Bringing up bilingual children

[marsup]

I noticed on the thread about 'when do they start staying mama and dada' that a few mumsnetters seem to be bringing up their children with 2 or more languages. Would anyone like to have a regular thread about this, comparing different ages/problems/advice? there seem to be a couple of relevant discussions in the archives, but not a general thread.

My DS is only 5 months so nothing but vowel sounds yet! but we speak French at home.

Yes please!

We speak Catalan and Spanish at home and English at the nursery of course, he is 15m old.

We have learned that multilingual children take longer to start to speak than other children, and that experts recommend that you stick to one language for 6m periods.

We have some friends who decided to speak only in Spanish at home, there where some communications problems at the nursery during the first two years but at 3 years their DD is fluent in both languages.

On the other hand we have other friends who decided to speak English at home to avoid getting the boy confused at the nursery even though their native language was Spanish, 3 years on he can hardly comunicate in any of the languages, it seems that it is more difficult for the parents to be spontaneous using another language, and they end up speaking less to the child.

our DD is 3 and we speak italian at home (both of us are native speakers) she has been going to nursery since she was 13 months and even though she was slightly slower in her language development than other children her age (but I also knew children with one language who were slower than she was), she now seems to have caught up, her italian seems to be still slightly better than her english, but it's not easy to say as we don't often hear her english.

Anyway the staff at the nursery are not concerned at all and she knows v. well what's english and what's italian, and she showed she knew this from the age of 2. I think the fact that we stuck to one language at home and a different one at nursery helped her understand. She rarely mixes them up, only when she doesn't know/remember a word will she use it in the wrong language, and she often asks how do you say this in italian/english.

I am amzaed at how easy and natural it has been for her, and I envy her because It took me years of studying to master to english at a decent level and my accent will always be foreign anyway. She has perfect accents in both languages!!

I'm quite curious to see what happens when she goes to school, I hope to be able to keep up her Italian and make sure she can read and write in Italian as well as English.

Very interesting thread, I'll be very interested to hear about other people's experiences, especially with older children!

oh yes please. We live a very lingusitically (SP) complicated life! I speak English with DS (age 4), my husband speaks Brazilian Portuguese with him and we live in Italy so he goes to Italian nursery...and prior to this we lived in Denmark so he went to Danish nursery! He is fluent in English, is pretty good at Portuguese but would prefer to speak English with Daddy so we have to push this and sometimes it means I get a day off at the weekend so that DS and DH can spend a Portuguese day together, this works really well for everyone! At school he has a good understanding of Italian (he's been going since September) but his language is not quite there yet and he gets very mixed up with Potuguese although he doesn't seem too concerned and chats away to the other kids quite happily even though they don't understand him all the time. When we lived in Denmark the school said it took ages for him to say a word but when he did it was perfect (as much as you can be at 2 1/2 years old!) I really don't know if we are doing the right thing and we are hoping that job transfers don't mean yet another move to a different country. TBH DS is coping very well, it's me that isn't!

What a good idea.
We speak English and German at home. DD is 18 months and only has a few words, but clearly understands things in both languages.
I think it would be great to swap ideas/problems/advice etc.
We´re off to Spain for 2 weeks tomorrow - who knows maybe she could add a bit of Spanish to her repertoire.

I'd like to know if a child can become truly billingual when spoken to in a second language by a secondary carer eg father. Dutch dh sees kids only on the weekends essentially, so ds can understand Dutch (somewhat) but certainly cannot speak it. I wonder how we can improve his Dutch? He refuses to watch videos in Dutch; there are no Dutch tutors/schools around.

On the subject of language delay, neither of my kids have had one, probably because they have so little exposure to the second language.

Dd (5 in July) speaks english and french. Dh is english and speaks english to her, I speak french to her. She went to a french nursery for a year last year, and her french, which was good, became perfect, and much more natural and child-like (IYKWIM). Now she is in reception at an english school and only attends french school one day a week. Her english is now dominant, but her french is still very good. She has a tendency to answer me on english though, but I let her do that as I don't want to put her off french by insisting that she speaks it all the time to me. However, she told me a couple of times recently not to speak to her in french when we were out because we were in england!!! I firmly said, sorry, but this is my language and I am going to speak it!
I tend to disagree about bilingualism meaning language delay. Dd spoke well early on, in both languages, and never got them mixed up. I think that's because I stuck to french from the start (mainly). She went through a phase of not letting dh read her french books because his accent was 'wrong'. Fair enough...
However she walked very late (22 months, with help from physio). You can't have everything!
She is now reading very well in english (and I have never pushed her to learn anything, it seems to be the right time for her), and beginnning to read in french as well. Because she goes to different schools, this isn't causing any sort of confusion at the moment, but I was worried it might.
expatkat, do you speak dutch? could you read them dutch stories, put dutch songs on (without even pointing out that's what they are, so there's no pressure). If not, I would just relax about it, maybe try and find another dutch speaker in your area (sure you've already tried that, but keep trying!). Do they go to Holland on hols? Motivation to learn might come later, when there's a real need to do so (family, friends, fun things to do that you can only do in dutch, etc) Good luck.

I think they will, but probably it would a bit more "rudimentary" than the languages thatthey practice more. We have a friend whose father is German, his mother French and he grew up in England, they spoke French at home and he still got German from his grandmother who used to visit during the summer so... there is hope

Marsup - Thanks for starting this thread. I have a ds aged 10 and dd aged 9. They speak Welsh to dh and his family and those of mine that are Welsh speaking, and go to a Welsh medium primary school. I've only ever spoken English to them (my Welsh is very poor) and dh has only ever spoken Welsh to them. My dh met a language specialist one day when ds was a baby and she said that we and other significant people in their lives (ie grandparents / childminders) should choose a language and stick to it. That's what we've done and they are truly bi-lingual. Of course, I don't always understand the conversations they're having at the tea-table, but if I need to, I ask them to explain and then they carry on again. When they want me to be involved, the conversations turns to English. It switches in a moment. I don't feel too left out. When they were little they would, from time to time, seem to take against a language or mix-up word occasionally, but we took it in our stride and they're fine. I wouldn't change a thing. A family living nearby have tri-lingual children as the mother speaks her native Spanish to the children, the husband speaks his native Welsh to them and, of course, they've picked up English naturally. I went to a party at their house one day and out of about 25 people (mostly kids), I was the only person who could speak/understand only one language fluently, despite several toddlers being there! HTH.

Dh is a Spanish speaker, I'm English and we have two boys aged 4 and nearly 2. As we're living in England at the moment the kids are surrounded by English and it's a constant battle to keep the Spanish going. The way we try and do it is that dh always speaks to them in Spanish and when we are all togethe we all speak Spanish. In reality we slip into English all the time and someone ends up saying "espanol" every five minutes.

If we didn't go back to Argentina for at least a month every year I think it would be very hard, virtually impossible, to keep the kids talking Spanish. We're lucky as well in that I speak Spanish so we can all use that language as our 'home' language. If not, I think it would be very difficult.

As it is they are bilingual, but ds1 is very much more comfortable in English and ds2 can say more English words than Spanish. Both were good talkers from early on (although admittedly much better in English) so I also disagree that it has to be confusing. They have always been able to distinguish between the two languages. I think being consistent (or in our case trying to be) with who speaks what and when is the key.

Dh used to get really depressed about the fact that ds1 obviously preferred English but then he saw the advances he made every time we went to Argentina and so worries much less now. At first his mother was also convinced that she would never be able to speak to her grandchildren and so started taking English lessons. She has now been reassured too.

I do think it's hard keeping it up, and will probably only get harder as they go to school. Then again, maybe it's embedded in them by then so not such a struggle.

Hi,

We are jsut English but I was very interested in your thread. I am a primary school teacher and thought I would tell you about some of my experiences with billingual children.
I lived in Finland for a few years and taught Finnish children but in English. I mean they just followed the curriculum in English. They were all fluent Finnish speakers and spoke to each other in a mixture of English and Finnish.
Most of the children had travelled quite far and wide but their parents always spoek to them in Finnish.
However one of the parents decided for some reason to speak to her son in English from the start. Her English skills were ok but not great so I think this made her worry about what she was saying to her son. She also switched him from Finnish speaking schools to English speaking schools which did not help him. She made a point though of not speaking Finnish. I met this boy when he was 10 and he had lots of difficulties. The psychologists over there said that he was 'between' languages which was why he was having so many problems in both.

The psychs also told me that it was always better for the parent to speak to a child in their native language as they can express themselves more naturally that way.

A much happier family I knew was that of a teacher in the school. She was English and had lived in Finland for years. Her dh was a Finn. They had four children twin girls and two boys. Both parents spoke their native language to the children and they were fluent in both languages.
The fascinating thing was that the children had a strong Northern accent when they spoke English even though they had never lived here, they had just picked it up from mum.
But it worked so well, the children were fluent in English and Finnish.

Good luck to all doing this with their children.

DH and I live in Spain. We both speak to DS who is 3 in English at home, although DH is spanish (we've always spoken to each other in English, having met, lived etc.. in the UK)and he is a fluent speaker but the rest of DS's daily routines are in Spanish, i.e. at school, with the in-laws etc. He hasn't had any problems at all. He seems to be able to keep both of them quite separate in his mind and if there are words that he doesn't know in one of the languages he will ask. We decided to do it this way because otherwise I am pretty sure (from personal experience of myself and other friends whose own parents have brought them up bilingually (my mother is french)at some point the kids become quite lazy or self-conscious and may refuse to speak the other language even though they do understand it perfectly well. Sorry if this isn't very clear - just saw this great thread and wanted to add my experience but am in a bit of a hurry!!!!

DH is Danish and so speaks Danish to DS1 and DS2, while I stick to English, although my Danish is improving! I would agree that both boys took longer to speak in either language. DS2 still has only one or two words (in English) at 18 months. DS1, who is now ten, did not speak Danish much until he was about five but since his father refused to speak in English to him he did understand it from birth - DS2 also seems to understand it. DS1 went through a phase at about 4 of stating that he could not understand DH, but he persevered with Danish and now they chat away happily. He apparently has a very Scottish accent in Danish (we have lived in Scotland since he was one) and also his sentence construction is based on English, but Danish friends and relatives understand him. Two important things - we have plenty of books and videos in Danish and we also go to a Danish Association a couple of times of year, visit Denmark and have Danish friends and family to stay. It is important for the children to see that the language they are learning is not just for talking to one parent!

I speak English and DH speaks a Chinese dialect to the kids since birth. DS1, 3, speaks back to dad in English apart from the odd word but counts with dad in Chinese.
I understand the gist of what they are saying but don't speak the dialect.
DS1 will translate for me if I ask him what dad said, and never gets mixed up and speaks to me in Chinese.
However he did get a bit annoyed when I tried to call him by his Chinese nickname, he said 'no that's what daddy says, not you.'
When they are old enough we will be sending them to Mandarin and Cantonese lessons, neither of which DH speaks but MIL, with whom we will be living when we move to Oz, does.

On the whole they seem to be very adaptable creatures don't they, bless them.

I grew up in the middle of a true linguistic melee. neither of my parents has English as their first language, but my dad was brought up speaking spanish and the Mallorquin version of Catalan to his dad and italian to his mum, with english at school etc from about age 6. Because of family complications he has ended up speaking mainly spanish and English so I speak very little Italian (can understand though) and Mallorquin (ditto). I used mainly welsh as a young child but went to english school etc.

The one thing i've noticed is that although 90% of the time i speak english, even with family if DH is there, I really have a very poor knowledge of english children's culture. i mean i don't know many nursery rhymes, lullabies stories etc. i've also noticed that none of the endearments I use with DD are English because they on't come off my tongue naturally IYSWIM.

When we were living in Wales I did make an effort to speak welsh to DD but have let it drop, although she still watches Sali Mali videoes. our other rellies tend to speak to her in their language of choice but she very rarely uses anything other than english to reply.

i spoke spanish to ds from the day he was born but by the age of 2 he didn't speak at all so my flaming MIL said i was confusing him so i decided to speak to him in english and hoped that once he learned english i could teach him spanish,he was 2 1/2 when dd was born and i was determined not to make the same mistake so i talked to her in spanish now age 6 and 4 they understand spanish but refuse to speak it,like frenchgirl's dd they tell me not to speak in spanish,is very frustrating but i'm hoping that they will speak it one day.it's also hard as there's no other spanish speaking families around here and it doesn't help that all my family in spain speaks english too and they like to practise it with the children although i keep telling them to talk in spanish but because my children know they speak english they don't make the effort to speak to them in spanish,in the mean time i keep buying them spanish books,videos and flash cards and i've found out that there's spanish lessons for spanish children living in uk but they have to be 7 so ds can go next year

We have a bilingual toddler too. We're British, but live in Spain, so they get English at home and Spanish at nursery etc (though ds doesn't go to nursery yet).

Dd is still only really speaking one word at a time and mixes English and Spanish. Sometimes she calls me "mummy", sometimes "mama" and she seems to take the easiest word of the two - yes is always "si", "little girl" is always "nena", but she says things like "shoe" in English. Or maybe it's just because some words are more useful for her at nursery: she says "mia" and "quita" in Spanish - "mine" and "get out of the way" (roughly).

I find it fascinating.

Whymummy - sounds like you're doing all you can, but practice would be good for your ds. I have some friends who were in the same situation and they moved over here for a year when their older boy was 7. Took him 6 months to become fluent even though he had always heard Spanish at home.

A friend who is english speaking with a welsh speaking DH found that at first her DD had different vocab depending on who she was with. so, for example she would ask her dad for "llaeth" (milk) but didn't learn the English for months after (friend reckoned it was because pointing at the fridge and screeching worked with mum but not dad).

hi senorapostrophei'm sure you're dd will soon be fluent in both languages.i'm starting "holiday spanish"lessons for parents at ds's school next week and if it goes well i might be able to do spanish lessons for children in the after school club and maybe ds and dd will be more interested if they see other children leaning it

if anyone wants a Spanish teletubbies video, email me via "contact another talker". Free to a good home.

that's really nice of you marialuisa,my children are too old for teletubbies but i'm sure someone will want itwhen ds was little we warched teletubbies in brazil and he learned a couple of words in portuguese so it is a good thing for little ones
ps. i have a caperucita video somewhere if you want it

I'm English and DH is Cypriot, although born in North London! He didn't speak any English at all until he went to primary school, and then within a year he was refusing to speak to his mum in anything but English. So, although DH is bilingual he is rusty and very reluctant to use it. Although I try to get DH and MIL to speak in greek to them, it never seems to last very long - they don't get responses from them so they soon lapse back into solely English.

The up shot of this is that , although DSs learn greek at school (its a greek orthodox primary) they flatly refuse to use it at home or when we are in Cyprus. I hope that they will grow out of this, but in the meantime I'm hoping to start lessons in September, so I can encourage them at home. The school aims for the kids to be bilingual by the time they leave YR6, but I don't want to leave the responsibility entirely with them.

Any ideas on how to get DH to be a bit more helpful would be appreciated, at this rate they will overtake him in a couple of years!

this thread makes really interesting reading, particularly comments from bilingual adults, as it's hard to know what your kids are going through when you weren't brought up as a bilingual child yourself. One of the essential things I think to keep dd speaking french happily is to keep meeting with her other bilingual friends, as they talk to each other in French (but i wonder how long that will last!). Even though english is now dominant, it amazes me how quickly she progresses again in French when relatives visit or we go over there. Whatever happens though I am determined to stay relaxed about the whole thing
whymummy, your MIL is such a.... MIL!!!!!!!!!

lol frenchgirlshe is!!

i personally think its a good idea for them to be bilingual as apparently it switches a part of their brain on so they are open to learn more languages as they get older and will be ahead of their peers at school when they start taking languages, both my children are only spoken to by their father in hebrew and understand totally what is being said, which makes it brill for understanding mother in law!! and my son aged 4 1/2 can translate for me!! hahaha heehee,my daughter nearly 3 also understands totaly and has excellent pronunciation, when we are over visiting in-laws they fit in better with the other children out there and although they both speak english in reply i noticed my son last time we were out there that by the end of the hol he had started switching over, my husband was brought up speaking two main languages at home then they moved to israel and he then took on hebrew with ease when he went to school... a french school at that!! so he`s fluent in about five languages and finds it easy to learn a new language so it obviously paid off for him.. so keep chatting and even if they dont reply just keep on because it will come later and when necessary!

well said bambi06

I also think it's great bevause dd not only grows up speaking 2 languages but she will only acquire 2 sets of cultures and though this will at times pose problems to her sense of identity I think in the long run, will open up her mind immenselY!!