Becoming bilingual is it feasible when the main carer does not speak the 2nd language?

[Aliway]

Hi there, I am the main carer for my son (speaking English)my husband speaks Arabic and English. We both want dd1 (aged 3 months) to learn arabic but as my husband works full time and I am the person spending the majority of time with him, I am concerned he won't have enough exposure in order to be able to speak fluently, what can we do to increase his chances?

Well if you live in the UK and you are the main carer, dd will be her first language obviously and she may understand some Arabic through her father but not choose to speak it if she is only spending time with him at the weekends and he is speaking English with you. It would be good to find some Arabic speaking families with dc and spent time regularly with them.

English will be her first language

sorry(!)

can your son spend time with your husband's family? We don't speak gujarati at home at all, but my dts understand quite a lot of it, and do speak bits of it from time spent with his family. I don't know if they will ever be fluent, but as they get older hopefully they will have enough grouding to attend lcoal classes with other children.

As long as your husband speaks to your son only in Arabic and spends at least 1 hour per day with him*, he should be able to speak it fluently (and holidays with the family in Arabic-speaking country would improve his language greatly)
My husband spends about 1 hr per day with DD (and of course the full weekends), speaking only his language to her and at 2 years, she is fluent in both my and his language (neither of us being English) and she fully understands English although her vocabulary is not as good as in the other two langagues.
The consistency in one-person-one-language approach that helps the little ones pick it up much easier

yes it is, my children are tri-lingual and I am, um, not.

You can help by having lots of dvds around - Bob the builder, stuff like that. Also, when the children get older, they can go to weekend classes to learn reading and writing in the 2nd language.

my children learned huge amounts of french and german from the tv

Can confirm what the other posters have said. It worked for me and it is working for my DS. TV, books, and obviously time in the country where the other language is spoken will all help. Even if your DD doesn't actually show any signs of speaking Arabic for a while (because it is not the language she speaks with her main carer) don't ever doubt that she understands and will, when she is ready/willing, use it eventually.
My mother is visiting me this week and my DS has stunned me by talking almost exclusively in my language, which he rarely does these days. They are little sponges!

Thank you very much all this info has been really helpful, my husband does not have family in England but does in Europe and obviously in the middle east -will get some holidays booked!

Should be fine,if your dh always speaks Arabic to him and commits to spending time with him when not working.

As well as being a multilingual speech and language therapist,I was brought up in thePacific with a Welsh speaking father and English speaking mother and thanks to my father,speak Welsh just fine,despite spending most of my childhood outside of Wales.

Go for it,bilingualism is a huge gift and I have come across so many families who bitterly regret not keeping it up.

hiya moondog - wedi newid enw (b urek)

in answer to OP
Yes

but my kids only answer Mr Wong in English although they can understand everything he says to them in Chinese.

Sut mae Tywysoges Bywyd Da

Hi Aliway,

I am Italian and my husband is english and we got a 16th month old son.

I wanted him to learn both languaes and I was worried like you at the beginning, that he didn't get enough exposure to the english language because we live in Italy.

I have bought him books in english that his dad and I read to him. Books are an excellent tool and he loves them.

I have got some english language interactive toys. You know those that you press a button an light with music and voice goes on.

He watches catoons in english.

And last but not the list he speaks a lot with his dad and grandparents on the phone or videoconferencing on the internet.

Hi there,
Vale I am Italian too, DH is English and DD is 3.2. We speak English at home and it is DD's main language at the moment. I know things will change when she starts nursery in September, but we want to try and keep English as our main language at home.
I have been using books, DVDs, tapes etc. since she was a little baby and this has helped her a lot.
Ciao!!

Hi,

I've been doing some reading on this in preparation for my own Spanish / English baby and this is what I've gathered.

Your son will more easily be fluent in English. Your husband will have to talk to him exclusively in Arabic if you want him to learn.

Will your son be educated in Arabic or English? If it is English, he may only become fluent in spoken Arabic. If you want him to read and write in Arabic, your husband will need to teach him reading and writing as they do in school. I guess the same is true if he is educated in Arabic. That is, he'd need lessons from you in written English and reading.

It won't work if your dh is as useless as my DH. I have soo many times asked him, but he can't be bothered. He will obviously speak in his own language with friends, even though he knows I won't be able to understand much of the conversation.

Sorry, whenever I see a thread like this I get so angry at DH.

My DS will be going to Turkish school when he is 5 on Saturdays as it is difficult to maintain the Turkish as my mother is English and my Dh deosnt speak Turkish so it is difficult for my dad and I to allways speak Turkish. I do have books and DVD's tho and holidays will boost their confidence loads.

On the other hand DH parents do not speak anay English so hopefully DS will have a good grasp of Bengali.

I think your dh has to speak to him only in Arabic. My children are trilingual - they speak English at home, French at school and German in the playground and everywhere else. The point is they only do it because they have to - it's not something they think of as a useful skill or something to show off about (they are 4 and 6) - they just know they have to speak French to French speakers, German to German speakers and English to us (they thought it was a minority language and were astonished to land at Heathrow last year and find everyone speaking English). If ds thinks he can speak to dh in English my guess is that he will. I think it is harder in practice than in theory - my brother's kids speak no French despite the fact that their mother is French because they always speak English together as a family at home and they live in England.