Bilingual kids

Parentberries
1

Hey, are there any other parents active on these boards who are raising or planning to raise their kid(s) to be bilingual? I thought it would be fun to discuss strategies and experiences if there are any others.

If there are, what are your circumstances - majority language, minority language, are you yourselves bilingual, is your society largely monolingual or bilingual?
What strategies are you using or planning to use? OPOL or MLAH or something else?
What are your bilingualism goals - active or passive bilingualism, do you consider biliteracy important also?
If you already have (a) postlingual child(ren), how’s it going??? Are you seeing the fruits of your labours? Have you experienced any hiccups along the way?

I am a native English speaker and my partner is a native Icelandic speaker. We live in Iceland and are both fluent in each other’s native language, although for me Icelandic is a second language acquired in adulthood and for him English is a second language acquired in late childhood / adulthood. We are expecting our first baby next [name_f]May[/name_f] and it is extremely important to me that he or she will become actively bilingual and biliterate in English (minority language) and Icelandic (majority language). Iceland is a basically monolingual society, although most people do speak English quite well. I am thinking we will probably use OPOL.

My main plans to ensure sufficient minority language exposure are me talking to the child exclusively in English (although perhaps this will be easier said than done when we are surrounded by Icelandic speakers…), reading and singing a lot to him/her in English, when he/she is old enough exposing him/her to English language films and TV programmes, having English speaking friends over as much as possible (unfortunately I don’t know any young children who have English as a native language, but I may try to seek some out), visiting family in the UK as often as we can, English immersion [name_m]Saturday[/name_m] school when he/she gets old enough (4 years old), etc. I hope this will be enough but I am ready to seek more solutions if it doesn’t seem to be working!

Anybody else?

2

My children are very monolingual, but my nieces are being brought up bilingual so I can tell you what happens in their family. In their case, Dad’s first language is English and they live in an English speaking country. Mum speaks [name_m]German[/name_m] and Vietnamese, I think Vietnamese is more accurately her first language, but she considers [name_m]German[/name_m] as her main language, so their children are becoming bilingual in English and [name_m]German[/name_m].

Their mother speaks to the girls exclusively in [name_m]German[/name_m]. If its a conversation that involves Dad as well, they use English but otherwise all interactions between mother and children are in [name_m]German[/name_m]. They also have lots of books, DVDs etc in [name_m]German[/name_m]. When the oldest was a toddler, she understood [name_m]German[/name_m] perfectly but would always choose to answer in English, much to the frustration of her mother! But now at five, she quite happily converses in [name_m]German[/name_m].

[name_f]Hope[/name_f] that helps :slight_smile:

3

My cousin has been brought up bilingual Swedish/English with her mother speaking one and her father the other but I think that at home it’s mostly english and at school it’s Swedish
She’s completely fine now but when she was younger she didn’t really understand the difference or that some people couldn’t speak one or the other but it just took a bit of reminding

Btw I know it’s not relevant but Ingimar is such a handsome name. I love the sound of it

4

Btw I know it’s not relevant but Ingimar is such a handsome name I love the sound

5

I love languages, and have a BA in ancient greek and latin, but i don’t ‘speak’ them, just read. I have been planning on learning Spanish, so hopefully I will be able to raise my child to be bilingual. I’m also somewhat fluent in [name_m]French[/name_m], so maybe we could move to PQ at some point. I would love to move to [name_f]Canada[/name_f] in general! I don’t know if I’d shoot for trilingual, but maybe. Hubby said he’d perhaps be willing to learn Spanish with me.

6

I was raised bilingual English/Spanish. Basically, my parents only spoke to me in Spanish while I was a baby/toddler and I didn’t learn English until I was in preschool. I did the same with my son. His first language was Spanish, with a Spanish-speaking nanny and everything, and he wasn’t really exposed much to English until I put him in preschool at age 3. Now he is an English speaker mainly, because of school, tv, movies, etc. But he does understand Spanish and he likes to learn it. He takes Spanish in school, currently in 2nd grade, and I hope as he gets older he continues with his interest in speaking Spanish, as where I live, bilingualism is definitely a bonus.

I plan on using the same strategy with my son due in [name_u]December[/name_u], as long as my BF is on board, he understands Spanish but doesn’t speak it as well as I do.

7

[name_u]Baby[/name_u] will be Australian / Japanese, and at home (while we are living in Japan) I will be speaking / reading e.t.c. exclusively in English. Probably Dad will be speaking Japanese to baby but since he works ALOT the house will mainly be full of English exposure.My Mum is also Bi-lingual (Maltese / English) She spent her early years in [name_f]Malta[/name_f] and then moved to Australia where Maltese was spoken with family and English outside.

8

I was raised bilingual, and I plan on raising our children bilingual. My mum says it was never anything they did with intent, they just lived their lives and we picked up both languages. My dad to this day only speaks to me in Spanish, but that’s because it’s the language he’s comfortable expressing himself in. My mum spoke mostly English to us, but not exclusively. We had both English and Spanish literature and music available to us. My mum says I spoke Spanish first, and then English came to me a little slower.

The only hiccup was my younger brother, who didn’t speak for a very long time, and when he finally spoke, it was such a jumble of words nobody could understand him. Then one day he just started speaking fluently in both languages. Mum says the doctor she took him to said that wasn’t abnormal for bilingual children. I know another child who also went through that. She didn’t talk for the longest time, not a peep, and mama was starting to freak. Then she talked some alien tongue. It wasn’t just the normal baby talk, it was very obviously a jumble of two languages that wasn’t quite right, but then it clicked for her, and it was a very sudden click to being a bilingual toddler.

My SO speaks very little Spanish (he seems to be resisting it, which frustrates me because it’s a part of who I am), so raising bilingual children will take some effort on my part. I plan on reading to my kids in Spanish, and watching Spanish movies/TV shows with them, as well as speaking to them in Spanish (not exclusively in Spanish, maybe half?). There’s an Immersion school I want my children to go to (starting age 5), but it’s a charter and I worry they won’t get in. Half the day is English, half in Spanish. SO’s niece recently got in, and I’m really hoping we will too when the time comes.

I do think language shouldn’t be forced. My adoptive dad was also a Spanish speaker. He used to bring me to tears over Spanish. [name_m]Even[/name_m] though Spanish was my first language, I lived in an English speaking country, went to an English speaking school and I wanted to speak English. He would yell at me for not using Spanish and it caused me to reject that part of myself as a teen. I don’t think that’s the sort of home you want to make for your child, but I wanted to share my experience being forced to speak a language I didn’t want to speak. If my children are resisting, I will continue to speak and read to them in Spanish, but will let them respond in whatever language they feel comfortable expressing themselves in. They will still be learning the language as long as I use it around them.

@[name_f]Moon[/name_f], I can’t remember the name of the book and I’m too lazy to get up and find it, but I recommend [name_f]Madrigal[/name_f]'s something something book for learning Spanish. Oh, here I googled it: Madrigals [name_u]Magic[/name_u] Key to Spanish. It’s an old book, but I love it. It’s the one I bought for SO to learn Spanish. Obviously you can’t learn an entire language from one book, but I think it’s an incredibly useful tool to have if you’re attempting to learn Spanish. What I love about it is it starts with all the words you already know, because they’re the same or at least very similar in both English and Spanish. Tractor, for example. They’re said differently, but it’s the same word. If hubby is into it, that will make it so much easier. It’s difficult to learn a language if there’s nobody to speak it with.

9

I totally agree, the very last thing I want is to create negative feelings around the English language. I’m not going to pretend I don’t understand Icelandic, if one day kiddo does start speaking to me in Icelandic (which will almost definitely happen). I mean if the kid is really little and only knows the word in one language I would do something like: “Look, a kisa” “Yes, that’s right, it’s a cat.” Haha, kind of lame example I know, but that sort of thing.

If the kid is older and is doing it to see what will happen, I will just continue to speak English myself and try to create more situations where we are around monolingal English speakers. If you have to speak English to communicate, that’s not quite the same as being forced, I think - it’s just creating a need for the language, which from everything I’ve read I believe is crucial to successful bilingualism. I really don’t want to end up with a child that understands English but won’t speak it, although I think this is probably an inevitable phase. I would never worry about code-switching either, I think it’s part of the fun of being bilingual. I code-switch all the time when speaking to another Icelandic/English speaker and I really enjoy playing with the languages like that.

I am also hoping that the high global prestige of English will play into my favour here - there are not so many films, computer games, websites or TV programmes that are in Icelandic that would be ‘cool’ for a preteen / teenager. Most Icelandic children are very exposed to English just because Icelandic is a tiny language and they don’t have much choice, and speaking English is definitely seen as cool. Hopefully this situation will lead to my child, when he/she gets a bit older, actively seeking out media that requires English knowledge, and maybe also communication in English (on the internet and so forth) without me having to do much about it! It would definitely be so much harder if we were working with Icelandic as the minority language.

They do have to learn English at school here, but I’m hoping my child will be able to skip those classes at least in the early years because if everything goes to plan they would be so easy as to be mind-numbingly boring. Hopefully there will be opportunities to learn another language instead, maybe extra Danish haha.

10

My family is Brazilian, but I moved to the US and learned English in my early childhood, I became literate first in English. My mother was very strict about us speaking Portuguese at home (I actually loved it) and she would often teach me songs, listen to music and tell me stories in Portuguese, which helped me to love the language more. However, as I grew (around my 9’s and 10’s), I became embarrassed of her speaking Portuguese with me in front of my school friends. That quickly passed as I moved back to [name_u]Brazil[/name_u] with my mother and at age 11 became fully literate in Portuguese as well.

I’m yet to bring my baby girl into the world, but I’ve been with my SO for the better part of three years and his twin daughters (first marriage), live with us. I ended up teaching them to speak Portuguese and my husband is also making a strong attempt at learning. My daughter will be raised bilingual and bi-literate if it depends on both of us and her older sisters as well.

I think languages can open or create barriers, once you know them or not. Not making the effort of having my girls, in my honest opinion, learning Portuguese is shutting the door to an entire culture and entire part of my identity (and theirs), and I don’t think that’s fair. I would’ve never forgiven my mother if she hadn’t spoken and continued to teach me Portuguese and the cultures (yes, in plural, it’s a hugely diverse country) of [name_u]Brazil[/name_u]. I also wouldn’t have forgiven her if she’d allowed me to erase English and the US from my life and identity, once we moved back to [name_u]Brazil[/name_u].

11

Well, we’re failures. Our son knows about three words in Arabic. He can respond to simple, simple phrases but that’s it-- and he exclusively responds in English. He hears it daily, and it makes his grandparents very sad, but nothing seems to have stuck. Globally dominant language ftw!

12

I am bilingual, my husband is bilingual, the grandparents on both sides speak Spanish as a first language, so raising my daughter bilingual is very important to me. Our strategy at the moment is to speak to her in Spanish almost exclusively at home (we are doing about a 70/30 split right now). She’s only 10 weeks old so not sure how it’s going beyond the she smiles at whatever high pitched cooing anybody does. Lol

We sing, read, and talk to her in Spanish and my [name_f]MIL[/name_f] who will be watching her when I go back to work only speaks Spanish so I am hopeful it will stick.

13

I’m in Australia, but have always been fluent in English and Japanese (my parents), and I lived in Japan for most of my high school years, which is where I met my DH. Our girls will probably have their first memories in Japan, as we’re moving back in a couple of months, but we will ensure they are bilingual.

As our kids will be in Japan for the first years of their lives, I’ll introduce English as MUCH as possible, because we won’t be there forever, and DH is definitely more fluent in Japanese. The next struggle is their names!

14

I am bilingual (English/Swedish) after spending a year abroad during high school. My husband and I now live in [name_u]Sweden[/name_u] and our 3 year olds are bilingual as well. I had the best of intentions of doing research on methods to make it happen and what would be best, but with the chaos of infant twins we sort of naturally fell into speaking English at home, Swedish when other people (particularly other children who don’t speak English) are around, and they get Swedish all day at preschool (since 14 months old). The only hard and fast rule I have is not mixing the languages when I speak. Otherwise I speak with them in the language that feels right for the moment. My husband speaks very little Swedish so they get lots of English from him. We read constantly in both languages and watch movies in both.

They could distinguish between the languages at a very early age. We were first sure of it at 18 months when they reacted to someone else speaking English at their preschool. They have naturally learned who to speak what language to. So for example, if I ask them in English to go tell a guest that dinner is ready, they will go to the living room and announce in Swedish to come eat. Since about 3 they have been translating during conversations around town for their grandparents when they come to visit (since they speak no Swedish).

We feel very fortunate that they haven’t had any linguistic delays. In fact, when they started at a new preschool at 2.5, the staff was highly impressed by their language skills and told us that they were going to have to continually remind themselves that the boys were not older than they were because of their advanced language.

Our focus now is to be sure that once they start school they learn to read and write and study in both languages so we are mainly looking at the two schools in our area that have programs where some of the core courses are taught in English.

15

Zaelia, it sounds like it’s working out pretty successfully for your family!

Maybe it would be worth it for us to consider having English as a ‘family language’, i.e. when we’re all together and nobody else is around, everyone speaks English? I do worry that this is the biggest flaw with OPOL, having two different languages going on at once at the same dinner table! It must be odd. The thing is my bf and I together kind of speak ‘Ice-english’, mostly English but we definitely mix our languages, especially him. I think this would be a hard habit to break if we were all speaking English, but on the other hand I don’t want my kid growing up thinking a plate is a ‘disk’ and that ‘smack’ means ‘taste’.

It sounds like you’re mainly doing MLAH, with Swedish around other Swedish speakers - would you say then that you find it more comfortable and natural if everyone in a given social situation is speaking the same language? When you’re out of the house but not really with anyone else - at, say, the supermarket with your boys - do you speak to them in English?

[name_f]Do[/name_f] you think your sons are dominant in Swedish? [name_f]Do[/name_f] they code-switch at all?

Was it like an international school you were thinking of sending them to? Or just a bilingual school for local children?

We have an international school in Reykjavík, but I’m not really interested in sending my child there. I think it is mostly the children of short-term immigrants who go there, so there would always be new people in their class and people moving away again, and also it’s sort of a bubble apart from the rest of Icelandic society. Although it would doubtless be good for their language, I think I want my child to be with other Icelandic kids. I don’t want to end up making them into outsiders in their own home country…

16

[name_m]How[/name_m] not to do it: my first language as a baby was Thai. We then moved to an English-speaking country. For several years my parents forgot to teach Thai to me. Then, when I was five, my mother tried to start again, but she didn’t teach me by speaking to me-- she just gave me an exercise book. I had to sit in my bedroom alone and copy out each letter of the Thai alphabet a hundred times. Not surprisingly, being five years old, I told her, “I quit!” and to this day I do not speak my own first language.

My son’s only a few weeks old, but I’m determined to make sure he’ll grow up bilingual in [name_m]French[/name_m] and English. We’re planning to go the OPOL route.

17

I used to live in [name_m]New[/name_m] Brunswick and the [name_m]French[/name_m] children there learn English pretty much exclusively from tv. I didn’t know any parents that spoke in English to their kids even though they all spoke English, when talking to the kids they spoke only in [name_m]French[/name_m]. [name_m]Ad[/name_m] yet from tv and hearing the odd conversations in English when they are at stores or whatever they were all bilingual by the age of 3 or 4.

18

Sorry for the long reply :slight_smile:

I’m sure there is lots of research that can tell you better than I can, but yes, I think our strategy is working out very well for our family. It felt odd to me to have two languages happening at the same time, and sort of complicated if not outright rude since my husband does’t speak much Swedish (although he understands a good amount). We definitely find it more comfortable to have everyone speaking the same language for the most part, but that works well with my husbands more reserved personality. [name_m]Even[/name_m] if we were speaking English with other Swedish families, he would not speak up very much, particularly not in larger groups. What often ends up happening is that he will listen to the conversations when we are all together and maybe have small side conversations with one person. I think he is just more comfortable that way. He will also speak English with people while cleaning up the kitchen after a meal etc. But the conversation naturally goes back to Swedish when kids are around.

When we are out around town the language I choose depends a lot on how much I want to stick out. If I am just not feeling like dealing with the looks I get sometimes when we are speaking English I just stick to Swedish. But I do try to speak English to them if I am up for it to be sure they get enough English exposure. Probably a total slacker method, but honest. :slight_smile: Sometimes I just want to get things done and not deal with attracting attention.

As far as a dominant language, I would say that one of my boys is equally good in both languages, while the other one is a bit better in Swedish than English. But we have noticed that when they go long stretches home with us (like week long holidays or when we are on vacation in the States particularly) their English skills progress quickly and overtake their Swedish, but then we come back and things even out again.

I had to look up what code switching was. :slight_smile: Yes, with each other they do that. And even in their solitary imaginative play. But when speaking to others, they speak one language most of the time. Occasionally they will throw out the first word that comes to mind (for example, if you ask them in English ‘what is that over there?’ the answer may come back in Swedish, but almost always they will answer in the language in which the question was asked, or quickly correct themselves if they started with the wrong language.) The other time they mix their languages is when somehow they have learned a word incorrectly. For example, one of my boys says ‘I want to bli with you’ instead of ‘I want to be with you’ (Bli is the swedish verb to become. I usually just repeat his sentence with the correct verb, but it hasn’t really worked to correct this misunderstanding like it has with others. My other son has my favorite mistake. When he wants to say ‘I forgot’ he sometimes says ‘I forglömt’ (glömt is a version of the swedish verb to forget, but he combines the two words). But these are really the two examples I can think of this so for the most part their languages are very ‘clean’.

The schools we are looking at are normal public schools, but they are bilingual. I don’t know a lot about them yet but I think they serve a mix of ex-pat families and Swedes who really want their kids to excel at English.

Good luck with your planning! The best advice I can give is to go with what feels natural for your family. If you have to force things you are more likely to ‘cheat’/ not follow through and just make things harder on yourselves.

19

Well I am utterly useless when it comes to languages, my husband is Italian (he was born there and then his parents moved the family over to [name_f]England[/name_f] when he was five), our children have been brought up around both English and Italian equally. We mostly talk English around the house (mostly for my sake) but my husband often talks Italian to them as does his family (They usually only speak Italian with the kids if I’m not around or involved in the convo).

They were brought up with English and Italian TV shows, books, lullabies, everything really. [name_f]Chiara[/name_f]'s first word was Italian, it was confusing at first because I found that with [name_f]Chiara[/name_f] she would mix up both languages and when she started forming sentences she would say some of the words in English and then others in Italian, she still sometimes says something to me inItalian before realising that I can’t understand her. [name_f]Vittoria[/name_f] worked out the difference pretty quickly between the two languages and who could understand which language. And [name_m]Renzo[/name_m] is still a bit too young, he mutters a lot but many of the words sound distinctively Italian in my opinion, his English does seem better than his Italian though.

We didn’t really have any techniques or anything like that, just went with the flow and each experience has been different but it seems to work, my [name_f]MIL[/name_f] often says that [name_f]Vittoria[/name_f]'s and [name_f]Chiara[/name_f]'s Italian matches what her children’s Italian sounded like at that age (and she’s got a lot of references with six children!). My husband wants to start introduces other languages to [name_f]Vittoria[/name_f], not with the intent of her becoming fluent in it but just so she can get a better grip on languages, this will be my husband’s job because: number 1 because I’m hopeless with languages and number 2 because he speaks not only Italian and English but [name_m]French[/name_m], [name_m]German[/name_m] and Spanish all pretty perfectly. I don’t know what he plans to do, I think he is just going to read story books in different languages with her.

21

I’m raising my kids speaking 2 languages. My native Spanish and my husband’s English. Since we live in Spain, we try to keep the English for when we are home or in a place where there are other anglophones. Things have been going very nicely for us. My stepson [name_u]Max[/name_u] and my older son are learning to read and write in both languages and are doing well at it. We try not to force them to learn or make it seem like a chore, in fact, since we have been speaking to them in Spanish and English (and Spanglish) all of their lives, they are very used to it.

[name_u]Max[/name_u] speaks the best English, followed by [name_m]Aurelio[/name_m]. [name_f]Ines[/name_f] and [name_f]Olimpia[/name_f] are more on the Spanish side, because they end up spending most of the day alone with me. They do communicate between them very well in both languages and when don’t remember a word, say it in the other language. It is important to teach the language by not making it look like teaching. if you expose the kids to books, films, tv programs, games and the language from early on, you wont need to “force” it in the future. [name_f]Music[/name_f] is also a key element, the rhythm and melodies of the songs help the children perfect pronunciation and also add new words and expressions to their vocabulary. Mine love the [name_f]Sesame[/name_f] [name_m]Street[/name_m] songs, lullabies, [name_m]Elvis[/name_m] and the Beatles.