Is there still a chance for my baby to grow up bi-lingually?

[Rochwen]

I need some advice. I grew up in Germany and all my family still live in Germany but I have lived in the UK for a very long time now. My German is a bit rusty. I still want my baby (8 months now) to grow up speaking both languages, not just because I thinks it's very beneficial but also because her grandparents don't speak any English.

I have tried just speaking German to her but it just didn't work. It felt strangely un-natural, I couldn't think of some words or expressions and I kept mixing English in. So, after two weeks I gave up and have been speaking only English to her since.

Now, I have no idea how she will ever learn German as a native language if I don't consistently speak it to her. There are no German speaking nurseries in our town either (I live in the North of Scotland).

Is there anyway you can think of how my daughter can still grow up speaking both languages?

Rochwen, I think your German will come back to you and you should persevere. If you don´t, you will cut off your child, who is only 8 months old (!!!) from all of her German family, and she may well hold this against you in the future.

As I get older, I realise just how many nursery rhymes etc my mother has passed on to me and say all kinds of things I had no idea I knew. You will never have an instinct for this type of thing in the English language.

If you want your child to be bilingual, then you have to WORK at it. It isn´t necessarily easy. IME everybody has a problem in one area or another.

it's all been said really rochwen - just wanted to give you another nudge to persevere. I'm in Germany at the moment with my three (7, 5, 2) and met, by coincidence, another German mum visiting from the UK with her 7 yr old, at the local lido.
She spoke English to her daughter and told me how delighted she was to meet me with my dd, as hers hadn't been able to talk to any of her cousins of the same age due to the language barrier, and was now so happy to have someone to talk to. How crazy is that?!
Bringing up a bilingual child does take a lot of effort and input, but it really is worth doing. I didn't find it easy to start with, either - my English is better than my German - but it does get easier.

Hello,
I have two daughters who I hope will be bi-lingual in catalan and english. I am catalan but my husband is english so we speak english at home, but I speak catalan to my 5 year LO and my 19tmonth LO2. My eldest always talks to me in english, even though I talk to her in catalan 90% of time, and I have been doing this since she was born. She understands perfectly catalan, but it just easy for her to speak in english, as we live in England. My youngest doesn'st speak yet, but she understands catalan and english.
And if you keep talking to your LO in one language, they will learn it. One thing I will advise is to travel to a country where that lanugage is spoken as much as possible, for them to practise. My LOs are spending the summer in near Barcelone, where all my family lives, and my oldest has a lot of contact with other children there, she has a cousin the same age, and together they go to summer camps in the morning, so she has to speak in catalan to the other kids, if she wants to communicate with them. They have been there for 3 weeks, and I know my LO1 catalan has improve a lot, but she still speaks to me in english everyday on the phone.

I have a very similar (but a bit worse) problem.

My parents are Italian and I understand Italian and speak it but it is not a native tongue for me as I was brought up in England so I make a lot of errors.

My niece and nephew were brought up in Italy and spoken to in English by their mother until she died when they were 6 and 4. Now at 13 and 14 they understand pretty much all the English spoken to them and speak it pretty well. They don't speak much for the reasons I hate to speak Italian - their understanding is perfect but when you live in a family where that language is spoken a lot. Children are often scared of making mistakes so take a lot of encouragement to actually speak the language.

My main problem is my son won't even understand Italian (which is all I'd really want for him) and that excludes him from a lot of our extended family which makes me sad. I have tried speaking to him in Italian but it just does not work as my Italian is not good enough.

Also my sister who is a specialist in language and education says that it has been shown that while it is OK for a child to grow up bilingual if the parent/carer speaks the langauage well, if they don't it can actually affect the child's learning of any language so is not adisable.

I am thinking of employing an Italian au pair with the specific instruction that she speak to ds in Italian all the time for the next couple of years. A bit different from the usual need to have 'good English' in an au pair

Agree you need to visit the country to encourage speech in a child who understands a language but won't speak it.

My niece and nephew invariable arrive for their visits to the UK and refuse to speak English but by the time they have been her a couple of weeks, their speech starts to fall into a mix of English and Italain with the English component getting more and more as time goes on.