Denmark: Children's language abilities are hampered while in the care of au pairs who often speak little or no Danish

Copenhagen Post
Working parents who hire au pairs to take care of their children during the day are helping to create an entire group of young people whose Danish language abilities are severely limited by the time they reach nursery school, reported 24timer newspaper Wednesday.

Existence of the phenomenon is supported by several language experts including Ulla Lahti Falkenberg, language acquisition expert at the University of Copenhagen, who said she encounters the problem regularly.

‘We meet children that speak Danish with Thai or Latvian accents – Danish children with severe accents primarily because of contact with their foreign au pairs,’ said Falkenberg, who is also president of the Danish Speech Language Hearing Association.

‘It’s a problem that parents are so busy with their own lives and spend so little time with their children that they don’t even realise the child speaks bad Danish.’

http://jp.dk/uknews/article987516.ece