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Unfortunately, neither my husband nor myself is bilingual. I've studied Spanish, French, Dutch and German, but it's been so long now that I'm no longer conversational in any of them.

However. B is hard of hearing, and is expected to lose his hearing completely sometime over X amount of years. It may be sooner or it may be later, but it will happen one day. We're planning on beginning ASL classes this winter and hopefully we'll be able to pass that onto our children.

We are hoping to. We've bought books, we have family members speak to our son in our language, and when he's a little older (and can actually speak!) we are going to sign him up for classes. We are hoping he'll actually be more bilingual than us!

That is definitely the plan. We speak to her in Cantonese. Sometimes it slips because I am much more proficient in English but I try to limit my English around her as much as possible. Her grandparents are also help raising her so I hope the Chinese language will be a part of her. Being bilingual has been such an advantage for me, I hope to pass that on to my child.

We hope to raise our daughter bilingual, but I do hear that it's definitely harder than it seems! I'm bilingual myself and I try to talk to her in Japanese as much as possible, although it can be difficult because I'm more proficient in English and when my husband (who can only speak English) is around, I am already in the English-speaking mindset when conversing him so it's hard to switch gears.

I hear the best way for a child to learn two languages is for one parent to constantly speak in one, and the other parent the other, so that they can clearly differentiate between the two languages instead of getting confused about which words belong to which language.

I was born in Canada and my level of spoken Korean has never gone beyond "conversational" so any Korean I do speak to my daughter is very, very, basic...Maybe one word here or there. My husband was born in Hong Kong but came to Canada as an infant so the same applies to him, too. I'm afraid that she will not pick up on either language. However, I am thinking about enrolling her in French Immersion school so that she is proficient in French.

I would like for my child to be raised bilingual but neither my husband nor I speak anything other than English. I would like him/her to start learning Spanish as early as possible just because the area we live in has such a large population of hispanics. I expect our child to speak English, of course but I would like him/her to know what their classmates are saying if they are speaking in Spanish.

We're going to try! My mom and I speak fluent Vietnamese, hubs speaks English only; maybe a little bit of Spanish (from high school). The only thing is, I don't want to speak to our kid(s) in Vietnamese in front of the hubs-- I think he feels left out enough already when my mom and I speak it in front of him. So that will be hard, since they won't be exposed to it as often as I was.

I only spoke Vietnamese at home and it's already pretty bad! I forget words all the time.

@misono: thank you for sharing that link!

I would love to raise my child to be bilingual, but neither my husband's Vietnamese or my Cantonese is good enough to teach our son. We are hoping that he can pick up both languages through his grandparents and understand it in conversation.

My son is going to learn English & Spanish.

We will definitely be doing Argentine Spanish/English.

@mh.albania: one of my son's godfathers speaks Albanian, I'd love it if our son picks some up from him! The godfather is already planning a trip back in the spring with our son. I'm looking forward to it.

@LOOCH - We should meet! Ha, Albania isn't a big country. Where's your LO's godfather from?

Uhh, probably not. I'm don't consider myself bilingual. lol I can understand vietnamese but I can't really have a conversation with someone without using english words here and there.

I do wish my vietnamese was better. When I live at home, I hated it. Now that I moved away from my family and I see the importance of my culture and language.

My husband does know spanish pretty well, though. Maybe he'll teach our kids. Although, I did take French in school and I personally like that language. I do have family in France and it would be nice to take our family there.

English and hopefully, Japanese from me and German from my husband

Yes - husband is multilingual, speaking at least 6 languages well (English, Mandarin, Taiwanese, French, German, Japanese). I'm multilingual, but am definitely not as facile in languages other than English.

With our son, I am the English-speaking parent. My husband speaks Chinese to him most of the time. Lately he's been trying to add more French words. My son goes to a bilingual nursery school that's mostly Chinese, a little bit of English. His babysitter speaks to him in mostly Mandarin Chinese, and a little Taiwanese. My parents speak to him in Taiwanese. We also do ASL with him (via the Baby Signing Time series) to tie in the different languages. While he doesn't seem as verbal as Charlie, he's definitely going through a verbal explosion and can speak all 3 languages + do the signs. He also differentiates - I often don't realize he already knows how to say something in Chinese until I hear him say it to someone else.

I'm actually trying to get my husband to bring some of his grad student friends with kids to play with Wombat. Hubs is the only American in his group, so everyone else speaks English as a Second Language and several have kids.

My sister also teaches deaf students, so she's helping me learn ASL.

I'm horrible with languages and I don't want that for Wombat.

Well, husband only speak english (I speak a little spanish but not much) so we haven't been raising her bilingual but she watches Dora way too much and can count higher in spanish than english and often says gracias instead of thank you... I think it is cute.

I'm expecting, and we plan on raising our child to be bilingual. My husband speaks fluent Spanish and I will be in charge of English! Our plan is to have him speak Spanish exclusively while he is home. I will get to improve my Spanish and that way the baby will be exposed to both languages, since I will be home during the day speaking English.

There are so many benefits for the baby, and I love the idea of keeping his family traditions alive through the Spanish language. I will update you on how it works out!

@Mrs. Sunglasses: @geekinheels: do you have to speak one language exclusively? I find it hard as I seem to mix Korean and English more. Just wondering what your thoughts are. I don't want to confuse him, but I find it hard to stick to one language all the time.