Have I totally F-ed up?

[MummyBerryJuice]

I'm a non-native English speaker but am fluent in both my Mother Tongue (Afrikaans) and in English, I live in England with my English (unilingual) husband and DS who is 13 months old. I tend to think in the language I'm speaking at the time but mostly dream in English.

I had every intention of raising him bilingual but find it very difficult to remain consistent in speaking to him in Afrikaans.

We have a few friends in London (we're in the North) who speak Afrikaans and DS has had quite a lot of contact with my parents (most recently we've come back from 5 weeks in South Africa) with whom I speak Afrikaans only. We also Skype them most days. I sing a lot of Afrikaans nursery rhymes 'with' him as that is what I grew up with and I don't really know the English ones.

The thing I have found is that although (if I put my mind to it) I have little problem speaking Afrikaans with DS when we are on our own, as soon as we join a conversation with his dad, granny, other children etc I automatically switch to English and tend to stay there as long as we remain in their company as it feels 'antisocial' to be excluding the others.

His dad doesn't speak nor understands Afrikaans and speaks English to him.

I have heard that unless a parent remains consistent and always speaks to the child in one language the child is likely to get confused and have a language delay and so I have recently decided to just stick to English .

Have I messed up or is there still hope for us being a bilingual family? Can I continue as I was before as I do find it unnatural to carry on speaking a different language to him from the rest of the group?

Help, please!

Just do what suits you in your family situation. Your ds will quickly pick up Afrikaans. Perhaps he'll talk it more with his grandparents which will be nice for them. Perhaps you have some favourite expressions in your mother tongue that you could use in the day. I find some phrases seems to work better in some languages than others. We have two languages at home & have just let it work itself out & kids are perfect bilingual

I don't think you have "messed up" per se - but you are his main source of Afrikaans so every minute you are speaking a different language to (not in front of - important distinction) your child is a lost opportunity.

I personally find it very hard to worry about being "anti-social" when speaking to a pre-school child anyway - most of what I have to say is by its nature private or boring to outsiders so I don't feel they are missing out by not being involved. If this is a worry, I speak to my daughter in French and then indicate to the others, in English, what's going on, e.g. if she is being difficult I might say "T'es fatiguee, hein? She says she's tired."

Interestingly, she understands perfectly well that I speak English in general but that I do not speak English to her; and, for the moment at least (she is just 3), if she speaks to me in English I can tell her I don't understand and she will repeat it in French.

Just read your message to the end. PLEASE don't switch to English - even what you were doing is far far better than nothing! Hang in there!

My DP does the same as you do, speaks Czech to our DS in private, and on skype with the grandparents, aunties etc every day, but switches to English when in public, and with me.

Our DS is only 2 and is still mixing languages, but does seem to use more English than Czech words at the moment.

We are hoping this will come right in due course. I don't think any of it will be wasted though. Keep doign what you were doing - any Afrikaans better than none!

Thank you that is a HUGE relief. I suppose I'm worried about delaying his language acquisition and 'confusing' him but also really, really want him to be able to speak to my parents in a shared language. One that is equally comfortable for them and him. And I want to be able to share this parting my culture and identity with him too.

You've all made me feel a lot better and given me new resolve to speak to him in Afrikaans, and perhaps translate for those around us.

Don't think I have much advice to add as we are a trilingual family but we are probably worse off than you because DH and I both tend to revert to speaking English most times and our DCs get quite underexposed to our mother tongues to be honest as we don't really have many friends here where we live who speak our mother tongues - have to admit that when we were living in London, there were plenty, as London is so cosmopolitan.

My DH is South African and Afrikaner too, if anything :) I'm Singaporean, but grew up speaking 3 languages at home - Mandarin, Cantonese (my mother tongue) and English. I did read here www.selectivemutismcenter.org/cms/what_is_selective_mutism.aspx that children in bilingual (and I assume possibly including trilingual) families are more at risk of developing selective mutism. That has been true for my DD1, though I have 2 other DCs (not yet of school age) who don't have the issue.

As long as you speak Africaan to him he will understand it and probably speak it to your parents. I don't think it will delay his language, it will probably make it more of a minority language.

He is still very young, but in time you could add some Africaan childrens DVDs, films, music, books etc.

No, you haven't messed up. As MIFLAW points out, it is about the quantity of exposure, more than about 100% consistency. The reason OPOL is recommended is that people know from experience that it can be very difficult to provide enough of the minority language, so it makes sense to shove it in at every available opportunity. This does not mean that if you have done something else, you have permanently ruined things and can never recoup yourself.

I speak quite a lot of English to my children and always have done. I need to as I have been the one in charge of taking them to playgroup, supervising their homework and in later years rehearsing dd's theatrical parts with her: I obviously cannot drill her in reciting Shakespeare monologues if I am not allowed to speak English. And if we left this job to dh, she would never get as much as the part of a Wall...

Dd sounds exactly like a Swedish teenager; you really cannot tell that she has not spent her life in Sweden. And ds is fluent too, though perhaps he sounds more like me and my "RP" Swedish family than the fashionable teen.

The reason I could get away with it is that I was able to arrange plenty of exposure to Swedish so I could afford a bit of leeway:

We spend the holidays in Sweden where they've had to speak Swedish to play with their cousins

I was very firm with myself about going back to Swedish after we had spoken English for some reason (e.g. coming out oif school, they might speak in English about the homework, but I would then gently slip back into Swedish). It's when you let it slip to the point where it feels too much like hard work to speak the minority language...

I read aloud to them every day and used a lot of Swedish books, which we then naturally talked about in Swedish. In fact, if you want to know how sad people can get, I am still reading aloud to a 14yo.

I sang to them in Swedish every day and they sang with me

we had DVDS and tapes

I talked to them a lot about language from an early age: so they've always known that some things are Swedish and some are English, rather than Mummy-language and Daddy-language; that way they didn't get confused if I suddenly spoke the other language any more than they got confused when I spoke French on holiday; they've known at least since the age of two that there are lots of different languages, some people only speak one, but lots of people speak more than one and that's what we expect of them.

I have a slightly different experience from MIFLAW about feeling anti-social when speaking to pre-school child in a language noone else understands. Dd and I (and later ds and I) spent a lot of time socialising with other mums and children during the toddler years; we seemed to move around in a large group a lot of the time. Which meant talking to several children at once, helping somebody else's child onto the potty, organising games and biscuit painting for a group of children, negotiating between two children. It's certainly not something I would have wished different- dcs still benefit from those contacts over 10 years later- but of course I had to compromise on the strict OPOL line.

I found it really difficult to speak English with my DC, as I had been living in Germany for such a long time. I persevered and now am very glad that I did because we later moved to Switzerland where their friends are English speakers so they had no communication problems.

Don't worry. Speak as much in Afrikaans as you can.

Thanks all. I am making a concerted effort to speak as much Afrikaans to him as possible. Part of the difficulty is that, I myself find thatIthink I English over here, so it has to be a conscious thing.

It'll get easier though, I'm sure.

Only one note of mild caution: linguistic politeness can be interpreted as shame by some children. What I mean by that is that in only speaking Afrikaans in private, your son might begin to think that it's a language that's only fit for use when nobody else is listening and not 'allowed' in public. I've seen it happen with some children, they are phenomenal social observers and analysts. It's why my wife and I make a point of speaking to our daughter in our respective languages in places like the supermarket or on public transport to reinforce the idea that it's perfectly fine not to speak English when other people are around.

As others say - you're doing really fine. I'm in a similar situation and just wanted to add that 13 months is still very young to 'see' any effects. I knew my DD1 would understand my Dutch perfectly, but she wouldn't speak it. At age 3 she seemed to magically flip a switch though and felt confident enough to actually speak Dutch. She's now 4 and getting along fine, although she noticeably peaks after trips to Holland

DD2 is 2 and only just beginning to talk - again, I know she understands me in both Dutch and English - she's a late speaker anyway and most of what she says is English. I fully expect that in another year or so she'll also make the change

Good point by AussieCelt about linguistic politeness. Even if you do sometimes speak the majority language (as I do) you need to demonstrate to your children that you are not embarrassed about the minority language.

Good point. I had not thought of that. I do try to speak Afrikaans to him when we are in public but on our own IYKWIM? Like in the supermarket etc