fluent French and German foreign language speakers could maybe analyze...

I've heard that English takes 3 days to learn, French 3 months to learn and German 3 years to learn....That's clearly oversimplified, but meant to show the difficulty...My second son says he doesn't know, because all languages are hard for him BUT that he has heard that deaf people think that German is easier than French or English because there are fewer exceptions...How's that for contradictory reports...

Personally I find German harder because of all the cases and therefore endings that change depending on how the word is used in the sentence, plus there are masculine, feminine and neuter, while French has M and F and English no dif ..."

My children spoke first English at home, learned a bit of high German from baby TV shows, then learned Swiss-German quickly in kindergarten, and High German reluctantly through primary school. (Nowadays it would be quicker as teachers in theory use High German.) Then French and Italian in secondary school and on trips, losing it through lack of practice, regaining it on holidays and with courses.

Graham