Can learning 2 languages slow down a child's language development?

[Mumie]

Hello

We live in Switzerland and have a wonderful 12 month old (next week) dd. We speak English at home and she hears Swiss German in nursery so she should grow up learning both - at least that's what I thought. But a friend of mine commented on how dd doesn't really speak yet and said it's because we are confusing her with two languages. Just wondered if she's right or what other people's experience is in this situation.

I'm not overly concerned as I expect she will talk when she's ready - are children normally talking at 12 months? - but I don't want to put obstacles in her way accidently.

12 months is still very young and def no reason to worry yet but yes I have read that bilingual children might start to talk later. Might be one reason why my ds (18 months) isn't speaking yet! My daughters, otoh, started speaking at a "normal" age (12 month ish), so I think it depends on the child, like so many things.

Be it how it may, I think you are doing a marvellous thing and should continue doing what you are doing!

I read an article on this recently which said that learnign 2 languages as a baby is fine, doesn't slow them down at all, especially each language is spoken by a different person.

Speaking at 12 months is young, you might expect the odd word but not too much

The other interesting point was that it doesn't increase the number of words they learn - if for example a normal 20 month old had a vocab of 100 words, a bilingual child will have a 100 word vocab as well, 50 in each language

Will see if I can find the article online rather than witter on here

Mumie, 12 months is WAY too early to be talking in any proper sense.

As long as your dd is vocalising in some way (making sounds in response to you/when she wants something) and showing signs of understanding the gist of what you say, that's completely fine.

And I do think children who are exposed to two languages are slightly slower to speak but I don't think that's because their language development is slow - they've just got twice as much to process!

IIRC some studies have found that bilingual children can initially be slower at language development, but they catch up and the benefits of bilingualism - both neurological and cultural - far outweigh any delays.

ds1's first word came just after his first birthday. Then nothing for a while. Now, at 2.8, he is fully bilingual, speaking in full, fluent and for the most part grammatically correct sentences in both his languages.

He uses his languages specifically - always english to me and German to dh. A week or so ago he said to me 'we say cup and Papa says Becher, and he says Tasse too'. So much for confusion.

We are a bilingual Welsh / English family - DCs use Welsh with dh, and English with me, and attend Welsh-medium school.

The Welsh-language movement has done a lot of research into the effects of bilingualism - and, while bilingual children do tend to speak later, they are not confused as such.

The vast majority of the world's population speaks more than one language ....

For a useful guide, there are 2 books I'd recommend: this one and this one
Oh, and your friend is talking bollocks - most children are not talking fluently by the age of 12 months!

No. There is no research that led to the conclusion that being brought up with 2 languages means delayed speech. It's a myth. Keep exposing your lo to both languages and your dd will learn both in parallel.

I agree with everything that's been said by all the others, so I won't go repeating it all. DS (4) is trilingual, English with DH, Welsh with me, and Bosnian in nursery school. He just knows that he has three words for everything, one being how daddy says it, one being how mami says it, and the other being how his friends say it. Nice simple logic! It's possible he was a little slower than the average child at talking but in the scale of life what's a few months, eh?

I know several nearly four year olds who are fluent in two languages due to being brought up in a bilingual environment - and it's incredible how beautifully they speak the languages and how easily they can switch from one to the other.

My dd1 (nearly four)is also bilingual but slightly slower with learning to talk due to a hearing problem.

DD2 has only just turned two and she's picking up the two languages at the rate of knots.

It's an incredible gift to give to your child.

onlyaphase - where did you read that? there was a huge study last year that showed that bilingual children generally know more words in total than monolingual children (I think the average was about 75% of the number of words in each language, or 50% more words in total). there is conflicting evidence about whether development is delayed or not.

But anyway, many children do speak at 12 months, but if this is your first, you may not realise it. ds2 for example says "DA" (that), "da" (down), and "bu" (bath). he is 16 months, but is my 3rd. I remember with dd, we only realised she had been saying things later, when her words were clearer. she didn't say anything that was clearly a word in either language until she was about 20 months.

I echo what everyone else has said, 12 months is very young to make any kind of assessment.

My personal experience (5yo DD and 3yo DS) was that the DCs started speaking slightly later than other children. The jury is still out on whether this is typical or not. A friend of mine is married to an Italian and her DD was very quick to learn both languages.

My DD speaks both languages fluently, although she favours German at the moment. DS is at the sorting it all out stage, he knows that he speaks 2 languages. He said yesterday, "Auf Deutsch Rakete, in English rocket"

There has been heaps of research in this field, and it has shown that bilingual children benefit not only in their language skills, but also in many other areas, as Berolina mentioned. Learning to speak 2 languages is giving your DD's brain a workout. I will look and see if I can find some links.

Otherwise, I can recommend this book. (if you speak German, that is)

And this one is in English.

Sunday Times, 2004

Just found this interesting website. Am off to have a better look, but this list of language milestones might be interesting for you.

Echoing what everyone else says.
I a ma speech and language therapist working mostly through the medium of Welsh. I was brought up bilingually too as are my children and my sisters (a mix of different languages).

12 months is rather early to think about emergent speech and yes,althoguh bilingual children may be slower initially, the benefits are huge.

Thanks for all the feedback. DD does make lots of noise and says things like mamamamamamama and dadadadadadada and generally "DA!" in conjunction with pointing when she wants something. So she is babbling away happily. But she is our first and none of our friends kids are bilingual so we don't have any experience of it so it's great to hear such positive things. Also good to hear - and read, thanks for the links kindersurprise - about the benefits and milestones that seem to fit with what she actually does. Will also check out the books.

my son now 3.5 yrs old did not begin to make whole sentences until he was 3 years old and now speaks our mother tongue extremely well. people have noticed that he did not speak well until he was around 3. i used to worry about it but it seems to me now that i worried too much and in fact he has an amazing ability with the use of language and learns new words almost instantly after hearing them.

his english lags behind as we delibertaely do not speak to him in english at home. it is VERY important to be consistant. i know many parents of bilingual children (including my own sister who has 3 children born in the UK none of whom understand or speak our mother tongue now) who have given up on their mother tongue as soon as their children have gone to school and started replying in english.

if you are not consistant the child will think that he/she can speak to you in any language they wish and may abandon one of their languages altogether, usually they give up on the langauge spoken at home and english dominates everything.

good luck ! i think giving children the opportuity to speak two or more langauges is an amazing gift. they may never thank you for it, but when they are old enough they will appreciate it as it will help them in life. i am hugely grateful to my parents (both now passed away) for bringing me to the UK when i was 9, but always maintaining our mother tongue at home. it has been a real gift. being bilingual i have also noticed that i learn new languages much quicker than monolingual which is an enormous plus : )

DD at 22 mths can distinguish words in both languages and as other posters have said Mummy says it like this and daddy like that.
At her 12 mth check I asked doc about learning 2 languages as I had had a few comments about how 2 languages was too much . He said does she understand you ? Yes I said - then I wouldn't worry at all .....I haven't and so far so good.

I used to nanny for a girl whose mum is french. Her mum speaks french to her and she visits her grandma 6 times a year who only speaks french but otherwise she is spoken to in English. Her language development is about 6 months behind my DS who is 2 days younger than her and only speaks english. I was quite concerned with her lack of speech at 2 1/2 when she still used single words and pointed instead of asking for things. When people commented it was just said that she was bilingual therefore a bit behind because she was learning 2 languages but i did begin to wonder if she had a speech problem! I saw her today for the first time in a couple of months and her speech has improved dramatically. She is clearer and talking in sentances but does not speak french yet. She understands french but always replies in english. I watched her play with a french talking toy and she did everything it asked. Her mum said her language has come on since turning 3. She's always looked at me strangely when i say something in french as if noticing it's not how i usually talk. Or maybe laughing at my accent! Her mum isn't concerned about the lack of french and assumes one day she will start talking fluently!

Anyway probably not what you're after but i thought you might be interested

I also thought that bilingual children would be slower at language development but I was quite amazed how well my eldest daughter could speak as compared to other children : she was making 10-15 words sentences in english at 18 months, better than most of her friends, and also spoke much better french than her cousins who actually lived in France !!! I really think it depends on each child, I think she is just very good with languages, my other daughter who is 3 is very different, also she speaks both languages, she is much slower... Nothing to do with learning two languages, just depends on the child.... exactly the same as kids with just one language... each child has it own development ...

One thing we were thinking about was having either me or dh speak to dd in German and the other in English although English is our mother tongue. Do you that would be confusing and like closethippie says we should keep the mother tongue for home and German for outside? At the moment I speak to dd in English inside our house and German/English outside depending on if I'm talking to another German speaker.

Don't do it, you should only speak your mother tongue to your child. If ylou want to up exposure to German inside the home get some DVDs, but if it's the community language you realy won't need it, especially as she'll be spending more time at kindergarten and school than at home at some point, thus making English the minority language. How long does she spend in nursery? Perhaps you could just up the hours if worried?

Not a 'scientific' answer but personal exposure to the subject: friend's child - english and polish spoken at home, noticeably later than his peers to speak. But slowly catching up now (age 5)

Yes, it can and mostly does.

Do you read French? There is an excellent book called Le Défi des Enfants Bilingues by Barbara Abdelilah-Bauer that explains why learning two languages means that a child makes slower headway in each language initially, and why it is absolutely nothing to worry about.

I agree with brangelina. One day German will be her dominant language and you will be struggling to keep up with English at home. Keep it simple, English ONLY at home and German outside the home. That is what we do. Also no matter how good your German, I assume you speak it with an accent ? Unless you are a native speaker of German it is not useful to speak to her in German.

For politeness, we do a mixture of languanges in the playground and elsewhere in public so that other children don't feel left out : )

mumie, there are some excellent resources for bilinguals on the web and some very good books too on amazon and in the book shops. worth having a look. i got a book when ds was just a baby (sorry have forgotten the name of the book) and it helped me a lot to understand the "theory" from language experts.

the experts recommend either one parent one langauge (if you and your husband have two different native tongues at home) or doing what i am doing, one langauge at home (the minority language) and another outside the home (the community language). they do say don't speak to a child in a language that you do not speak as a native, no matter how good your grammar. i speak english with no foreign accent as i came to the UK when i was a child, but still resist speaking to my son in english unless i absolutely have to. hope this helps : )

Mumie, I'd speak to dd in English even when outside the home - dh speaks to both DCs in Welsh even when in the company of people who don't speak Welsh: it's just the language he speaks to them in.

And I wouldn't recommend speaking a language that's not your first language at home - I speak French fluently, but don't speak it to either of the DCs - as I didn't grow up in French, so even though I'm fluent, I stick to my first language.

That said, it's important that they see you speaking German.