bilingualism and possible confusion?

[Gabriella13]

Hi,

My baby is only 5 months old and is exposed to two languages - Russian and English. What I am worried about (hope uneccessarily) that once she starts to talk she will confuse the two languages, i.e. her words (to start with) and then sentences will be in both languages at the same time. I am not sure (this is my first) if babies can distinguish between languages and would not want my little one to be taken a mickey out of when she is around other english kids. I live in South West of England where the population is mainly British. I look forward to hearing from you if you are/were in the same situation to see how your little one handled it. Thanks

There will almost certainly be a stage where she mixes up the two languages. This doesn't mean confusion in the sense that she is doing anything wrong: she will just be using her full linguistic range- and being bilingual her full linguistic range will be wider than that of a monolingual child.

But we're talking about a situation that is likely to occur round about age 1-2: other toddlers don't have the maturity to notice and take the mickey out of another child who speaks funny: toddlers just haven't got that the need to conform socially that results in teasing anyone who is different. Toddlers are little anarchists By the time they develop that desire to fit in, she will have developed enough linguistic awareness to keep her languages separate.

Some bilingual children (including mine) are even able to operate a 3-tier system, where they speak only language 1 outside the home, language 2 to visitors from the other country, and a mixture (language 3, as it were) when speaking with bilingual siblings and other close bilingual family. They never get confused.

DS1 never did mix the languages and always spoke the language that his audience understands. DS1 too, but he mixes happily with me. I have only ever heard him misunderstand something once (confusion between art gallery and wolves because one sound is the same - took me a while to understand why he was upset about not going to see the wolf while his brother went to the Tate with school), and he talks A LOT.

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Agree with Pitchounette. Dd used to use lots of french words in English sentences when she was smaller. It was cute rather than a cause for concern.

Nowadays, she only does it for words where she doesn't know the English word - and we tell her - or for certain day to day things (collation, gymnastique, diner chaud) where she does know the english equivilent, but that is what they are called at school.