Raising a trilingual baby

[1981juan]

Hey, any Cantonese speaking parents trying to raise their child to speak 2 or 3 languages?

Would be interested to hear from you!!

Any parents raising bilingual or trilingual babies/ children? Interested to know how you do it!

We are anglophone, lived in Austria for the last 6 years and have now moved to France. Kids are bilingual English and German and will be trilingual with French in time.

Youngest is only 3 so we don't expect her to retain her German but the older 2 have weekly Zoom lessons and are happy reading in German.

I'll be honest, it is hard but that is because German is not a native language for either of us as parents so it is more difficult to bring it into the household.

As a teacher I would say being brought up bilingual or trilingual is of huge benefit, in 19 cases out of 20, and causes long term difficulties in communication fir some children, even adults.

Each parent should speak to the child in their first language. You should keep an open mind about whether your child is coping, and be prepared to choose a main language if they are not.

That’s my advice

Hi! I speak Vietnamese and English to my 16month old, every time I speak English to her my mum encourages me to speak Vietnamese more as she will be learning English in school anyway.
I wouldn’t be able to speak Vietnamese if it wasn’t for my mother forcing my sister and I to speak it at home and to her, so I’m glad she made us! It’s always better to know more than one language. Especially if you intend to go back to the country for a visit, it helps!

My mum lived in Hong Kong for a couple years so she knows Cantonese (slowly fading and forgetting the language but still understands it) I wished she taught me canto too

I am native Chinese and husband is Hungarian. We both speak our native languages to our 2 year old since he was born, now he can speak both Mandarin Chinese and Hungarian, a few English words which he learned from TV and conversations between hubby and I. Once he goes to preschool , English will improve and he will be a proper trilingual child. The only why to help his language skills is by talking to him in your first language if you want him to understand and communicate in that language. Try not to mix with English or any other languages, that's the advice I was given by lots of people who are in the same situation.