My father spoke so many languages. He spoke Bengali, Hindi, English and German, and I think he was proficient in Latin too. When I was in high school, I took Spanish and my dad let me know that I was a huge disappointment. I never learned Bengali, much to his everlasting shame. I remember being decent at Spanish, although I’ve forgotten a lot of it. These days, I wish I had pushed myself to learn another language when I was younger and my mind was like a sponge, absorbing all of the crazy stuff that I still remember today. Is that Gwyneth Paltrow’s justification then? That even though she allegedly makes Apple and Moses speak to her exclusively in Spanish, that they’ll thank her one day?
En Espanol, por favor! Gwyneth Paltrow wants her kids Apple, 9, and Moses, 7, to be well-rounded and worldly — so much so that in an effort to teach them to be bilingual, she sometimes encourages them to speak with her only in Spanish, a source reveals in the new issue of Us Weekly.
While at Cameron Diaz’s Beverly Hills home for the Oct. 12 wedding of Diaz’s assistant, Jesse Lutz, the Iron Man 3 star, 41, urged her children to put their language skills to use. “Gwyneth reminded them through the party,” a witness tells Us.
“At one point,” the onlooker says, “Apple came to her table and asked, in Spanish, if she could sit on her lap!”
Married to Coldplay singer Chris Martin since December 2003, the Goop founder recently defended her parenting choices in an interview with U.K. magazine Red.
“That idea of ‘Oh God, if I don’t show up to this concert, all the other mums are going to think I’m terrible.’ Well, so f–king what,” the Oscar winner said. “It’s like, when I’m with my kids, I give them everything I have. And when I’m not, I give whatever I’m doing everything I have. And that’s my work/life balance.”
“I’ve made it work for me, but it doesn’t matter what my specific thing is,” she continued. “It’s like, what’s your specific thing? How do you want your life to look? It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. It matters what you think of yourself. And what your children think…I’d say, do what is right for you and don’t give a s–t what anyone else thinks.”
Does this make her a good mother because, in the long run, Moses and Apple are going to have a leg up with their language skills? Is this smart because kids are little sponges and it’s easier for them to pick up a language? Or is Gwyneth just a pretentious monster? Eh. Can’t it be both? Frankly, I’m not worried about Gwyneth’s mothering skills when it comes to her kids’ education. I’m worried about what Moses and Apple are learning about diets and juice cleanses and Goop’s version of “healthy eating”.
Photos courtesy of WENN, Fame/Flynet.
Yeah, my Goop beef doesn’t revolve around what language she speaks with her kids. Where I live people speak a lot of different languages at home – some native, some learned. I don’t see this as a big deal, I guess. Plus, I think that once you’ve learned a second language, it’s much easier to pick up a third or fourth.
Have you guys heard of DuoLingo? It’s a free app and it’s a fun way to learn a language. I’ve been using the French one to brush up. It has speech recognition & everything.
is it really easy to learn a third language once you have learned a second? I”ve always wanted to learn french, being Canadian. And also German, just because…. it seems like a fun and beautiful language to learn
technically, yes, it’s easier because you have a sense of comparative grammar so a third one should be easier if it’s a latin derived language like Italian or French because the kids already know Spanish.
Generally yes, to some degree anyway. If you learn French, Italian and Spanish should then come easily. If you learn Mandarin and then attempt Hebrew, you’ll be aided by the fact that you are now used to different language structures, the process of learning a language will be less difficult because you have an idea of what you need to do etc., but knowledge of one won’t directly aid in learning the other.
I think learning German can be moderately difficult for a foreign speaker, though not as difficult as Chinese or Russian I think.
I think when you have been learning one Romanian(French, Latin, Spanish, Italien) language it is easier to learn another lagnuage from the same branch.
For native English speakers German is the easiest next language to learn because the grammar structure is the same. English is a Germanic base with a Romantic (French, Spanish, Italian) vocabulary.
It’s not Romanian or Romantic. French, Italian, Catalan, Portuguese, Spanish, etc. are “Romanic” or “Romance” languages.
I will have to check that out, thanks. I took both Spanish and French, and remember just enough to be passable.
As for Goop, I don’t have a problem with her talking to her kids in other languages, it’s a good way to learn.
i am an early childhood education esl teacher and cannot get on board with this. it would be awesome if she had a mother tongue spanish teacher teaching the kids, but no matter how fluent (?) she may be they will not learn the nuances of tbe language…and may miss out on the true spoken english by losing the resource of a parent speaking a native language. my kids are trlingual, native english speaking mom, native italian speaking dad and native german speaking teacher.
@respect: I agree, unless Spanish is her mother tongue (not the case), that’s just weird to speak with your kids in another language.
My dad’s German and my Mom is French so obviously I’m bilingual in both German and French but my parents would have never spoken to me in, say, Portuguese because that’s not their native language (even if they had been fluent in Portuguese).
I don’t disagree with Gwyneth on the usefulness of teaching your kids other languages, but she should hire a Spanish nanny or something.
Yo I speak a second language too, it’s called Ebonics and I’m fluent in that shit. 🙂
Actually I suck at that too but it’s always good to throw in a little humor with our gossip. I took French but failed miserably. I am too cheap to buy Rossetta Stone but I will check out this DuoLingo some posters are raving about.
On a different topic, how many times is Kaiser going to use that open mouth stop in the name of love no pictures please picture of Gwyn for the cover post? I laugh everytime I see it.
@Respect,
You and the other women have no clue about GP’s background do you? Well, GWYNETH PALTROW is perfectly fluent in Spanish and grew up Bilingual. She has lived in Spain. You should check out her series with MARIO BATALI in Spain, it is fantastic.
As a French (second language) speaker, nothing is wrong with what she is doing. I assure you her kids have the best in Spanish tutors where they will get those nuances. They don’t need to because their mother is an excellent speaker.
And yes, once you know 2 languages, three, four and five becomes easier. If you speak FRENCH, Italian becomes easier, and so does Portuguese. If you speak Greek, you have a window into the Romanic languages. If you know the meaning of Greek words, you can definitely understand meaning in many other languages.
If you know Chinese, Korean, Japanese, etc should be so difficult. Russian is difficult because it has 6 cases (even more) – then consider singular and plural, and masculine, feminine and neuter. #Complicated
And even though German is close to English, the structure of German sentences can vary, even with the same sentence. English is much more identifiable with the Romanic languages.
I think she is pretty much perfect in speaking Spanish
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLTXYP27b-I
She also “annoyed” RDJ when she did the Iron Man 3 press conference in Paris speaking French
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtsnChpYtlw
@respect,
In terms of linguistics, regardless of whether she’s a native speaker or not, because she is (based on the videos, she definitely at least seems) fluent, it will benefit her kids to hear the language now because learning a language as a child structures the brain so that the second language is in the “native” language portion of the brain versus the “learned” language portion (I am simplifying, but that’s more or less the gist). What this means is in the future the kids will have the ability to pick up/learn the nuances as adults, if they don’t as children.
In other words, a child who learns/picks up multiple languages as a child *can* achieve fluency in those languages, either as a child or as an adult (fluency defined, in this context, as mastering those nuances you mention), regardless of *when* they are exposed to the nuances. An adult who learns the language as an adult may master the language as in, learn an expansive vocabulary, conquer the grammar rules, etc., but organic fluency (understanding and learning the nuances, and being able to develop an organic or reflexive, unforced, production of those nuances) is out of their reach, because the brain learns and stores the language as a second language.
So, I am a native English and Spanish speaker–the nuances of other Romance languages are very simliar or the same to Spanish, so I can come very close to achieving fluency or sounding like I do. I learned Italian as an adult but I can pick up many of the nuances since you have many of the same in Spanish. But if I decide to learn Swedish or Japanese, even if I master all the rules of the language, I’ll never be *truly* fluent, since I learned as an adult, no matter how good I get at speaking the language.
FYI, my undergrad major was in Romance Languages (including the linguistics), and I did my master’s in teaching program as a foreign language teacher (Spanish). I know ESL isn’t taught, in the US at least, from the standpoint to take advantage of the linguistics structures in the brain, since the goals aren’t solely to learn another language, but to help the child learn multiple other subjects while mastering the new language ASAP (at least, this is what I understood from the program where I worked on my master’s).
I’m using that right now since my mom often slip to her French and I want to know what she’s saying. 😀
I’ve heard DuoLingo is really good. LingQ is also good. I’m using that one to learn Spanish, but it is easier because I speak French for sure. As for Goop and her goopiness with her children – I think the Spanish thing is a good thing, learning languages is always a positive thing and can create tremendous opportunities. As long as she doesn’t teach them how to drive a Vespa!!
GIGI – THANK YOU so much for the DuoLingo suggestion!!! I took 5 yrs of French but have never worked to keep it up. I’ve always felt so ashamed of that. Just downloaded DuoLingo and I’m loving it! Great fun. I want to learn as many as I can. This is the perfect start!
Thank you again!!! You’ve made my day!!!!!
Haha! You’re welcome, Patricia! It *is* fun and super addictive, as well. It’s been years since I spoke French on a regular basis, but it comes back quickly. My friend is using it to perfect her English – if you select Spanish as your native language, you can learn English on it, as well!
I’m learning French on Duolingo, too! It’s a really good app, from absolute beginner I am now on level 10 and enjoy learning the language, because you not only learn grammar, vocabulary, sentence structures etc., but you also practice writing and listening the language, so I’m Duolingo all the way!
As far as GP is concerned, I don’t find it terrible that she speaks (occasionally) in another language to her children, because they are like a sponge at this age, picking up everything they hear, without even realizing that they are ‘learning’ something, If she manages to make it fun, then why not? The children will surely benefit from this.
Wasn’t she also allowing them to watch cartoons only in French or am I confusing her with someone else?
If she makes them lisp I call pretention.
..lol.. of course she’s going to make them pronounce the “z” and soft “c” with the Castilian lisp… I mean she does it herself (even though she sounds like Sylvester the Cat when she does it..)
So what, if she does? She learned Castellano in SPAIN and we speak that way, that doesn’t make us snotty nor does she. Her castellano is almost PERFECT. People in this site are full of shit regarding her. I would love to see if a lot of people who is bashing her for that, is capable to speak another language the same way she speaks Castellano.
How is that pretentious? She learned her Spanish in Spain, and that’s how they speak. More kudos to her for learning the language properly. I’m Hispanic (so my Spanish is more Caribbean-sounding) and my dad is Peruvian– what’s hilarious to me is when he puts on the Spanish lisp when he goes on business trips to Spain. Now *that* is something to nitpick; better to make fun when she puts on a London accent when we all know she was born and raised in the U.S. as a point of reference for her English.
Wow, Apple looks just like her dad.
And I was just thinking Moses looks like Matt Damon. I’m not insinuating anything! I just noticed a slight resemblance. : )
Those kids need to go to the eye doctor. Just sayin’.
Matt Damon needs to go on Maury! Baby Samuel (Jen and Ben’s cutie pie) looks like him, and now Moses looks like him. Ha!
I think there’s a great advantage to learning languages – it’s another way of thinking. I speak spanish at home with my family and i’m teaching myself German at the moment. I also did an ancient language for my uni degree.
I think teaching your kids another language would be good for them in the future, so I’m not gonna shade her for this. My hubby comes from a different country. He can speak 4 languages, and understand one more language although can not communicate well with it. English is the main language at our home but he’s always trying to teach our kids other languages. And I’m still trying to teach our kids my own language, too. Lol.
I grew up with linguists. Aunt and her daughter learned and frequently spoke seven languages and the cousin’s living in France teaching Spanish at a private school. Yeah, they were pretentious; however, touching other languages in any way, imo, is a good thing. Didn’t I read here about Jolie having her kids communicate in French? I dunno. I don’t MAKE my kids speak to me in a certain way, but I do enjoy teetering between Spanish and English…I’m about exposure, not lectures. lol
I’ve always wished I has learned another language and had decided a long time ago that if I ever had kids I would get them foreign language lessons at a young age. As for forcing them to speak nothing but spanish at events it seems weird, if you have friends that speak spanish and you are around them you might suggest hey show so and so how good you are at spanish or if you are at a spanish speaking restaurant let them order in spanish, I feel Gwyn gives those kids very little chance to make decisions on their own. and she’s trying to turn them into mini me’s.
My first language is Croatian, but I speak English, German and Spanish, and have an understanding of Italian, but can’t communicate in it. I’ve learned English in school, German by watching German cartoons and Spanish by watching telenovelas with my gran ( long live the TV). My parents don’t speak foreign languages all that well. However, my pronunciation varies. I started learning English in school when I was 8, so now I have a barely detectable accent because I have used English for so long. I started actually learning German in high school and since then haven’t had the chance to use it a lot so my pronunciation isn’t the best. Therefore I can see how making the kids actually speak a foreign language can be very beneficial. No shade here.
Have to agree with Gwynnie on this one – language skills are always useful.
My mother is Czech and spoke to me exclusively in that language, but I always answered her in English, so now I can understand conversations and Czech TV but, to my everlasting shame, can’t actually speak the language!
I’ve managed to teach myself through books and the computer to get my French and German up to a level where I’m able to hold a conversation, but alas there is no real way of learning my mother tongue without hugely expensive language classes. Not even a Rosetta Stone *sadface*…
You can do it, don’t convince yourself otherwise, if you understand the language you can learn to speak it.
Isn’t that exactly what’s recommended when trying to raise bi or multilingual children? Every single multilingual parent I know speaks to their children exclusively in whichever language they aren’t learning at school and aren’t learning from the other parent, I see nothing at all unusual here. My mother spoke to me in Russian, my father spoke to me in German and I spoke English and French at school. Today I’m fluent in all four and find it easy to pick up other languages…I can’t imagine how doing this could ever be seen as a negative thing.
Kate,
That’s just it: if you are a native speaker, then you should communicate with your kids in your native language as your parents did.
Goop is teaching them a language that is not her native one. Language teachers don’t recommend this because the kids are basically picking up on the pronunciation, grammar & syntax errors of Goop’s, in this case. (Though, when I lived in Spain, the Spanish said Goop’s spoken Spanish was pretty good.)
exactly!!!!!!!! it is misguided to teach a language that you do not speak natively…mmakes good copy and impresses the peasants though…i was channelling goop on that.
German wasn’t my father’s native language, just the language he decided would be most useful for his children to also speak, and literally none of my teachers were native English or French speakers despite those being the languages they taught in. You don’t have to be a native speaker to be completely fluent, in fact I generally find non-native speakers to be far more precise about grammar, pronunciation etc. I’ve lived in an English speaking country for a decade or so now. I used to speak and write with absolutely perfect English, I was a translator at one point. Now my English is actually deteriorating considerably because I’ve gotten too comfortable with it. None of the native English speakers I’m surrounded by speak anything nearing perfect English and so my standards have dropped. I speak far better English when I’m with other non-native speakers.
GOOP certainly seems proficient enough in Spanish to get by with minimal mistakes in the context of family conversation, and her children do spend some time in Spain so even if she wasn’t using this technique she’d have to teach them some basics anyway. This way, even if she’s not doing it perfectly, they’ll speak passable Spanish, which is considerably better than only knowing how to say por favor and muchas gracias.
Gwyneth’s Spanish is really good! I was quite impressed with her when I watched Spain in the Road with Mario Batali.
@Pixiestix
Not trying to argue, just curious on your opinion: wouldn’t the fact that “Goop is teaching them a language that is not her native one. Language teachers don’t recommend this…” really limit language learning, because not everybody can learn a language with a native teacher? So, supposing Goop speaks Spanish fluently and correctly (I have no idea if it is so), I see no reason why she shouldn’t teach them Spanish. A Spanish teacher (who is not a native speaker) is also a person who has acquired the language by learning it sometime during his/her life, probably not from a native speaker…
I’m rather on the fence about this one, because yes, the child would maybe learn some mistakes or wrong pronunciation from the (not native) parent, but still: he would acquire a basic vocabulary, would be encouraged to speak/use the language etc. and he could correct the mistakes later, in school. No?
I agree, Balehead. It sounds like Gwyneth is fluent in Spanish, too, so I think what she’s doing is cool!
I think it’s crazy to suggest one can or should only teach their native tongue. Why place such an arbitrary restriction on learning or enthusiasm for learning? So what if the children don’t learn the language perfectly?
I believe Paltrow picked up most of her Spanish in high school when she spent several months in Spain living with a Spanish family on a student exchange program. Her Spanish is excellent.
I married into a Puerto Rican family. The parents spoke only Spanish at home. The children spoke English to each other and Spanish to their parents. Now the grandchildren understand Spanish from hearing their parents and grandparents speak it but they don’t speak it themselves. In the next generation it will probably be lost altogether. Too bad. Bilingualism is definitely a plus.
Normally I would just call her pretentious but … I live in Canada and was taught French in school from a young age, when I was 12 I begged my parents to let me go to school entirely in French and they did. But my parents couldn’t speak any French at all, so I had no one to speak it to at home. Eventually I started learning Spanish at 16 and now I’m a professional translator… I’m so glad I did it and if I ever have kids (probably won’t) I’m making sure they’re fluent in both my country’s official languages whether they like it or not… 🙂
I’m from Nova Scotia, which is pretty smack dab in the Acadian french kind of area. A lot of the communities around mine are french communities, though there isn’t a single person (unless very very elderly) that doesn’t know English fluently.
I shit you not, from grade 7-9 we learned maybe a couple phrases in our mandatory French class. We colored mostly. Watched a few Canadian heritage videos. In 5th -6th grade, my French teacher had us making scripts in French, posters of endangered animals all in French – learned so much more then than we ever did in Jr High.
I ended up taking latin from 10-12 and learned soooo much more than I ever learned French.
Note: this was like, less than a decade ago, too. I’m only 23 now.
It’s funny how different our schooling is in different parts of the country. I grew up in Alberta and my french program was great. I did an advance program right through grade twelve and it was very involved. My two daughters are now in a french spanish immersion school and I can understand what is said during the assemblies in french and carry on basic conversation with their teachers.
I grew up in Quebec and learning French changed my life. I see the world perfectly. I breezed through Italian because languages help you connect the dots. You become 10 times more intellectual. I can see stuff that had no meaning to me and get it. I learned some Russian and through the alphabet understand Serbian. It is fascinating what languages do for your brain.
GWYNETH IS DOING IT RIGHT!
nice to know that Spanish isn’t a peasant language. yay.
This is what surprised me most. Gwyneth? Allowing that peasant culture into her home?
in what universe could spain, one of the oldest centres of culture in europe, be considered peasant culture? i mean, i guess it’s more a joke about goop’s snootiness but… que?
I don’t consider it peasant.. I have a degree in Spanish and I love it. So yeah, it was a joke..
@Ajla R
it obviously was. sorry about my sense of humour bypass this morning. i don’t know why i got defensive about it, i’m not spanish, i just live there.
She irritates the heck out of me, but I will not give her hell over this. It’s simply good parenting. There is no downside to the kids learning another language.
My mom knows 4 languages and my dad knows 5. How many do I know? Two…and a half. It’s disgraceful. Thankfully my parents made sure I could speak a second language fluently and only spoke that language at home while I spoke English at school. Still, I wish I spoke more languages than I do now.
I am a translator and can speak several languages fluently. If Goop was a native Spanish speaker, this whole act would make sense because it would be natural. But it is not and Goop is bound to make many mistakes, so I think it would be more sensible to teach those kids proper English first.
I remember reading Goop is fluent and spent summers in Spain as an exchange student.
They’ll be learning English at school and from their father since Chris Martin only speaks English. Even if GOOP speaks lousy Spanish (which doesn’t appear to be the case from what I’ve seen, she may not be 100% proficient but I don’t think she’d be making mistakes in the context of daily conversation with her kids), some immersion in a second language is better than nothing.
That very first photo before you click to the article is the most unflattering I’ve ever seen of her, LOL. Surprised she didn’t try to have that one erased from the interwebs completely.
It really isn’t a problem- that is the only way you learn! They are probably fluent in Dietry and juice cleanse terms in Spanish!
My mum and dad are both fluent in English; Hindi, Punjabi, Swahili and can speak Urdu and Gujurati. The Asian languages they speak have very similar dialects but they are all written very differently. I’m embarrassed to say I am not so proficient- I speak in all those languages but badly! I think for them it’s a dissapoinment- I sincerely regret it now when I want to have a connection to my culture. My parents weren’t pushy- which is another way NOT to learn a language but I wish they had instilled a bit more value in it for me as a kid. For them it was important I had a British schooling and that meant German and English come more naturally to me.
I think it’s cool she’s making her kids speak to her exclusively in Spanish. They’ll definitely learn and become fluent much faster vs just sitting in school taking down grammar and vocab notes. My family is bilingual (Malay and English) and my parents are constantly speaking in English to my 4 year old sister not only to make her learn the language faster/better but also to pique her interest in speaking the language. I wish i had someone to speak German to all the time!
Before the age of six or so, a child can readily pick up new languages and can learn to speak without his or her native accent affecting the second language. After the age of six, it gets harder and it really is a challenge then to learn to speak the target language with a near-native accent.
I’ve heard that it’s not 6 but 11. And I know a bunch of kids, which arrived in the US when they were 8-9, and they do sound near-native now.
Well, there are different reports and much of the theorizing related to the notion of brain plasticity. I’ve heard 6, 7, and around 12 but a multi-lingual professor friend of mine still holds with the notion of six or so being the age.
Generally, what is very hard to teach at the older age is the accent. After a certain age, it really is near-impossible to pick up the correct accent.
Myself, I heard Italian in the home (but never learned to speak it) and then I easily picked up Spanish at age twenty and am near-native enough to fool people into thinking that I am native. My Italian (learned in college) is not as good as my Spanish, either, although I am now fluent in it as well.
I think you can learn another language at any age really. People who claim that it’s too late for them to learn a foreign language are just lazy imo and convinced themselves that “oh well, it’d be too hard anyway”. Seriously, if you’re motivated, you can learn anything. Sure, it’ll be more difficult than if you were 6, but really, if you have enough incentives, you’ll learn.
Our discussion is not just about a basic ability to learn but rather about acquiring a near-native accent. The latter is extremely hard because you have to train certain muscles, which you lack. For example, if I pronounce “sorry” with a New York accent, I feel slightly nauseous because it is that difficult to pronounce that “o”. My English is alright but I do have a foreign accent, although people cannot pick up on its origin.
I for a change, see nothing wrong with Paltrow doing that.
If she encourages her kids to speak other languages, good for her and good for them. I might raise a brow, though, as far as her actual knowledge/proficiency of Spanish. I have been studying foreign languages for more than a decade now, and there is nothing worst than having a bad teacher who doesn’t provide you with the standard pronunciation, or does not have a decent command of the lexicon/grammar/syntax/whatever, so that in the end he/she just plants mistakes in your head. Plus, if you quit studying for just a few weeks, you quickly start forgetting stuff. You need constant dedication, revision and assessment. Since when starring in a cooking show for Spanish television makes you fluent in Spanish? As far as Wikipedia says, she spent 7 weeks in Spain as an exchange student when she was 15, and she is still in touch with her Spanish family. But if she hasn’t kept up with the language all these years, I seriously doubt she is able to have a decent conversation in it. But, what do I know, she’s probably had her personal Spanish tutor all along !
There’s a video on youtube where she speaks spanish. Actually i went looking with an already risen eyebrow but i had to lower it… she really speaks good spanish, at least for someone who learned it as a second language.
Ok, I saw a couple of videos on Youtube and her pronunciation is actually quite good! Still, I think (from the preconceived opinion I have of her!) she had a list of questions and had the time to prepare the answers accordingly. I know, I am biased! 😛
Despite not being a Goop fan I still think she is not pretentious for wanting the kids to speak different languages.. I was raised in Italy and the only country that speaks the language is indeed Italy. I wouldn’t call my first language useless but is not largely spoken like for example spanish, english or mandarin. I’ll never thank my mother enough for teaching me German and then sending me overseas to learn english in the States. I would do the same with my kids, languages are important and they can open new worlds for you.
Same here, I am Italian as well!
ahah no way!! Di dove?
I had a boss once who taught her very little children Spanish and French before they even entered school. I’m all for exposing kids to other languages and cultures – fantastic :). 🙂 However, parading your children around a party (or through the office, in my boss’ case) and insisting they converse in a language that most of the attendees don’t speak is obnoxious. Parents who do that are pretentious twits. Ugh.
I would totally agree with this, but it sounds like the party might have had Spanish speaking guests and it was a good opportunity to practice.
goop definitely seems like she’d force parade her immaculate organic children any opportunity that might be covered by the press.
Nothing wrong with kids learning multiple languages as youngsters when it is much easier than at adult age.
Is that Spielberg behind her?
If I were her I would probably just hire a native spanish speaking nanny.
I am sure she has, and I am positive that is how she became so fluent. I can say when I saw her on that Batali Special in Spain, I was fascinated. The funny thing is that I wasn’t a fan of hers before that show and after, I fell in love with her. She was really cool. Maybe she may be naive about some things but I think her heart is in the right place.
their original nanny was spanish. she wrote a book and goop deigned to write a blurb for it -despite always claiming she raised her kids all by herself.
She was very open about how she’d wanted to do it all herself, but then realised actually she could use some help. She’s actually one of the few celebrities who’s been quite candid about having nannies, home help etc. when her children were still little. Most celebs only start talking about their staff when their kids are school age, even though they’ve had live in nannies from day one.
I can’t stand her but her daughter looks so much like her!
My Mom speaks SEVEN different languages, fluently, and all I have is a few “mandatory” Spanish phrases like “Cerveza por Favor (beer please)” and “Donde es el bano (where is the bathroom)” my Mom is utterly ashamed.
Eh, all moms do this. It’s not controlling in any way, unless she won’t give them something they need if they say it wrong. It’s helpful to have your kids practice languages at home!
I used to go back and forth with G-dawg, but then saw a PBS show in which she and Mario Batalli traveled around Spain eating fabulous food together, She snottily made fun of his ‘kitchen’ Spanish, ie., Mexican accent Spanish. Just can’t get that out of my head. It’s just too snooty. Like Spanish spoken with a Castillian accent is the only proper way to speak the language. Barf.
I think it’s a good thing.
I also like what she said about parents making their own choices as to what works for them. I don’t feel like there should be one set model of “great parenting” because not every parent’s lifestyle is identical.
For once an article about Goop that doesn’t piss me off! Lol
This is wonderful. It’s always good to teach your kids a language young and hopefully about other cultures as well. It will be very useful when they are older.
I agree–less concerned about the language enforcing and more concerned that they will end up with eating disorders. Or spattered on the street from a Vespa ride.
I agree that speaking Spanish at home is a wonderful thing, but forcing them to do it at an event no es bueno. Children are already anxious around adults, why make them perform like circus monkeys? It’s like the poor kids who walk around Disneyland with their dental headgear. Seriously, can’t a kid get the day off?
The whole thing, like everything else in Gywnnie’s bubble, is a big pat on her back for being mucho amazing. That said, her own mom seems plenty pretentious, so perhaps our dear Goop never stood a chance of being a PB&J-serving, Toys R Us-shopping mom.
I read an article that Goop continues learning Spanish, that she speaks only Spanish when they are in Spain (Goop owns a house there), and that locals are impressed with her level. I assume that being Kuban, Cam Diaz has a bunch of Spanish speaking relatives and friends, so I see nothing wrong that kids were given a chance to practice. Good for them.
Cameron Diaz my be Cuban but she does not speak a lick of Spanish. Confessed from her own mouth.
Por fin una buena prensa para Gwyneth!
Como se dice “There’s gluten in this kale, peasant”?
For some reason it irks me….i should be giving her props for teaching her kids culture, but it’s not a culture she’s a part of…I guess that’s what bothers me.i’m of Puerto Rican descent myself and speak the most white girl spanglish ever so maybe i should spend sometime in the paltrow -martin household.
@Kate & @Balehead,
I do see your point and certainly some exposure is better than none, by all means. I was sharing my opinion comes from 17 years as a language teacher of French & Spanish and that was the theory. I need to learn languages for my new job, and am always taught by natives for that same reason, and it’s how I learned my most recent Asian language.
I can’t understand how practicing foreign languages with kids is harmful to anyone. Why is it a huge problem? When it was said Angie did the same with kids and French, it was the same. It’s the best way of learning new languages.
But the food issues and such really are a problem for Gwynnie. Those actually are harmful to her kids. Not education.