To want to raise our child Bilingual

[NewMumBGentle]

Bit of background DP is Italian, born in Italy, family still live in Italy, Italian is his native language, we've very much made a home here and have no plans to live there, although e go over to visit his family.

I'm currently 32 weeks with our first child, a little girl and the conversation tonight turned to her meeting the family when shes first born, from that id mentioned that i'd like DD to be raised bilingual. DP disagrees, he says we'll be living in England and that his parents speak conversational English so will be able to communicate with her that way, he thinks theres no point confusing her with two languages at home and is adamant he will not teach her. His parents so speak some English but there's still what i'd consider a language barrier there, i'd teach her myself but my Italian isn't the best. I just about get by when I'm there.

AIBU to be annoyed by this? I feel like she has this connection to this beautiful language and culture and he's denying her that.
AIBU

If you want to learn a language as an adult, you will need to girl out hundreds of pounds s year for classes. Or you can learn it as a child for free! No brainer to me.

@zwellers why do you assume the child is going to be forced to be bilingual, maybe they will live speaking two languages?
I feel people who find this a bad idea often only even speak one language themselves and envy those who speak more than one language, trying to find a rationale why being unilingual is superior...

I'm sitting in my living room in Germany with German DH watching German TV and chatting to DD (who was born in England and is negotiating with us to be allowed to go to sixth form in England) about the programme in German, while the two German born DSs play a StarWars card game in the same room speaking only English to one another with in depth discussion of the biographies of the StarWars characters in English between moves and game strategy and attack and defence numbers all stated in English - I'm not sure why they're playing in English because the cards they're reading from were a freebie from the local supermarket and are all written in German.

Life here is in German outside the house and all the children's friends are German but my children have never resisted using English (they're between nearly 9 and nearly 15).

anyone who is currently raising younger children bilingually and have the problem that the child(ren) only answer in English (or the other language) push on. That often happens at Kindergarten age when children really start to notice differences and try to fit in. Just persist in using the language you have always used and keep on. Usually they grow out of it - as long as they're not feeling as though the parent doesn't understand them, they'll be fine.

one of my DC went to a secondary school that has a bilingual class - starting from the first year there they have their lessons in a different language (in this case French - mostly here the schools that offer bilingual classes the other the language is English, in fact a lot of people criticised me at first for picking the French-speaking school. As I pointed out at the time, she's already fluent in English)

Anyway: to get into the bilingual stream they had to be interviewed and accepted (tested for language aptitude). Out of 33 children in the class 31 were bilingual in the local language + one other* (if not multilingual, which a few were). the two who weren't bilingual struggled a bit, one dropped out relatively early on but the other persisted and did well and is now studying in France.

*I think the class spoke a total of 15 or 16 languages in total

My dad was Danish-English was his third language after German.
I’ve no idea why I wasn’t bought up bi-lingually-most likely because my mum was a controlling bully and for some reason she didn’t approve. I really wish I had been though!

Two of my brothers married foreign ladies. They’ve bought their children up to be bi-lingual.

I teach a lot of students who speak two languages fluently (as a minimum) and can see only advantages to this. They are so confident and articulate: I'm meant to be the teacher and I envy them their skills! Few of mine are genuinely bilingual in the way your DD would be (OPOL) but they have been learning English for so long - and are now in an immersive English environment (educated in English and socialising in English) - that they are very fluent. To be at the start of your adult life with skills like that, to be able to apply for jobs saying that you are bilingual - your DH would have to be mad to want to deny her that opportunity!

(Plus Italian is such a beautiful language! I love to hear my Italians speak their native language even though I don't understand it...)

It would be sad for your child not to have some Italian as not speaking the language is not only a linguistic barrier but a cultural one. You need to understand the language to really "get" the culture.

Italian is a very good second language to have - it means your child will find Spanish easy at school. Learning to read and write in Italian will be simple as it's a language with very straightforward spelling rules.

I wouldn't expect complete native-standard fluency from OPOL with a father using the "foreign" (non-community) language, unless he is the primary care giver, but your child will have a massive head start in language learning.

Get your partner to read some of these posts (not the rude ones obviously).

My daughter is trilingual and my son bilingual but not via OPOL (English speaking parents, children educated in French and Spanish speaking settings). As a general rule I would say that bilingualism/multilingualism is easier for some than others - my son had mild language difficulties as a child which made the acquisition of French (his second language) slower. But this has had no impact on his later education, he's bright and speaks/writes well in both languages. His sister picks up new languages very easily and is currently trilingual and learning a couple of other languages.

Brefugee the modern foreign languages "stream" at my eldest's school is similar. About 80% of the one class out of a 9 class intake who specialise in MFL from year 7 onwards already have two or three "native" languages even though we live in a fairly monolingual area generally. Some children in her class speak five languages including the ones they learn at school. These are often the children doing best in the MFL taught at school.

A child bilingual will have an easy time picking up languages easily later on.

DH (bilingual) has an amazing ear for languages and was chatting away in Italian one year after two weeks - and no lessons - he says ‘oh it’s easy’ (no it’s not!). I’m very jealous of linguists.

A little boy in DS class was trilingual and it was amazing to listen to him.

My father spoke four languages including English. Two were native to his country of birth. I never even knew he spoke them fluently until my forties. Back then it was considered useless or shameful to have non-white heritage. He was mixed blood but this was always denied. I remain angry that a whole chunk of my heritage was white-washed.

Many many of the children my children go to school with are bilingual - it is almost more common than not and very useful for them.

However unless the Italian husband here is prepared only to speak to the child in Italian from birth and then on Saturdays once is it about 6 you send it to Italian classes it will be quite an effort. It tends to be when one parent always keeps to his or her native tongue that the child picks it up seamlessly.

Interesting comments since last night.
It's a shame that Velveteen's experience was negative, but as others have said, that's because she was brought up in a monolingual household speaking that language. For her to have had the benefits of a bilingual brain her parents would have had to make the effort of getting her out there from a young age into nursery, playgroups etc.
Similarly, with the father's input still generally being less (in terms of actual time spent with a child in the early period) as long as the child is exposed to the other language regularly it won't matter. When did was 3 and started Italian nursery, sure her English was stronger, she'd just spent three years mostly with me. Now, at 16 her Italian is stronger. Perfect 50-50 bilingualism is hard to find.
Friends of ours in the same situation are now regretting the fact that when their son was born, both parents spoke to him in English, figuring that as he was in Italy, they should push the English. Trouble was, the dad's English wasn't at a high enough level so the child picked up mistakes which became hardwired. They also sent him to an English speaking nursery. So by the time he started school, he needed extra Italian lessons.
People who haven't been through it, or studied bilingualism, or taught languages (and if you've done all three you find you sit there thinking "oh, listen to that, she said that because of the hardwiring of the past tense ending before the present and then she transferred it to Italian" etc ) do tend to think a) it's hard to "teach" a baby and b) it's all or nothing . Nobody is teaching anybody anything You're just speaking to your child in your language. What could be simpler! And I've never only spoken English to dd. You're not going to sit there and spend half an hour communicating a concept in English that the child only ever comes across in Italian. Now we quite happily have a sentence with an Italian verb stuck in the middle.

We did all the studies at university about benefits and drawbacks and for me, tbh, I'm not as interested in the fact that maybe a bilingual child is generally more advanced with other cognitive functions as, quite simply, languages are bloody great and it's nice to use them!

You honestly don't need Italian classes! You do need the native minority language speaker to stick to that language and read to the child in that language way past the age parents typically stop reading to children and to have lots of books in Italian (ideally not translated from English but books originally written in Italian) around the house in Italian, watch Italian original language films in Italian as a family even if one parent needs English subtitles on (Italy does still have a small film industry I believe and there's quite a back catalogue), have Italian radio on, spend part of each summer in Italy...

Oh what a shame your husband feels like this. I teach a little lad who is tri-lingual at 6. His mum is Spanish, he speaks English to his dad and locally, and goes to a Welsh medium school. It's amazing. He gets a little confused sometimes, but it's one word he'll stumble over, and you'd never know. He happily chats away in Spanish or English and chats to his mates in Welsh. Its amazing to see for us monoglots.

I think I'd probably try and establish the thinking behind it, and dig out stories of other children in similar situations who have used it to their advantage in life. There must be plenty out there.

Classes might work though if the other things are not in place- my husband didn't want to spend weeks each summer in his birth country as he didn't get on very well with his parents and it was stressful, so there were less opportunities to practice the language. It is also an obscure language, not like Spanish or German, so no resources not even satellite TV til about 5 years ago! Learning some basics in class plus hearing the accent at home may not have got my children bilingual but they can understand the language.

I think who the parent is makes a huge difference too- my husband didn't seem to chatter on like I did in his language when caring for the children, I spent all day just speaking and saying 'can you get the BALL, the BALL' and he would just pick the ball up and hand it over. I realised very early on their exposure to the second language was quite minimal with him, even when he did supposedly speak it.

The mums I've known who have succeeded (and it has mainly been mums doing OPOL) have done extra things like: put their children in daycare in the other country in the summer, sent them to summer camps, only reply in the other language and accept replies in the other language (so not responding if the child speaks English), and even taking them out of school and putting them in the other language country school for a few months. Also long visits in the summer to play with other language speaking cousins.

You have to find a way to make the child speak the other language, some reason to do so, or they start responding in their main language and stop bothering (that's my experience anyway).

I also notice where English is the second language it works better, probably because there is tonnes of English TV/music/songs/videos now so there is reinforced exposure which you don't get with a more unusual language.

It's mainly the mums though or the whole family speaks the second language- I don't actually know any OPOL dads who have succeeded in bringing up bilingual children, possibly as they are often not the main childcarers early on.

Hi

I am in the same position as you but my husband was very keen on it.

Speaking two languages doesnt confuse them at all if you do it consistently. I mean there are millions of kids who are bilingual. Research shows if they learn another language when they are young it permanently changes their brain (positively) in a way it doesnt when they are older. You have to have a rule though eg mummy says x daddy says y, or Italian at home and English outside the home. If you speak mostly English and do a bit of Italian it will not work.

It also wont work if he isn't really strict about it. My husband had to work really hard at speaking his language to them as naturally if he hears me speaking English to them his brain switches to English. He downloads tv in their language as well so most things they watch is in this language, and he reads books to them in that language as well. He also takes them to lessons. With all this their language is still a year or two behind for their age.

In my experience it didnt delay them. Even the two year old who doesnt speak in sentences, only 3 words max (like daddy read book) can switch from one to the other if she diesnt get the answer she wants from the first parent!

My 4 year old is really proud she knows 2 languages, she said tbr other day she was lucky to understand two.

Also for them to really speak it well, he will have to spend a lot of time with them alone

It probably depends. While we were living in the UK and DS was little, I spoke my first language with him. It did make me feel weird and I felt much more comfortable with English.
We moved abroad and could have gone down the route of me continuing to speak the local language and DH speaking English. However, DH is at work until quite late during the week. We now have English as our home or family language and DS learns the other language at nursery and when spending time with grandparents. He's a little behind but it's not causing any concern. His pediatrician takes his bilingualism into account when doing checks and we are lucky that he's at a bilingual nursery so doesn't feel weird speaking English there.
Are there any Italian-speaking playgroups or nurseries in your area? It might make it easier.

Absolute madness not to give your DD every advantage. They re little sponges at that age and its proven that once the 'language' brain is switched on then it's for life eg. Once you know 2 languages it's much much easier to learn a 3rd etc. Our DD is bilingual (French/English) she did start 'speaking' a little later than some of her peers I seem to remember at about 18mth-2yrs there was just an explosion of words and she was straight away doing short sentences etc. We have really lucked out and there is a local French Saturday School she goes to (remarkable how big the french speaking community is where we live -we had no idea when we moved here!) So now at 3.5y she is age appropriately fluent in both and sometime corrects mine or DH pronunciation! They don't really get confused they adapt. The way I see it is that even if she grows up to have no other employable skills - she will always be able to get work translating!

Nearlyalmost50 you are right that it's absolutely the easiest combination to live in a country with another community language and have English as the minority language.

As you say there are infinite, easy to access, high quality resources in English and it's pretty useful that English is seen as a high value language by most non native speakers. Dc3 came home from his first day at German kindergarten and announced "Englisch ist die Weltsprache!" but Polish parents I've met here have often asked me how I keep my children speaking English especially in public and told me that teachers have told them not to speak their native language - you clearly need a thicker skin to keep up languages not taught at school. One of DS's friends speaks French at home and this is also respected because it's a school subject. There certainly is language snobbery in some circles.

It's also much more likely children will speak a language fluently if a fairly verbose primary care giver whitters away to them all day in it for the first three years of their lives, absolutely

Altuogh don't do what my daughter's Polish best friend's family did when the children were 5 - sent the girl for the whole summer to her grannys in Poland such that in September when they started school she would only speak in Polish to the teacher (who of course knew no Polish)... that was a bit much total immersion..... However it settled down and her English came back and she went to Polish classes too at the weekends (her mother only spoke to her in Polish at home and they attended a UK polish church too)

I think he's been completely unreasonable and crazy.

My step-DGD is bilingual. She's 3. She speaks English with her dad, who is English and all her English family. She speaks French with her mum, who is French, and all her French family. She isn't confused. She switches between languages incredibly easy and it's wonderful to see and hear.

I have a friend whose Mum is Spanish but didn't talk to him in Spanish or ever use Spanish with him. He failed his Spanish A level. So so wrong. He is so disappointed in his Mum, as he could have been bilingual. A totally wasted opportunity.

The ability to be bilingual is a wonderful gift to give your child.

.My Italian friend at work says it's best to learn I Italian because it is then easy to learn Spanish and once you know Spanish, Italian and English, French is easy and then you can stick Portuguese or move into the German/Dutch languages. That's how so many people end up speaking 5 or more languages. She can get by in 7 and read and write in 4 to GCSE level or above.

" I don't actually know any OPOL dads who have succeeded in bringing up bilingual children, possibly as they are often not the main childcarers early on."

DH works 4 days a week and looks after DS 1 day a week. He takes him to a French parent/toddler group. As a result he has made friends with French families and we sometimes socialise with them at weekends. When DS starts school we will send him to a French club (for French not English kids) after school or at the weekend. We are lucky in that we live in a muliticultural city with a French population and French groups and clubs. Well, lucky, but we choose to live here partly for that reason. We also regularly go to France to see friends with kids - not cousins but the next best thing.

English is obviously the dominant language but maintaining the minority language can be done if the parent is committed and the other parent is supportive.