Do you make an effort to expose your kids? Our family language will be English, since that is what DH and I both speak and the language that we are most comfortable with. Since we both WOH, I imagine that most of our time with our LO (who's still baking now) will be as a family, speaking English. We have different second languages - I would love to expose our LO i.e. through books (and even got some foreign language baby books as gifts that I'm excited about!) but I wonder if it will create confusion - especially when our LO is really young - if most of the time we're communicating in English....
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We are a trilingual family. We each speak a different foreign language to our LOs but speak to each other in English. Our kids speak all three! The more early exposure the better.
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@Baby Boy Mom: that’s great!
@periwinklebee: do what she does! I wish we had a second language for our LOs. Both grandmas are totally fluent in Spanish, one native speaker and one Spanish teacher for 30 years, but neither will be serious about only speaking Spanish to my kids! The native speaker (my MIL) specially drives me crazy cause she’ll teach him baby talk type names for things in Spanish but that’s it! -
Only I (and my family) speak another language - DH solely speaks English so DS only deals with two, not three, languages. I would say prior to age 2 he would sometimes mix up words. However, at age 3 now he functions equally well in both languages and often translates for his Dad.
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We have several languages between us, but are focusing on just one (that DH and I both speak) for now. We'll maybe start teaching something else later, when we have a better idea what they like/might need.
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My husband and I speak different native languages (me English, him French) but we each speak the other’s language too. Our home language is mostly French and we each speak our own language to our LOs. Until 4 months ago, we were living in Austria and our LOs both spoke fluent German too since they went to German-only daycare. Now we live in Thailand and the German is sadly fading, but my kids are learning Thai (Thai is also part of their heritage). We’ve lived abroad for almost 6 years and I’ve known a ton of mixed nationality families with multilingual kids speaking 2-4 languages per family! It’s really incredible to see kids who are multilingual and can juggle languages and cultures without even thinking about it. Just keep in mind that each kid learns language differently, I definitely saw differences in my LOs when they were very young. I personally think any langage exposure is amazing and opens up worlds of opportunity regardless of the languages spoken.
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Small children don't make the distinction between languages, they just think that there are multiple words for things.
My personal view is that any exposure is good exposure, even if it's not enough to have them actually speak the second or third languages. It's enough that they hear it and understand that there are different sounds that are made. My husband speaks 4 languages and I speak 3, and my son is actually learning a third in school, it's really exciting.
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I only speak English (my Dads native language is Spanish and I’m still bitter he didn’t teach me at a young age but whatever ha)
My husband spoke Tagalog at home and I would love for our kids to learn- especially to communicate with the grandparents and his Filipino community. We haven’t started yet, though -
Selfishly- I also want to know what’s going on haha. Anyone else struggled with that?
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We don't really, mostly because I haven't figured out a way to do it effectively. My daughter gets some exposure to my first language through my mom, who taught her some words and a lullaby she loves, and she recognized when I speak Russian with my parents, but doesn't really understand any of it herself. She has less understanding of my husband's language, since she doesn't spend as much time with his family, and they don't make a particular effort to expose her to it. And my husband and I don't speak each other's language, so she's not hearing either at home, unfortunately.
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Between DH & I, we speak 3 dialects of Chinese. But, it's definitely been way more difficult to incorporate it in our daily lives with kids. DH def prefers English, and we don't see his parents that often, so DD1 probably can only recognize a few worlds in 1 dialect. The other dialect, nothing.
My mom watches our kids often, so they're more exposed to our dialect. But even my mom speaks a lot of English too. I am horrible at trying to speak in my native tongue. I keep saying I need to buy some Chinese books and look up some Chinese cartoons or something for more immersion!
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Thank you all - this is super helpful! I have a couple of friends who are super-regimented about following some of the research on multi-lingual kids, which apparently suggests always having one person speak the same language - so i.e. my friend only speaks English and his wife only speaks German, even when they talk to each other, which would never work for us. It's so good to hear that more flexible approaches work well. I think I will pick up some more foreign language books and start there...
@justjules: I totally get wanting to know what's going on. My husband's family speaks a Chinese dialect and I can never understand a thing they are talking about.
@snowjewelz: My husband also speaks a Chinese dialect, which I think is fast becoming a dead language with the imposition of Mandarin. I don't know that our child would ever have a use for the language per se, besides talking with the grandparents (who can in principle speak English), but I figure being exposed to the sounds and tones could make learning other east asian languages easier in the future should he have an interest...
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@periwinklebee: Same here. My in-laws speak Mandarin to the kids/me anyway, so sadly I think their dialect is gonna "die" with DH & his siblings.
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@snowjewelz:
My MIL actually hates Mandarin for this reason and gets super annoyed when people use it, even though she's completely fluent, but it's much more practical...
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@periwinklebee: Aww, yeah, I get why she'd be upset, but sadly I think a lot of dialects will die out within the next few generations b/c everyone is just learning Mandarin
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@snowjewelz: Yeah, I know there have been some very unsavory government policies behind language homogenization and understand why it is upsetting, but it also is probably an inevitable result of greater economic integration, access to better ICT, etc...
My MIL actually hates Mandarin for this reason and gets super annoyed when people use it, even though she's completely fluent, but it's much more practical...
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