Can non native speaker raise bilingual child?

[alusnitcher]

Just wanted some opinions/advice, please do say if you think I'm being ridiculous! I speak fluent French, although my accent isn't perfect, people usually think I'm Spanish when there. I teach French and Spanish and have friends in France. I'm de determined to bring my 10 week old dd up bilingual but do you think it's really possible as a non native speaker? I prattle on only in French to her all the time, sing her songs etc in French. The plan is for me to speak exclusively French and dp to do English. We'll go to France as much as poss as well.

Something I've been wondering as well is the following; when I meet up with for example the Nct group, we speak English, so she'll hear me speak English then. So I can't be 100% French speaking in front of her. Is this an issue? Also she won't really hear me speak French to anyone else, have searched in vain for French kids groups etc where I live (w yorkshire). Could it still work!?

Any thoughts greatly appreciated?

lightgreengrass

The research you mention refers, IIRC, children growing up in typical immigrant contexts, where the parents are not fluent in the majority language of the environment and children have sufficient exposure to the language from other sources not to pick up their parents' mistakes.

In the. op's situation, I am not sure how a child could self correct errors the OP makes as their exposure to French will be exclusive, bar the odd holiday in France, to the OP.

It depends on your definition of bilingualism - and even the experts are not in agreement of what that is.

If you define bilingualism as speaking 2 languages without any errors, then that's probably not going to happen.

In my experience, with OPOL it is harder to achieve 2 fluently spoken languages.
We speak exclusively the minority language (German) with our children, always. So our house is a completely German environment. DVDs are bought in German, radio is German, tons of books, etc.

Our children are bilingual, but I wouldn't say they are as fluent or eloquent in German as they are in English. They read age appropriate books in both languages, the teens have done their GCSEs in year 8 with little effort and got full marks.
They spend about 3-4 weeks every year in Germany.

It's hard work, yes, but for us it's natural. I couldn't speak English with them even though my command of it is quite good

We were in your position 15 years ago while living in Germany. Even though we both spoke English quite well (we both have written our uni thesis/phDs in English) it felt odd, unnatural.

We moved to the Uk when dc1 and dc2 were 5 and 3.

Greythorne - good point, I was referring to children who successfully created their own language who had no one to correct them, it was a natural development of grammatical structures. But I take your point if they are just at home learning French.

The OP if she has the chance should try and give her child the advantage of bilingualism (whatever your definition is) as the benefits cognitively are proven time and time again.