How to teach baby my mother tongue if I’m not fluent myself?

[Peridotty]

Mum of a 7 month old baby girl. Really want to teach my baby my mother tongue but I’m struggling!! My first language is English. I understand the OPOL thing but I cannot express everything in my mother tongue myself or I get it wrong (grammar, sentence structure and word choice). I have been asking my mum for help on FaceTime. She lives in another country though. DH is no use. We speak English to each other. I don’t have friends who speak my mother tongue either and I plan to put my baby in a bilingual nursery but they don’t teach my mother tongue. My mum plans on teaching my baby when they meet but this would only be during any holidays. We don’t have a TV and don’t like to use screens with baby. What can I do?

Hi
I’ve discovered the proper word for it! It’s not my mother tongue, but my ‘heritage language’. From wiki: A heritage language is a minority language (either immigrant or indigenous) learned by its speakers at home as children, but never fully developed because of insufficient input from the social environment. The speakers grow up with a different dominant language in which they become more competent.

@Peridotty Heritage language, good fact! I was born in an Asian country but moved to the UK when I was 9. My dominant language is absolutely English, though I do speak my heritage language at a child's level.

I'm in exactly your position in that I want my children to learn the HL, but I don't feel able to teach it to them. My parents only see them a few times a year, so not realistic for them to do it for me.

My solution - for now - has been to teach them food words in HL, with food being a big part of the culture. I did try HL cartoons but my toddler was just confused and didn't like it. People have suggested HL Saturday school to me but I didn't think that was very fair.

I think when they're young, the key thing is to pin down the pronunciation. That's harder to get right later. The vocab can be managed later.

@Buttercup2021 how did you go about finding the babysitter?

[quote tikha]@Buttercup2021 how did you go about finding the babysitter?[/quote]
Try childcare.co.uk

Just start. Only talk to her in the HL. All the time. Your DH will speak English, as will nursery, school, friends etc. She will learn to switch between the two.

If you start, and also watch tv/listen to audio books in your HL, your fluency will pick back up.