Tips for raising a bilingual child

[bubblepond]

We are expecting our first baby in March 2022. DH speaks 3 languages fluently - his mother tongue, then French (the language he completed all his schooling in), and then English.

We are planning on trying to raise the baby to be bilingual - by me speaking solely in English to baby, and DH speaking solely in French. We expect baby will pick up bits of his mother tongue from hearing extended family speak it, but don't expect that they will speak it fluently.

At home, we use English at the moment. I do speak French, but not fluently. Should we try to speak more French at home between ourselves so that baby doesn't get exposed to one language more than the other?
We plan to buy books in French, watch TV in French etc. Is there anything else we can do to help?

We are also aware that babies who have 2 languages often speak later but for us the rewards later in life (plus more importantly, being able to better communicate with aunts/uncles etc) outweigh the risks.

You don't need to be totally strict about 50:50 exposure, but you do need enough exposure during the sensitive period for learning language. We are in a similar situation and just make sure you spend some decent time in each language.
I agree making it a 50 50 split can help make life simpler but don't worry about being too rigid.
Our son prefers to use each language for certain words but he can understand both, even sometimes he mixed in one phrase. Although he doesn't s in sentences yet. He spends all day with an English childminder so he doesn't get the full exposure to my wife's language.
Good luck!

We do German at home and via Netflix, English is at school. It works.

If you use one parent one language it can work, but I’ve seen it be hell on the parental relationship for the kids non-favoured language.

There are several options:

1. one parent one language - but as pp has mentioned it has its drawbacks.
2. non community language at home (french in your case) and community language out with home.
3. situational, eg certain language with certain people, French during the day/English in the evening, or week of French/week of English. Has to be consistent though.

We are trying the situational approach. When it's just me and my 10 months old DS, I speak my mother tongue. When my DH is around we speak English. When it's just DH and baby together (admittedly very rarely) then DH speaks his mother tongue.

It depends how good your French is to be quite honest. If it’s poor then OPOL is probably the way to go despite its drawbacks as you don’t want baby picking up serious errors. If it’s pretty good just not perfect then non community language at home has been found to be pretty effective anecdotally at least by people I know. We’re doing non community language at home (English at home, Italian out of the home).

My tip would be to do whatever suits you best. If you are going to feel awkward speaking French then it will be counterproductive. If you are not fluent in French I definitely wouldn't recommend it. You need to bond with your baby too! Also don't give up even if it doesn't seem to be working. My ds spoke to me in Italian (I
spoke in English) until he was about 8. Then for no apparent reason he switched to English and is now fluent in both.

OPOL. You just need to be strict and not switch. DS spoke to me for 6 months in French, I replied in English. Then when he was 3 he started speaking to me in English only. You just have to be consistent. Now he's totally flawlessly bilingual and an utter machine.

I have a relative in a similar position in Europe. Their family did:

• mum and maternal grandparents speak her mother tongue which was a third language which dad didnt speak
• dad speaks his mother tongue, English, which mum is also fluent in
• childminder, school and community speak local language.
• mum and dad tended to use local language and English at home but dad did pick up a bit of mum's language, at least the basics

Mum and dad speak local or English language for guests or playdates. And TV is in local language or as they got older in English, as watching dubbed American series and films annoyed the children.

When alone the two children played in the local language of country, not mum's language or English.

Both the kids are now fluent in 3 languages. The eldest took to it like a duck to water and was not delayed speech- it was incredible. The second child took a long, long time to speak, remained silent for years and then was happiest in local language. But eventually he has sorted it out and his English is now very good.

As littles, the children read books in the two languages that shared an alphabet, and were only introduced to the written language of mum when they were established reading English and local.

Ironically their dad was saying the other day the boys hate learning languages at school and are dreadful at French. They complain that it is just as hard for them as other kids, as everyone learns to speak as babies when brains are able to absorb grammars easily. Both of them prefer maths and have gone to science specialist schools. Most of their friends are bilingual local/English so nothing special where they live.

There's some good info here: bilingualfamily.eu/resources-for-parents/

I ONLY speak French to DS and DH speaks English to him.

He’s 5 now and speaks French to my parents and English to DH parents.
If all 3 of us are in a room together, DS will speak English to Dh and then turn to me and swap to french.

So far he’s been watching Netflix in English but my parents suggested I mix it up with some French cartoons which I’ll probably start doing.

Ah congratulations on your baby. I have 4 DC who speak English and their DF’s mother tongue. I speak English, DH speaks his language and then together we speak both.

Other language comes in very handy when they need a discrete telling off in public “get your finger out your nose!”

The older DC are learning Spanish also in school.
Spanish teacher said they are picking it up and pronounce the words more accurately than other pupils due to their additional language.
We also make efforts to stay in contact with other bilingual families with the same two languages. Seeing the kids together is fascinating. It is like they have their own third language made up of both languages. One word with the suffixes and prefixes of another. Full sentences containing words and grammatical rules of both languages. They only ever do it together and do so fluently, understanding each other perfectly.

They need a lot of exposure in both languages to be fully bilingual.

Here its French is the local language and DH/his family only speak to the DC in French. DH and I also speak together in French.

I only speak English to the DC (one exception is helping them with their homework, sometimes I'll switch to French to help them). My parents looked after DC whilst I worked for many years so they had a LOT of exposure in English when young.

Loads of books and DVDs in both languages.

The DC mainly play together in French, although when in England their English comes on in leaps and bounds.

DS1 (10) struggled to speak before he was 3 and still has some communication issues (but he has SN). However he is fluent in both languages, though prefers reading in French.

DS2 was speaking full sentences in both languages before he was 2. Now I'm the only one talking English with him daily it's a bit harder and I often have to correct his syntax. I waited until he learnt to read in French before teaching him to read in English and he picked it up really quickly.

Oh and when they're older, finding a youtuber on a topic they're interested in is really useful. DS2 knows loads of skateboarding and parkour terms in English through that.

A cautionary tale for you. I am English, living in England, DP is other language. We have had other language CDs, music, books, Netflix etc etc from the beginning.

Unfortunately due to the hours DP was out of the home (pre-Covid) there wasn’t enough other language exposure day to day, so the gap in working vocabulary between the two languages got so enormous that DC (now 8) got very frustrated with the minority language and speaks to DP in English. DC has attended Saturday school
in the minority language, and latterly also had one on one lessons, but it still isn’t enough. No accent when speaking, but is v v v limited as to what can say, so speaks English.

Annoyingly he is at school with lots of children who also have minority language, but they all speak to each other in English. It had always been our plan that the other grandparents would do a month of care over the summer holidays, but in all honesty I feel this would be miserable for everyone, due to the very very basic nature of conversations that are possible.

So don’t do what we did.

We do opol. Dd always answered me in Danish, not even realising I was speaking different words. Only when her classmates said she was good at understanding english did the penny drop. At 4 we went to the uk on holiday and she said to a friends child come on. Lets go up i your værelse. After that I would get some english words in every sentence and by the time she started school at 5.5 I barely heard any danish words.

Personally I find speaking another language 1. exhausting and 2. I cant be myself.

Agree with PP that limited exposure to the minority language (ie just 1 adult a couple of hours a day) isn't enough to be fully bilingual.

My parents spoke their native, non-community language at home, and we spoke the local languages at school and with friends (Spanish and Catalan). By the time we were in upper primary school we’d switched to Spanish between siblings at home, but my parents always replied in their native language (even though we refused to speak it much after a certain age).

My cousins had one parent doing one language each + community language, so 3 in total.

I plan on doing OPOL with the minority language spoken by whoever becomes primary carer + English as common language + community language outside of the home.

My DS attends a bilingual nursery and they recommend OPOL and follow a similar concept - half the staff only speak in French and half only speak in English. Interestingly, I've found that it has made zero difference to my DS in terms of his bond with staff - he's equally, if not more, attached to some of French staff than those who speak English despite us only speaking English at home.

We're in Spain. DH is bilingual Spanish/English. In the house we speak English, read in English, TV is in English. At school, and outside the house in general, it's Spanish and Catalan. He's fluent in all 3. He was a little slow to start speaking, but not by much.

It's hilarious listening to him playing video games with his English cousin and Spanish BFF as he flips between the two languages effortlessly.

He has books in all 3 languages but prefers reading in English. When he writes stories/cartoons, he writes in English. But he's doing well at school in all languages, totally bored in English though, poor sausage!

My son is trilingual and currently learning Swedish.

I generally only speak Urdu to my son, my cousin also only speaks Urdu to him, he learnt English at nursery and from my friends who only speak English. When he was in year 1 I did have a period where I had to essentially ignore him asking my things in English, it was a 1-2 week phase and be went back to almost exclusively talking to me in Urdu.

As they get older they also need to see the advantage of speaking 2 languages. We re "lucky" that our minority language is English and that the attitude here is that the DC are extremely lucky to be fluent in it with "no effort" (how little they know!). We ve spoken a lot about how useful English is around the worls and the DC have seen first hand how they can make friends anywhere on holiday with their 2 languages.

From my experience and studies (thesis in code switching in children - in a nutshell), OPOL makes most sense. Also always speak the language you are most proficient in- so your native tongue. It works itself out in the end and difficulties usually also go.
The problem comes when English is one of the languages (as with me), often foreign children will resort to English which then hinders the uptake of the community language in your child. My children don't need help with their English, they need the community language so that's frustrating but it does get easier.

The two most important things are:

• Level of exposure and input in the languages
• Positive associations with speaking the languages

How you arrive at these two doesn't really matter, it can be whatever works for your situation. Militant OPOL is in the process of being debunked academically

I’m bilingual - my mum spoke German, my dad English. If we were on our own me and my mum spoke English, if dad was around we’d all speak English (he can’t speak German very well). We still do the same now. Same with my sister and brother - we all speak German together unless an English speaker is with us. It doesn’t have to be exactly 50/50.

If we were on our own me and my mum spoke English, if dad was around we’d all speak English (he can’t speak German very well)

*That’s supposed to say I spoke German with my mum.

I chop and change between languages, my mother's tongue and English. I'm not strict or rigid about it.. I just go with the flow. DD is 3 and understands what I'm saying in both languages so I guess I'm doing something right.