日本人と外国人が子供ができたら、この子は二つの言語を簡単に学べるでしょうかね。理論的には正しいと思いますが、実際に、子供がバイリンガルにさせてたいけれど、すごい大変です。

僕は日本人と結婚しまして、二年半前に、女の子が生まれました。日本に住んでいるなので、日本語が多いと思います。僕は日本語しゃべれる（下手けど。。）奥さんはちゃんと英語を話せます。娘が両方、英語と日本語をしゃべれるようにさせたいと思います。

東京に住んでいるから、奥さんと僕はしょうがない二人で働かなければならない。だから、平日では、お子さんは保育園にいています。保育園はすごいいい所だと思います。先生が優しくて子供と遊んでいるし、お友達がいっぱいいるし、娘はすごい嬉しいと思います。問題は、この保育園はもちろん日本の保育園なので、みんなは毎日で、日本語を話しています。

家に私は100％英語です。奥さんは英語と日本語を話しているが、最近こどもは奥さんが英語話すとちょっと困るような感じをしました。内の子にとっては日本人が日本語、外人は英語らしいです。そして、奥さんはずっとちゃんと日本語を話して始めました。
僕は娘と話したら、英語で話します。娘がよくわかっているようですけど、いつも日本語で答えます。電車の中にいったら、みんなはちょっと変な感じをしていると思います。こどもはすごいいい子だ時に英語で答えて、すごい嬉しいです。

インターネットで少しだけ調べまして、こどもは、親の言語が関係がほとんどないと書いていました。こどもは当然に自分の友達の言語をしゃべりたいらしいです。人間は本当に社会的な生き物で、他の人といい関係が欲しいですて。若いものもそうですと思っています。

それでは、ネイティブな英語を話させたいんですけど、父さんとして、どうした方がいいかな？

This is perhaps one of the biggest challenges facing multi-cultural couples living abroad and is something that I am experiencing first hand as a father and husband. My wife is Japanese and we are raising my two year old daughter here in Tokyo.

My wife and me both work full time so our daughter goes to nursery school every day and when she is there she plays with the teachers and her friends and has a great time. The nursery school is a Japanese school and so naturally most of the kids are native Japanese, which means they speak Japanese all day.

At home I speak English 100% and my wife speaks both English and Japanese but mainly Japanese. If I speak to my daughter I speak English and she understands. However, she usually replies in Japanese. We get some strange looks on the train when people see this! Occasionally, when my daughter is in a really good mood she will reply in English and when she does it really makes my day.

I read somewhere that it does not really matter what language the parents speak or what they do to try to make their children speak a certain language. It said that if a child has friends who speak a certain language then the child will naturally want to speak in that language. We humans are social creatures and we all want to fit in with the people around us, apparently this is also true for very young children like my daughter.

So as a parent my challenge is to find what I can do to give her a head-start in English when she wants to speak Japanese because all her friends speak Japanese?

今朝、私の日本人友達がわからなかった英語フレイズのは、「彼にとっては。。」でした。

僕は、それは、英語で「From his point of view..」だを答えました。

私にとっては　- From my point of view.

これは「In my opinion」と近い意味と思います。「私の意見は。。」

パソコンのデータについて、仕事中のよく聞く言葉なんですけど。（私はインターネット系開発者です。)

Duplicate

意味は「重複している」です。

使い方は、日本語とちょっと違うとおもいます。

例えば、

英語「There is no duplicate data.」

日本語「データが重複していません。」

日本語では動詞形ような言葉ですね。

他のよくある例文

There are no duplicates.

The client has complained about some duplicate data.

This is a duplicate record. (他のデータはこのデータと同じみたい。)

I am not an English teacher. But while I have been living in Japan a lot of people have asked me if I can teach them English.

I always say ‘yes’ because I am happy to help people who want to learn something, but to be honest, I don’t know what to do to help them learn. Unless they ask me a question there is not really much I can do.

I may not actually be an English teacher but I have studied three different languages - French, German and Japanese, so I know a little bit about learning languages.

It might sound obvious, but to become skilled at using a foreign language you have to practice speaking, reading, writing and listening in that language. These are the core-four skills you will need to be fluent.

Some people are more interested in one particular thing, like being able to read English, or being able to talk in English to their foreign friends, and that is no problem at all, but I still think you should try to practice all four skills because each skill helps you with the other skill.

For example, when you are practicing your reading you will learn new words and phrases that will help you with your speaking. Also, the biggest benefit of practicing all four skills is that it makes your study time more interesting. If you only do one thing again and again you will soon lose interest and then the risk that you stop studying all together is very high.

And that brings us to what is, in my opinion, the most important thing for learning a language - persistence.

It takes time to study a language and there is no way to get around that fact and there really are no short cuts.

When I study Japanese I find that the best way to keep going and constantly improve my skills is to do just a tiny bit of study every single day - just five minutes on the train on the way to work in the morning. It is easy to do everyday because I only study a little bit so it doesn’t feel like hard work and because I study every day it has become a part of my lifestyle, it has become my new habit and it has become easy to continue. Also I get a great feeling of satisfaction from doing this because it feels like I am always learning and always progressing.

So my advice for you is to do a small bit of study every morning on the train to work. If you don’t take the train then study while you eat breakfast, if you don’t have time to do that then study while you are on the toilet! Any time you can fit a regular five or ten minutes study into your day will be fine. The key is to do it everyday at the same time so your body makes it into a habit.