Hi everyone. I am expecting a child this spring with a Vietnamese Canadian man. I myself have Euro ancestry (Irish and Italian). I've been doing a lot of research into some of the nuances of raising a mixed race child and I would like to do my best in raising a child who does not feel alienated from any part of their identity. It's really important to me to do my best as a parent in helping my future child feel a sense of belonging and connection to all of the communities in which they are a part of. Learning Viet was/is important to me in the sense that I think it would be really nice to communicate with family members of my partner who don't speak English. With the prospect of a child entering our imminent future, it's important to me for my child to be able to engage with non-English speaking family members and minimize disconnect from any aspect of their identity.

My partner did Vietnamese after school programs growing up and that is for sure something I intend on pursuing with our child! I also started learning Vietnamese when things started looking more serious for us (it's been about a year of learning but my goodness the process is slow...).

My partner has a very tenuous grasp on his mother tongue and uses translation apps to communicate with non-English speaking family members (which is not an occasion that often presents itself --mostly just when texting with family who live in Vietnam). His mother immigrated to Canada in adulthood so obviously is fluent in Vietnamese but sadly lives 4hrs away so, unfortunately, exposure to the language inside of our home on a regular basis will be somewhat limited. I definitely intend on continuing to learn and hopefully develop fluency in Vietnamese, but I am a far cry from being there at the moment.

I like watching children's programming in Vietnamese, my logic here being that kids' shows are intended to help children better grasp language, so that has been great for supplementing my own learning.. but I was wondering if anyone here has any experience with exposure to this sort of programming for an infant and whether that makes a tangible difference when that language isn't really spoken inside of the home. Would this just be confusing for our child? Would it make learning the language at a grade school age any easier? Would it be best to just hold off?

TIA for your insight and perspective! :)

I’m considering buying a few Habbi Habbi books in Spanish. My 3 year old is doing well language-wise and I’m just wondering what else I can use for him to expand language and expose him to literacy. The sentences don’t seem very complex in the books…, but I imagine he’ll end up memorizing several of them due to reading the books so much. (Since they have the wand). Have you all generally found these to be helpful?

I’m an “advanced” non-native speaker but sometimes I feel like I don’t sound natural enough. Has Talkbox been helpful for anyone who is an advanced non-native speaker? Also just thinking it could expands my vocabulary as well.

Hi all,

My partner and I are blessed with twins this summer. Thing is, I am now stressed as to how our future will look like with them and I found little to no one in same situation, so I thought you guys might help.

We speak English together and live in an area with a dialect of German as community language. We both are quite fluent in “high” German, but we stick to English together as we both are way more comfortable with it. We do not really care that the kids are fluent in English as good as we are in the beginning, they will learn it eventually.

We do not speak each other’s language at all and trying to do OPOL. It is important for both of us that the kids are absolutely fluent in our mother tongues. However, it is hard sometimes as there are some stuff that I say to one of the babys but it is actually meant for my partner, basically when we are together, and conversing, the babies get talked to in English as well.

Currently they have zero exposure to German also. Any kind of childcare where we live accepts kids from 18 months of age and I fear it can be a bit late, the daycares that I talked to also meant that they require basic understanding of german like “lets wash our hands” etc, and I am not and will not be able to teach them these in the local dialect.

Besides, I am afraid that they will develop a language between each other that noone will understand.

Sorry that it feels like a rant, but in a nutshell, I would like to know:

1- If anyone raised twins in a 4 Language environment?

2- When is it realistic that they start talking?

3- How do you guys handle family language while trying to maintain OPOL?

4- How late is “too late” for the 4th language to enter the equation?

5- Do twins make up their own language by mixing everything up?

Appreciate any help!

hi! sorry if this isn’t allowed here but wasn’t sure of a better subreddit

i’m 17 and my brother is 3 but i wanted to teach him italian since ive read loads of benefits about multilingual children and how good it is for their brain development

i’m not fluent in italian but i can speak/read/write/ listen comfortably (im completely self taught as we live in scotland and know no native italian speakers)

is it too late to teach him since for his whole life so far he’s been spoken to in english (he hasn’t learned to read or write yet) if it’s possible i’d love to give him a good kickstart in language development

his listening and speaking comprehension in english is really good also

My one year old can babble however cannot point or wave. He clapped couple of times and stopped that also. Do you have any experience with delayed gestures?

Hi together,

my daughter is only 4 months old but I’m already giving some thoughts about how we are gonna communicate with her. I’m Croatian, my husband Tunisian, we speak English between us and live in Germany. German is going to be a community language since she will start daycare at 1 year old. I’m planning on speaking Croatian with her and my husband Arabic Tunisian, but we are not sure what our common language (of all 3 of us) should be? We would possibly drop English (should be easier to learn while she is growing up) but it’s super weird for both of us to switch to German and I’m scared 4 languages would just be too much for her. It would be nice to have a common language but does it work good without one? I have a friend whose daughter had speech delay and was very distressed (pulling her hair, biting nails) until she could express herself that she wants to speak only German. I guess it depends on the kid and the talent?

My son is going to be 3.5 years this December. He's very clearly speech delayed, we're doing speech therapy now. We are a trilingual household since birth. He was previously going to family daycare but she's revoked his place because it's too hard to deal with his lack of speech. He communicates his needs quite well, but he is still a toddler so there are times when he gets quite frustrated, and is very hard to calm down with the lack of speech. He's now starting Kindy and of January next year and I'm terrified that it's going to be terrible and he's going to really struggle. Anyone that's been in a similar situation?

I’m Moroccan and my husband is Syrian. When we moved in together I started learning the Syrian dialect but I’m far from fluent. We just had a baby and I’m confused about which language to speak to him. I’m not fluent enough to speak to him in Syrian Arabic and feel judged by my MIL if I speak to him in Moroccan Arabic. She always says that the poor kid will be so confused and that Moroccan Arabic is not real Arabic. So what I do is speak to him sometimes in English and French and few words here and there in Syrian but I’m sad because I don’t want my baby to grow up and not be proud of his Moroccan heritage.

We live in Quebec so ultimately our little one will speak French/english when he goes to daycare/school.

Am I doing something wrong?

Hey there! I've been lurking and loving this community. So huge thanks already! Got ideas for later on, when Little One can speak and read.

I'm the minority language parent, speaking it almost exclusively. Though things like cafés, baby classes, visiting in-laws, doctor appointments are in the majority language.

We read lots of books, sing plenty, and talk to my family. Is there anything else we can do? We're avoiding screen time for now. Sometimes I will put a podcast on.

Currently OPOL. What I find hard is when my partner talks to me in the majority (and their native) and trying not to respond back in it. Switching costs brain power and I'm sleep deprived ha

We're not sure yet if we switch from OPOL to the minority language at home, since our childcare is likely to be in the majority language.

Thoughts?

I’m expecting my baby girl in April my mother tongue is Arabic and I speak fluent English, my husband only speaks Arabic. I want to raise my kid bilingual and OPOL seems to be the solution in our situation, but I’m afraid that I wouldn’t be comfortable enough expressing my feelings to my baby in English and not in my native tongue. Any advice?

I would like to get a couple of Christmas themed books for my toddler in Spanish. I don’t love kids books in translations as the rhyming/lyricism does not work. My husband is the Spanish speaker and can’t think of anything specific to look for and we don’t have any local stores for browsing books in Spanish. Would love any recommendations, either for originally written in Spanish or very good translations. Will be ordering online for delivery to USA.

We have a 21 month old. OPOL -Dad speaks community language, mum speaks minority language. The community language is English and most of his new words seem to be in English. He gets decent exposure in the minority language - primary stay at home caregiver,some TV, occasional rare visits from granny but all the words are so much more complex to pronounce than the English equivalents- they are long and require a more developed speaking apparatus. So he just picks up and uses the English equivalents which are usually 2 syllable, involving sounds he's already "mastered". He does say some words in minority language but not nearly as many as in English. Anyone else dealt with similar? Does it get better or worse later?

Hi everyone! I’m here seeking advice on multilingual parenting :) Our daughter is 16 months old. I speak Spanish to her, my husband speaks danish, my husband and I speak English together. We live in Denmark and our daughter goes to a danish nursery. Now she has started saying some words, and they are only in danish. I tell myself it will come, but she only hears Spanish from me, doesn’t watch any tv yet, and we videocall my family often, but she is not super interested. Comes and says hi, and up again to continue playing. For me it’s super important that she learns Spanish, because first of all I don’t speak danish very well, my family back home also doesn’t of course, it just feels natural to me to speak in my mother tongue with her, and lastly a huge gift for her! It’s not possible for my husband and I to only speak Spanish at home, because his Spanish is not so good either. We are going to Argentina once a year for 1 month, so she will hear plenty of Spanish soon. But I’m just wondering if anybody else had a similar setting at home and if your kids spoke your language eventually 🫶🏻♥️

This is a very culturally specific question but I'm hoping someone can share their experiences here.

I'm a new parent and I'm the only Korean speaker in a multilingual household. I want to give my newborn a good foundation in Korean, but her exposure to korean will perhaps be limited to 10-15% of her time because she will be surrounded by other community languages.

I'm a native Korean speaker but I mostly converse in English (which is my second language) in my daily and professional life, and I'm not a primary caregiver.

Given that my newborn will not have a lot of community exposure, I'm wondering - Should I talk to her in 반말/존댓말 banmal/jondaetmal?

• I want her to be proficient in speaking 존댓말 (formal/polite) because she won't have a lot of korean friends to talk to in 반말 (informal/casual). Most people she will interact with in korean in the future will be those she must talk to in the polite and honorific register (her grandparents, her korean relatives in korea, strangers, potential future employers, etc.)
• So I'm wondering if it's easier for her to pick up 존댓말 if I talk to her in 존댓말 all the time? I noticed that some korean-americans seem to be only able to speak 반말 even to strangers, which can be seen as (unfortunately) rude and "foreign" to native Korean speakers. I wonder if this is because the gyopos were only exposed to 반말 at home.
• I'm not keen on passing on the culture of age-based hierarchy to my child. I was born and raised in Korea but I struggled with the rigid age-based hierarchy through my entire life.
• So I want to be reciprocal in terms of speech level when I talk to her. If I speak 반말 to her, which feels natural and intimate, I'd want her to speak 반말 back to me. But again, I want her to pick up 존댓말 for social purposes later in her life.
• When I talk to her in Korean in 반말, I realized that I naturally say stuff like "울면 안 돼" ("you better not cry") and I recently read an entire reddit rant by a young korean-american about korean immigrant parents saying that lol. I'm afraid of becoming a typical domineering asian parent and I believe that speaking 반말 to your child might exacerbate it. But at the same time, 존댓말 feels respectful but certainly less intimate.

Has anyone else experienced the same dilemma? I'd much appreciate insights from people who were raised in my child's situation.

How was your experience and how fluent are you now in the language?

Hi, my partner and I are both Italian living in an English speaking country. I am pregnant with our first baby.

We speak Italian at home and initially I thought I’d speak English and he’d speak Italian to baby, however the more I study this sub the more I understand this is not the right way to go and in our case the best would be to keep Italian at home and English as the community language baby will eventually learn it through exposure. However, I have a few doubts:

1. I have babysat Japanese under 5s who were only speaking Japanese at home (and with me as that’s my third language) and they used to get incredibly sad and frustrated whenever we went to the park as none of the other children could understand them. I don’t want this to happen to my baby, I want her to have a good grasp of English from the very beginning and not wait until she’s a bit older so she can play/interact with her peers. I am not sure how much nursery she will attend before 3yo as I am planning to work part time/dedicate a lot of my time to her. Would exposing her to exclusively English media and books for example be a successful strategy to at least give her some understanding of English before she goes into English education?

2. We are planning to go back to Italy in about 3 years. For many reasons, including that half of our family is American living in the US, I’d want my baby to be fully fluent in English throughout her life, even after we move back to Italy. When we move, would it be OK if we switched to OPOL and she’d only speak English with me? Would this be too confusing for her?

Thank you so much in advance!

Hi all,

My husband and I are struggling to decide on which minority languages to speak at home. Both my mother and mother-in-law live with us in Toronto, Canada.

• My mother speaks Tagalog (official language of the Philippines) and Bisaya (a major language there)
• My mother-in-law speaks Mandarin and Hokkien (the latter being Penang Hokkien)

If they are spoken to in Tagalog and Mandarin, it may be useful for them in the future, employment/travel wise. If they learn Bisaya and Hokkien, they will be able to converse with their relatives in Philippines/Malaysia.

I suppose it’s a matter of practicality vs family. Has anyone else run into this issue before? What do you think we should do?

I speak Portuguese and English. My husband speaks English.

We are expecting for next month and want baby to learn both.

How do we do? Husband speaks very little Portuguese. We live in the US, baby will be raised in the US. No other family speaking Portuguese except on video calls or when traveling.

Thanks

Help!

Both of us speak Spanish, living in Brazil and want to teach English to our son. He is almost 1 year old. We are currently speaking Spanish at home, TV shows just in English like Ms Rachel, and outside home is just Portuguese.

Someone here have any experience like this? What about results? It is ok what we are doing?

I have 10 month old twins and we have just started doing OPOL. My language is Afrikaans and I haven't lived in SA for over 14 years. I only speak it with my parent these days.

I'm a bit lost and don't know if I can or should do this. I find myself searching for words that I don't remember anymore and the language doesn't come naturally to me. I'm scared that when my babies start experiencing big emotions and tantrums, I won't have the language skills to talk them down.

I either need to commit and start reading Afrikaans, watching TV and almost studying it myself... Or I need to let this idea go.

Has anyone else been in a situation where they want to teach a language but are no longer fluent themselves? Any thoughts or advice appreciated.

Hello all! I need your help regarding my (not yet)bilingual kids, twins aged 3. We live in country X and my kids were born here. However at home we speak language Y (mine and my husband language). Thus kids speak Y (on a very advanced level regarding their age) and we thought that they would catch up language X at preschool. However this is not the case as they tend to spend most of time speaking together in language Y. We also go to social gatherings however my kids are not really engaging much. They can speak some phrases or count on language X however when it comes to interaction they are hopeless and even state to me sometimes they would want to play with this kids however they cannot speak language X. I need your help how can we approach this at home. Should one of us start speaking to kids only in language X? And the other parent continue with language Y? What is worth adding is that the other parent is less at home due to travels, and sometimes it is significant difference (like week alone without other parent). In this case how to handle this? I really want to help my kids become more social and able to function well 🙂 thank you in advance!

My toddler is now 2 years old. We try to do OPOL. At home, mom (me), nanny, and grandparents speak in minority language while dad speaks in English. My toddler is currently much stronger in the minority language but she knows how to effectively code switch.

Honestly, it would make more sense if dad and I switched. He is much stronger in the minority language and I was an English/writing tutor. It's becoming much more difficult for me to convey more abstract concepts to her in the minority language and I'd be more comfortable if I spoke to her in English.

Would it confuse our toddler if we switched languages now, with me speaking in English and dad speaking in Chinese?

I'm currently focusing on dreaming Spanish and I'm about 35 hours into my journey there. I had about 5 years of Spanish in school. My Tata spoke Spanish in the home to others but not really to me.

I want to teach my kids Spanish. We are dreaming Spanish videos together but they want clarification whenever they don't know a word. Any advice? Is it okay to translate a little for them to help them stay engaged?

Their ages are 13 down to 5. I want to speak to them as well but I'm still at level 1 and I feel like I'll stunt myself(and them) a bit if I speak a lot too early. Saying a word here or there or two word phrases that are super easy probably won't hurt. Trying to put thoughts together too early hurts by brain and gives me pause.

My idea is to get to 150-300 hours of CI whenever I can start upping the hours a day for myself without my brain hurting and speed run to 600 or so when I can speak, get lessons, and speak to them in Spanish mostly. Any other thoughts or ideas are welcome!

I might get them a teacher on italki too...

We put Disney Plus on Spanish mode for bluey and the like. They don't understand much yet though.

Sending them to a school isn't an option for us.

Hi! I have been lurking this sub for a while as I navigate trying to teach my 7 month old my mother tongue. For some background, I am Serbian (my first language) and I immigrated to Canada at the age of 3. My parents exclusively spoke Serbian at home and I was involved in the Serbian diaspora community. I attended Serbian language school weekly and spent summers in Serbia. I would place my language proficiency between b2 and c2. My husband is also Serbian and moved to Canada at the age of 3 with a similar, maybe slightly lower, proficiency level. My current issue is that I really want my son to be fluent in Serbian and so have exclusively spoken Serbian to him, however, I am finding it harder to spontaneously speak a lot in Serbian and explain more complex topics as he gets older and I want to expand his exposure to a varied vocabulary. Additionally, my husband and I have established our relationship in English and find it difficult to naturally speak Serbian. I am worried that my child won't properly learn Serbian or be motivated to speak it if my husband and I keep reverting to speaking English. I am also concerned that due to my lacking complex Serbian vocabulary and often having to look words up, my baby's language acquisition will suffer. I also wonder if my ability to emotionally connect with my child will suffer due to me speaking Serbian and not being able to always properly express myself. I am increasing my exposure to Serbian to enhance it with podcasts, articles. Etc. Does anyone have words of wisdom/ tips to ease my worries? Anyone with a similar situation that can offer advice?

TLDR: Basically I feel like I could teach my child a lot more and more naturally in English but I really want him to learn Serbian before he goes to school. How do I balance this?

I've heard of OPOL and it felt unnatural towards us. Toddler is 16mo and worried he won't speak both. Wondering if anyone has similar situation?

Husband and I both speak both languages at a fluent level. We "met in English", and therefore speak more English with each other, but also sometimes speak Spanish to each other. Our community used to be evenly split, but now is more English speaking (but still a good amount of Spanish on bus, at library, stores, etc).

We have books in both languages. We both speak to baby in both. We speak to our dog in both--he knows skills in mix of languages as well. I realized recently that I use certain situations in English, and others in Spanish. He understands both. We randomly both assigned the same language to different stuffed animals that "speak" English or Spanish. Both husband and I default to speaking to him in Spanish when out of the house with him (naturally?), though we switch to Wnglish if someone next to us is speaking English.

Anyway, I know this sounds like a mess. We're worried he'll be confused. Where we used to live, Spanish was spoken more often, but we are now realizing it is spoken less often where we live and are worried it won't be learned well in our new area unless we speak it more. We are also worried he'll be confused.

Anyone else have a spouse who's equally fluent in two and who is constantly mixing in life? Were your babies confused? Do we need to become more deliberate? It is hard for both of us to limit ourselves to just one language!

We are OPOL with mom, grandma and nanny speaking minority language and dad speaking community language. Mom and dad speak community language at home. Our baby is under 1.

We sing and talk (no screen so no cartoons yet) in minority language but are running into issues with children’s books. We were gifted lots of books in the community language that are fun and engaging (pop ups, felt pages, cool colors, etc for age appropriate development). It’s been hard to buy/import books in minority language and they are kinda crappy; we got lots of adult books that are not age appropriate.

What do you do? Do you use books in community language and read/translate them but still get appropriate engagement? Do you not use them at all by minority language speaking adults? Do you just read/look at crappy books in minority language? How does that change with age? She’s a baby now but I’m thinking ahead to toddlerhood.

Does anyone have experience with one parent one language?

My husband and I are both fluent in Spanish and English so those are the two languages we are trying to teach our 7mo daughter.

We settled with this method before she was born because my husband insists that my Spanish is better than his. I speak exclusively in Spanish to her, unless I’m reading a book to her in English (we don’t have as much of a Spanish book variety at home or the library) or sing to her (I know a few nursery rhymes in Spanish but I grew up in the US so I’m a lot more familiar with English songs and nursery rhymes).

I’m nervous she won’t pick up the language as well because I do speak to my husband in English in front of her. I’m also nervous because when someone else is talking to her in English I will also talk to her in English also out of fear they will assume something bad if I talk to her in Spanish.

Update: thank you so much for your kind responses!!! Yes our community language is English. I just had a talk with my husband and he agreed to try to speak more Spanish at home with me. This is something that I have been wanting to do for a while, and you have given me the support to trust in my instincts!

We are immigrants living in USA. Our native language is Bengali/Bangla . We are first time parents and want to raise our child as a bilingual person. We both are fluent in English too. Do we pick one language for each of us ? Me with Bangla and hubby with English? Normally we speak our native language at home and English outside.

Oldest just turned 3 when we moved to a new country. We don't use the community language at home because I'm still learning and don't want to impart bad habits onto him.

He goes to preschool 5 hours a day in the community language and I notice that he really relies on physical play/gestures and looks a bit excluded from play.

For others who moved to a new community language with a preschooler, when did they start to catch up with the others around them?

Part of me is catastrophizing that he'll always be left out due to language.

Do you make your kid respond to you in a particular language? Kid only responds in English, he can have full convos but in other languages he might copy a word or two but nothing