Mumsnet Talk

Although my ds is not yet 4 months old, both my DH and I talk to him in both English and Spanish and I was wondering if anyone has taken this approach and how it has ben for them, or if OPOL is really the way to go.

I should add we also swap languages when talking to each other and depending on who else is in the room, etc.

No experience of BPBL but didn't want you to go unanswered. We do OPOL mainly, but it's a question of exposure. I think cory does more of a mix with great success. Hopefully she'll come along soon.

<bursts onto stage and waves at OP>

I wouldn't say we've been doing anything conscious or deliberate or planned enough to be dignified by an acronym- but dh and I have been allowed ourselves to use each other's languages to dcs, both in conversation and when singing/reading aloud. Dcs who are now 11 and 15, speak both languages fluently and happily and do not appear confused. Dd also reads books in Swedish at an age appropriate level (i.e. grown-up) and texts Swedish friends: ds is not much of a reader in any language.

The main reason people are wary of this approach is because of the risk that the majority language takes over and it gets harder and harder to maintain the minority. We reckoned we had a lot of compensatory factors in place: spending summer holidays with Swedish speaking family, a fine collection of Swedish books and DVDs, lots of bedtime stories- but even so we have sometimes had to remind ourselves to speak more Swedish.

When we are in Sweden the whole family speaks Swedish for the duration, when we are at home in the UK we speak whatever we fancy (often switching languages in the course of the conversation), when we are with other English speakers we speak English. Dd and ds do speak Swedish to each other, though not all the time.

Another reason people are put off BPBL is for fear the children will pick up a foreign accent from the non-native speaker. I can't say we've had much of a problem with that: dh's accent is very poor but dcs worked that one out at a young age and have never tried to imitate him; in fact, they stopped him reading aloud in Swedish when they were little (but never objected to my reading aloud in English).

There were times when ds was little when I did worry about his Swedish accent, but then I listened to my Swedish nephews and realised a lot of it was just the common baby errors. I think when you have a bilingual child you tend to blame anything linguistic they do wrong on bilingualism, when in actual fact the child may be further ahead than his monolingual peers.

We also talked a lot to the children about languages, what they were called, how you did things differently in the two languages, how people spoke different languages at different times.

But I would say the absolutely vital thing is getting in enough exposure of the minority language. And getting them to feel positive about it. If you can manage those two, then the actual method is probably not that important.

Cory comes up trumps again!

Having spent 3 weeks in my home country recently and listened to children of the same age group speaking, I am somewhat reassured that Cory is right about accents and mistakes.

I also agree that exposure is everything. That is why I bought 45kg of books and lugged them across the world. And that is why we have a better collection of Chinese books than the library.

Do whatever comes naturally for your family. OPOL is good because it gives people structure, but also provides a minority parent with ideological support against the majority language. However, if both parents speak both languages then things become more 'naturally' bilingual. Certainly in my family my wife and I had 2 shared languages with another 2 I speak with the kids, language use is very, very organic.

Sorry for the late reply and thanks a lot for the reassurance everyone.

I think in a way my situation will be similar to Cory as we will have lots of contact with family members with the minority language (English for the time being), we will spend time over there etc. Our collection of baby and children books is definitely overwhelmingly in English and on TV there area a lot of programmes you can watch in English so i think we will be fine!

Anyway, i think Spanglish may become a language in its own right soon, so we might even be ahead of the times!

We do OPOL (I see how that will evolve to BPBL later) mainly to avoid the terrible franglais my DSIL seems to communicate in despite speaking both languages perfectly.

If you do notice fluent Spanglish emerging I would put up boundaries sooner rather than later.

We do the same as Cory. Dh and I mix both German and English, so the bilingualsim has felt very natural.

I myself grew up bilingual (English and Croatian), and back then my parents didn't conciously pick a system, they just spoke whatever language seemed appropriate at the time. Both my dsis and I spoke both languages fluently, never had any problems, and didn't rebel against the minority language, so my experience of this very relaxed "method" was very positive.

I am somewhat against OPOL (for us) as I cannot imagine speaking to my ds in English in a German situation, with German speaking friends. That to me would feel wierd, wrong and tbh a bit rude.