Do we introduce Latin and Cyrillic alphabets at the same time?

[lucasnorth]

I am English, DH is Russian. We are doing One Parent One Language with DD - i.e. we each speak our native language to her.

She's only 2, so it's early days yet, but she is just starting to show an interest in letters (particularly in her ABC book). I'm not sure whether we should try and introduce Cyrillic at the same time, or if we should wait until later.

Grateful for anyone's experience with kids whose languages come with different alphabets attached...

I should perhaps have added that we have plenty of books in each language; when we read to her I read a book in English or DH reads one in Russian.

My children are english / greek bilingual.At that age I probably just pointed out that's 'a' (sound not name of letter) in english / greek accordingly. (It's so long ago I can't really remember - they are uni students now!)

As far as reading and writing went, mine learnt greek first at school (age 6) mainly because greek is very phonetic and easy to learn to read. They then quickly learned English reading and writing the following year.

I now teach EFL and work with young children starting english and I don't teach any of them to read and write until they have learnt to read and write greek at school.

My advice would be:

a) Yes point out the differences but
b) concentrate on developing her two languages now. It is such a gift in life (I think) to have two mother tongues. The richer her vocab and language skills are in each language the better she will do. HTH.

Thanks PollyLogos. I know DD is still very young, but she's showing an interest so I've started sounding out some words in books she knows well. I was worried I'd end up pushing her into favouring one language.

My instinct though is to stick to one written language at first (we are in the UK, so it would be English). It's good to know that that approach didn't cause you any problems.

Hi Lucas, "official" advice is to teach reading in one language, leaving a gap before teaching the other. As your little one will be going to an English school my guess is you have little choice - the first will be English. Reading in one language makes it much easier to read in another.

I don´t think you will "push" her into favouring English, she will inevitably prefer it as long as you are in the UK. Ime, unless you really PUSH Russian and ensure lots of exposure to it your DD may lose interest. Do you have lots of contact with DH´s family or Russian community? Do you speak Russian? If not, why not? If not, you can think in terms of learning with your child, and if you do, make it clear to your DD that it is important to you.

Hi Sachertorte

I know she will inevitably prefer English - which is what makes me nervous about doing anything to make that even more pronounced.

To answer your questions - we see my PIL about four times a year, for about ten days each time and I take her to a Russian-language playgroup once a week, but that's the only exposure to Russian she gets outside the house. I speak Russian in that I can express myself, and understand most conversations, but it is a very grammatical (is that a word?) language and I make lots of mistakes which is why I don't speak it to her. She does hear me speaking it when PIL are around though, as they don't speak much English.

When you say "official" advice - is it something you would agree with? What's your experience?

Thanks.