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@Clementine: we're speaking Arabic exclusively at the young age before school
Our plan (and our parents did it) is no speak Arabic at home 24/7 and then when they go to school, they can learn English. We plan to send our kids to pre-k so, that means the age of 4. I think Arabic will be solidified by then and English will/ can be easily learned by 4.
Then, after that point, we plan on speaking exclusively in Arabic at home, but allowing the kids to listen to music, watch TV and play in English. That way: both languages are solidified and fluent. -
Yes! I hope to raise our future children bilingual. I speak Cantonese and plan on speaking it to the LOs. My parents are pretty close by too, so I hope they can spend a lot of time with them too. DH does not speak any Chinese though, but I think it's still possible.
My distant relatives are from Puerto Rico, the dad speaks Chinese, English and Spanish. The mom speaks Chinese and English. So Dad always speaks Spanish to the kids, mom always Chinese, and then to each other, English. I'm not sure why they speak English to each other, instead of Chinese - I think Chinese was his last, language so it's not as easy for him as English. But anyways.. it works, the kids understand Spanish and Chinese, and being in America, will have no problem learning English, esp since their parents speak it to each other too. -
@Clementine: Oh man. I can write a novel about this. But basically, what I've learned from dealing with my son's speech delay is that it's best to stick with "one language/one person".
We've worked with at least 5 or 6 different therapists and they all agreed with this. They definitely all recommended that we expose our kids to multiple languages because studies have shown that early exposure to multiple languages boosts executive function. So it's definitely a positive thing. But in order to help the child compartmentalize the 2 (or more) languages, it's easier for the child to associate languages with specific environments/people.With that said, there are certainly children who tend to pick up languages easier/faster without the "one language/one person" split. When I asked our speech therapists about bilingualism, they said there isn't any evidence to show that bilingualism causes speech delay. Apparently it's a hot topic in the speech & language community. But they've all seen it first-hand. They've worked with many, many bilingual speech-delayed kids without any diagnosable problems, other than expressive speech delay. Once the child masters the art of expressive language (in whatever language), then it's ok to start mixing them up.
This is sort of the same premise as language immersion programs. Most of the ones that I've seen start by speaking 100% in the foreign language in Kinder, then 90% in 1st grade, 80% in 2nd grade, etc. I haven't seen any programs that mix the 2 languages up 50/50 in the beginning, when they are first becoming exposed to a new language.
We started by mixing up the 2 languages in our household too (english/korean). I spoke Konglish to him all the time. Once we realized he had a speech delay, we switched to 100% English because he gets 100% korean at his daycare (and from his grandma). It's really made a big difference for us.
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We are a bilingual household, English and French. DS also goes to a bilingual English/German preschool. He has been going for about 6 months now and we can see that he is picking up German and using it at home sometimes.
At home, I speak about 95% English to him and DH speaks 100% French. However, DH and I speak about 80% French to one another so I think DS gets a fair amount of exposure to both languages at home.
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