https://boards.hellobee.com/ Pregnancy, Baby and Parenting blog, by Hellobee en Sun, 10 May 2026 02:34:55 +0000 https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/multilingual-families-or-if-you-know-multilingual-families#post-1908206 Mon, 20 Oct 2014 17:15:05 +0000 mrs scrapbook 1908206@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>I taught in a trilingual school (although I only speak English). Teachers spoke to students in their (the teacher's) native/first/home language. So I spoke with them exclusively in English, but our French teachers spoke with the kids in French. Parents were encouraged to follow the same model. So, for example, a student with a Spanish/English speaking Mom and English only speaking dad, spoke Spanish with mom and English with dad. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/multilingual-families-or-if-you-know-multilingual-families#post-1908124 Mon, 20 Oct 2014 15:58:31 +0000 xmaskidjr 1908124@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>My DH and I both speak Korean(native tongue) and English. We speak Korean exclusively at home and she is exposed exclusively to English in her daycare. We do read English books to her (18month) at home and speak English when we are interacting with other kids' parents. Hopefully she will pick up both languages from us and also daycare. :) </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/multilingual-families-or-if-you-know-multilingual-families#post-1907005 Sun, 19 Oct 2014 23:01:44 +0000 PinkElephant 1907005@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>Ditto what Sunny said - I know a family where each parent speaks their native tongue to the child at home, but they speak English to others. I was astounded that at three, the little girl was proficient at all three languages and had no trouble realizing upon first meeting me that I spoke English to her mom and addressing me in that language...and that in front of me, she converses with her parents in English. Not only super smart, but also very polite! :) </p> <p>I speak a decent amount of two languages besides English but I don't feel fluent enough to be using them to talk to my kids, so they just know a smattering of words in a few languages. Our former nanny used to talk to them in Tagalog sometimes but I don't think they retained much. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/multilingual-families-or-if-you-know-multilingual-families#post-1905649 Fri, 17 Oct 2014 17:53:40 +0000 sunny 1905649@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>I'm only sort of bilingual, DH speaks several languages and we only speak to our LO in English. Fail. :-(</p> <p>We have friends who are really great about speaking to the kids in their native tongues. The mom speaks to LOs in her native tongue, the dad speaks to LOs in his native tongue and the kids speak English at daycare. What is amazing to me is that they know which language among the 3 they should be speaking to any given person. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/multilingual-families-or-if-you-know-multilingual-families#post-1905639 Fri, 17 Oct 2014 17:35:43 +0000 Charm54 1905639@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>I speak 50/50 French/English to DD, DH speaks English. Our community is bilingual so out and about we speak whatever language is appropriate for the situation. Dd will go to an English school but be in the French immersion program </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/multilingual-families-or-if-you-know-multilingual-families#post-1905633 Fri, 17 Oct 2014 17:30:37 +0000 Mama Bird 1905633@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>We speak Russian with DS, but he's picking up a bit of English too from the radio and the other kids in day care. I really wanted to be teaching him Spanish or French by now, but he's having a bit of a speech delay, and I'll be happy when he learns to talk in one language!</p> <p>A co-worker does the taking turns thing... he speaks English with his daughter, his wife speaks Chinese, and the day care people speak Portuguese :) </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/multilingual-families-or-if-you-know-multilingual-families#post-1905522 Fri, 17 Oct 2014 15:34:25 +0000 erinpye 1905522@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>I speak Spanish fluently, DH speaks Japanese. We speak English to our DDs. I try to teach them some things, but we forget to incorporate it as much as I'd like. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/multilingual-families-or-if-you-know-multilingual-families#post-1905520 Fri, 17 Oct 2014 15:31:01 +0000 shinymama 1905520@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>We're a bilingual household. The game plan was that we were both going to speak Spanish to our second LO since that's what we did with our first (oldest is 12 and is fluent in English and Spanish), but that hasn't completely panned out.</p> <p>- As a family, we speak to each other in English.<br /> - I speak to LO in Spanish (home/out and about).<br /> - DH speaks to him in English.<br /> - Grandparents speak to him Spanish.<br /> - Daycare - at our request - speak to him in Spanish most of the time. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/multilingual-families-or-if-you-know-multilingual-families#post-1905466 Fri, 17 Oct 2014 14:58:03 +0000 mrs.shinerbock 1905466@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>We are the same as @PurplePeony: and @wheres_c: . I speak some Spanish and will read books to LO in Spanish or use some phrases/words, but generally speak English to her and with DH.</p> <p>We have friends that both speak English and their native tongue interchangably with their LO, friends that only speak their native tongue in the house, and friends where one parent speaks only their native tongue and the other parent only speaks English. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/multilingual-families-or-if-you-know-multilingual-families#post-1905349 Fri, 17 Oct 2014 13:49:34 +0000 HabesBabe 1905349@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>I speak Vietnamese and English, and the hubs only speaks English. We speak English to C and H when he's around, but when my mom is here (she helps watch the kids while I work from home), we both speak to them in Vietnamese.</p> <p>C is 2 and understands Vietnamese, but only speaks in English :( H is only 5 months, so he mainly just drools. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/multilingual-families-or-if-you-know-multilingual-families#post-1905323 Fri, 17 Oct 2014 13:38:47 +0000 wheres_c 1905323@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>exactly the same as @PurplePeony</p> <p>We are a bilingual home (well, DH is and I have a rudimentary grasp of his native language) and we hope DD will speak both languages. For the most part, DH and I each talk to her in our own "mother tongue," but she hears more English by default because that's how DH and I communicate with each other. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/multilingual-families-or-if-you-know-multilingual-families#post-1905309 Fri, 17 Oct 2014 13:27:54 +0000 Anutka 1905309@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>I speak Russian to LO, and DH speaks French, but we communicate between each other in English so LO gets a lot of that when we're all together. </p> <p>I actually had a bit of a tough time with this when she was younger, because she understood Russian a lot better than English. So although I would try to speak English to her when out in public, I'd often have to repeat instructions in Russian.</p> <p>She's picked up a lot more and now understands all three. Her trilingual sentences are hilarious. </p> <p>It's really engraved in me that I can speak Russian when we're alone...When I get left alone with other babies, I have a strong urge to speak Russian to them. Confused baby stares follow :silly: </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/multilingual-families-or-if-you-know-multilingual-families#post-1905306 Fri, 17 Oct 2014 13:26:48 +0000 snowjewelz 1905306@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>Although I'm still pregnant, I plan to speak to LO in Chinese as much as possible. Once maternity leave is over, I'll probably speak a little less since my mom will have her twice a week and will speak Chinese to her there. I wish DH would speak Chinese to her (another dialect) but probably not... </p> <p>If we're out with friends I'd probably stick to English. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/multilingual-families-or-if-you-know-multilingual-families#post-1905300 Fri, 17 Oct 2014 13:20:57 +0000 Corduroy 1905300@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>My neighbors speak Japanese to their little boy at home. They try to speak English in front of us but their LO doesn't follow too well so they end up speaking to him mostly in Japanese. He speaks Japanese to my LO but she doesn't seem to mind. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/multilingual-families-or-if-you-know-multilingual-families#post-1905298 Fri, 17 Oct 2014 13:19:29 +0000 PurplePumps 1905298@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>I'm bilingual, but DH is not. I plan on speaking only Chinese to our kids both in and out of the house.<br /> I have family where the mother speak Chinese to the kids, the father speaks Chinese &amp; Spanish so he speaks Spanish to kids) and then they speak either Chinese or English to each other... and the kids have picked up all 3. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/multilingual-families-or-if-you-know-multilingual-families#post-1905291 Fri, 17 Oct 2014 13:11:08 +0000 AmandaB8 1905291@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>We're not multilingual, but have friends that are. </p> <p>Mom speaks Spanish to son, Dad speaks English (even though Dad is Mexican and Mom is white! lol). Out in public, it's generally the same. But if they're somewhere like a restaurant, where it would help the waiter to know what mom asked, she speaks English. </p> <p>FWIW, mom is a spanish teacher, but didn't start spanish until she was in high school. Dad grew up in a spanish speaking household, and honestly hates the "feel of speaking spanish" (his words, not mine). He's completely fluent and it's his first language, but he refuses to speak it unless he has no other option. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/multilingual-families-or-if-you-know-multilingual-families#post-1905276 Fri, 17 Oct 2014 13:01:13 +0000 lamariniere 1905276@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>We are a bilingual household and my LOs are actually trilingual because of school/babysitters. I speak almost exclusively English to my LOs, DH speaks exclusively French to them, DS goes to a German speaking preschool and DD has a German speaking babysitter 3x per week. DH and I speak 90% French to one another. </p> <p>As for friends, we are in an expat community, so practically everyone is at least bilingual if not more! I find people tend to default to the group majority language, so the vast majority of the time people are speaking English in group settings. However, if they need to say something private to their kids, they might say it in their native or 2nd language. For example, we had some Norwegian/Swedish friends and they would usually do everything in English, but if the dad needed to say something more serious, he would speak to his kids in Norwegian. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/multilingual-families-or-if-you-know-multilingual-families#post-1905275 Fri, 17 Oct 2014 13:01:09 +0000 PurplePeony 1905275@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>We are a bilingual home (well, DH is and I have a rudimentary grasp of his native language) and we hope DD will speak both languages. For the most part, DH and I each talk to her in our own "mother tongue," but she hears more English by default because that's how DH and I communicate with each other. </p> <p>We have many friends with bi- or trilingual households and the parents either do things more or less the way we do, or if both parents are fluent in another language, it is the primary language spoken at home. For example, in one family, both parents are Russian and their child didn't start learning English until she was in preschool, but she's now fluent in both. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/multilingual-families-or-if-you-know-multilingual-families#post-1905273 Fri, 17 Oct 2014 13:00:02 +0000 Arden 1905273@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>DH and I both speak Albanian but he is native-level fluent and I have an accent and make grammatical errors. We decided before she was born it would be best if she learned one language from each of us to help her not confuse them.</p> <p>So he speaks to her almost exclusively in Albanian, and I speak to her almost exclusively in English.</p> <p>We do this both at home and out. DH and I speak to each other in about 70/30 English-Albanian, so she hears it from both of us. My husband also speaks Spanish but I don't so he doesn't really use it at home, just at work. We also speak a little German but mostly just to my mom and a few random phrases to each other.</p> <p>(We both cuss in German, which she has picked up. Oops.) </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/multilingual-families-or-if-you-know-multilingual-families#post-1905266 Fri, 17 Oct 2014 12:57:03 +0000 looch 1905266@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>My husband speaks 4 languages, I speak 3. My husband speaks German to our son and I speak English to him. My parents speak in Italian to him at times.</p> <p>Our family language though, is English. My husband and I speak English to each other. I suppose we could switch to German, I am getting much better at it.</p> <p>So my husband usually also speaks to our son in German when we are out, BUT in the instances when there are other children present that do not speak German, my husband will speak English, so all the kids understand. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/multilingual-families-or-if-you-know-multilingual-families#post-1905264 Fri, 17 Oct 2014 12:54:42 +0000 mrsjyw 1905264@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>I am bilingual. I speak mostly in English to ds. He speaks a mix of both. My parents speak All Korean to him. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/multilingual-families-or-if-you-know-multilingual-families#post-1905263 Fri, 17 Oct 2014 12:54:22 +0000 Mamasig 1905263@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>I speak both Spanish and English to my kids. But I would say it's 75% English. My mom speaks 99% Spanish to them. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/multilingual-families-or-if-you-know-multilingual-families#post-1905261 Fri, 17 Oct 2014 12:53:20 +0000 hilsy85 1905261@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>DH is bilingual and speaks to LO in a mixture of the 2 languages (Russian and English). </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/multilingual-families-or-if-you-know-multilingual-families#post-1905257 Fri, 17 Oct 2014 12:52:26 +0000 mediagirl 1905257@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>If you speak 2 (or more) languages, what language do you speak to your lo at home? What language do you speak to your lo when you're out with friends? </p> <p>On the same note, do you have friends who speak 2 languages? What do they speak to their lo when they are out with friends? </p>