Hellobee Boards

If I had to quantify in percentages, my son is exposed to less than 10% of his second language over the course of a week. He more or less always answers in English and my husband is starting to question how we can get more of the responses in the second language...I suspect we will have to change our family language. The challenge there is really to my husband, he has a difficult time speaking to me in German.

DS1 understands both spanish and English but mainly speaks English. He only has a handful of spanish words. He was exposed to spanish daily as my mom took care of him for the 1st two years of his life. I told her to only speak to him in Spanish. I think it will be hard for him to speak in Spanish because now he primarily hears and is learning in English.

my kid is turning 3 in a few weeks and she speaks and understands English completely. She understands Korean but will respond in English. She does speak some phrases in Korean because I consistently say those phrases in Korean. I will also put her in Korean school in a year or so.

She does know all her alphabets in English but shows no interest in learning the Korean alphabet. But I don't want to push her, so for the time being, all I can do is speak to her in Korean more and more and hope she understands enough so Korean school won't be too difficult and off putting later on.

My children are trilingual. We are a bilingual home with French and English and they go to German daycare.

For DS, who is 4, he is exposed mostly to English with me, all day daycare is German and French when my husband is home. He is completely fluent in all 3 languages even though he makes grammatical errors and occasionally uses a word from a different language when speaking. He started German daycare at 2.

DD is 18 months and has been exposed to German since she was 4 months (babysitter). It's hard to tell where she is, but I think her receptive language is equal across the board. She has more English than French words and I'm not sure if she is saying any German words yet.

DD has been advanced in English and Mandarin. I think she just has a knack for languages. We will be adding German soon.

@looch: I speak English to the children but I speak 90% French to DH.

@looch: it was easy for me because that's the language we met each other in. I have to make an effort when I switch to English with him, but it comes automatically when I switch back and forth with the LOs.

@jasmine: ANY language exposure you can give them is amazing, especially Chinese in today's world! Do you have Chinese speaking family? Even if your future children only use Chinese to speak to family members, that is really great. My father's native language is Thai and he also speaks some Cantonese, but he never taught either to me, so I cannot communicate with my Asian relatives. It's really a pity.

To "lamariniere", thank you for your suggestions.
I mentioned this in my other thread that I had an abusive mother in my childhood. I left my mother house when I was 18, and this year I'm 30, so more than a decade I do not have a close relationship with my mom.
Our relatiosnhip is pretty much over now. She disown me because I married my husband, an African-American guy that she disapproved.

My mother is very unreasonable. Never once she try to met my husband. She totally rejected him since the beginning after she know his ethnicity. She doesn't even care to know his name, let alone his jobs or who he is as a person.
Nobody in my Chinese family accept my husband, except one person that is my older brother.

To my Chinese mother, I'm just a 'Dirty' girl in her eyes because I married a guy she disapproved. According to my mom words, my future children are also equally "Dirty" like me.
My children going to just have to grow up with their paternal grandma. Because their maternal grandma thinks they are Dirty and full of shame just like me--their mom.

I do not want my kids around my mother, not with her hateful attitude like that. Seem like my children going to just have to speak Chinese with me.
Despite my mother disown me, I have no regrets that I married my husband. He is an awesome awesome husband! I have zero regret.

@lamariniere: So, last night I randomly began speaking German to my son...and he started speaking German back, so I think we're officially changing the family language to German. Problem is my son's more advanced than I am, but I guess we're going to learn together!

@lamariniere: Yes, he always does unless we're with other English only speaking children, then he speaks English so the other kids understand.

My son was so shocked that I could speak like my husband, it's not perfect, but it's a start. I also can read in German, but I have basically zero comprehension, so my husband is going to order some beginning readers for the both of us, lol.

@looch: @lamariniere: do either of you have any book recommendations to help me learn some German?

@Andrea: I have a 15 minute German CD and accompanying book, probably an older version of this:

http://www.amazon.com/15-minute-Eyewitness-15-Minute-Language-English/dp/1409331164/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1432124427&sr=1-4&keywords=german+language+cd+DK

As for books, I have a reader at home, I'll check and see what the brand is.

@Andrea: another thing you can do is stream German language television, my husband watches Swiss news programs. It's really important to hear the pronunciation, and you can usually pick up a lot by the context.