Hello everyone,

English is my second language and I don’t have trouble communicating when there is a need (work, vacation, etc)

When I found out I’m going to be a parent I’ve decided I want my baby to be bilingual (OPOL)

Now, the baby is 3.5 months old and I tried multiple times to speak in English to him but it just feels awkward and for some reason hard, even though I feel comfortable speaking English with other people.

So I ended up with talking to him in my L1 and just reading/singing in English, but I know it’s not even close in terms of later results compared to OPOL.

I don’t want to give up, did any of you faced similar issue? Do you have any advice on how to overcome it?

Thanks in advance

We live in Switzerland so when my kids go to nursery at 2 years old they will learn French and German. I will speak Dutch, my husband will speak Thai and all together we will speak English (at the dinner table/in the car etc.) so our child will have 3 languages at home. When they are older, we also plan to put our child in an Italian class. Is 2 languages at school, 3 at home and 1 extra language too much?

Hi all,

TLDR: Any recommendations for children’s storybooks, cartoons in French? French, Canadian, Belgian, all good! I plan to expose my baby to French as far as possible, based in UK, context below.

Context: Non-native French speaker here (would say high B2/C1) who wants to expose baby to French as far as possible (currently based in London). French is meaningful to me as I learnt from a young age and have spent a lot of time in France. I take weekly conversational classes and listen to podcasts (am aiming to beef up my grammar by reading more, using online resources etc). I am realistic and certainly acknowledge my own shortcomings in the language..! Am obviously not aiming for bilingualism, but really like the idea of introducing the sounds, some vocab, grammar etc during the highly plastic early years. I know I can’t confer the advantages that a native speaker can, but I definitely benefitted from early exposure myself (was taught French from age 7 which really helped my accent, and this has proven helpful when travelling in francophone countries). Will consider bringing in better sources eg Francophone childcare provider in future. Even if baby doesn’t pick much up, or it doesn’t stick long term, I feel it’s worth a go.

TIA!

I am totally new to this. Please correct me if I say something incorrect.

My partner and I are expecting our first child. We live in his country where LangA is spoken, and he is fluent in. I speak LangB and together we speak English because neither of us speak each others languages fluently. My plan was for me to speak my own language to the child, him to speak his language and English would be picked up casually. Is this a bad idea? The child will start childcare at age 2 where LangA will be spoken. I am worried that since English will be a minority language at home (only spoken in between us, not directly to the child), it will just create more confusion.

Here’s my second idea: I speak LangB, husband speaks English. Child will learn LangA from institutions/exposure from society? The only issue with this is I’m scared of LangA being too much in the background since it’s not spoken at home, and that will lead to issues further in life since that’s the main language used in this country. I really worry about speech delay and language delay with LangA since it’s the most important language for the child.

Please give me ideas and sources!! I am super new to this and would like to learn more about the correct ways to approach this.

I’m not the parent, but thought this would be a good sub to ask this question. My family speaks only English and we live in the US. I speak Spanish and English. I would like to teach my younger cousin spanish because where we live has many spanish speaking residents. I was wondering if he would be able to learn if I spoke to him only in Spanish and only put on spanish shows for him, but I don’t know if he is too old now and therefore unable to learn passively. I’ve tried to teach him phrases but he is uninterested and doesn’t understand the concept of different languages. If he isn’t too old does anyone have any tips for me? I see him very often but do not live with him.

I'm working at home and heard the song Eternal Flame played somewhere and my mind flew to 13 years back, when my then 5-6 months old son was on the car seat and I was sitting next to him singing to myself Eternal Flame: "close your eyes, give me your hands, darling" he then reached for my hand and held it.

You guys I'm crying now remembering it 🥲 His dad and I raised him trilingual (1 roman language, 1 asian language, and English) despite my in laws constant disagreement. At that age he didn't speak yet, and in laws always complained that I confused him and repeatedly asked me to stop "confusing" him and to just stick to 1 language: the roman one aka theirs 🙄. But that small gesture that he did in the car showed me he wasn't confused, he understood 😭

For all parents out there, who are uncertain about this multilingual path, hang in there! And celebrate every small gesture you child makes.

My son is now 13, he speaks 2 languages fluently and can understand 1 other language a little bit. I call it a win 🎉

I immigrated at a young age so my native tongue (which is also a minority language in my home country, so scant learning resources) is stuck at a basic level. For example, it's difficult to have an adult conversation with my cousins to discuss abstract ideas like politics or outlook on life. My kid is a baby now so OPOL feels doable if somewhat laborious, but what do I do when they start school and I want to help them with their homework? Or they have to work through some big feelings? I don't have the native vocab for such conversations.

What strategies have people used? Is it ok to switch to the dominant language for these situations without losing the benefits of OPOL?

My partner and I come from two different European countries with completely different mother languages and we live in a third European country. So we have already two different languages we are using with our one year old (OPOL) plus the community language from daycare. Only to make things more complicated, we are not proficient in the community language so we speak English at home and we will likely continue to for the foreseeable future. We don't intend to teach our baby English because we are not mastering it plus we have each an accent that we are not so keen on passing on. But we cannot avoid exposing her to our "bad" English either. I have a few questions for whomever had a similar setup and could help us with some advice.

Was your toddler frustrated they could not understand what their parents are saying when talking to eachother? We are trying to repeat a summary sometimes but now even if she is too young to care we are afraid it will become annoying for everybody at some point. Did you ever think they are missing out on how you interact and how your relationship is?

Did you experience language delays? What was the age they starting actually saying words and visibly expand their vocabulary?

Was it difficult to teach them to not default to one language when answering?

How and when did you introduce the fourth language? What was the outcome?

And last but not least, a very generic - do you wish you did some things differently?

Thanks in advance! It seems to be little science based approach out there and sometimes I feel we will end up in a Babel Tower mess.

Hi

I don't have kids yet but I've discussed with my partner that we would raise them speaking Sicilian. I have concerns though about whether I should also teach them Italian, whether they'd have trouble differentating the two with so little input. While I want to preserve my heritage language, I do recognize that Italian is more useful and many young sicilian speakers italianize their sicilian more these days. My partner only speaks English so I'm worried they might feel left out or alienated if I only speak Sicilian or Italian to the child, but also if I only do it when alone with the child, we live in an English speaking country so I don't think they would hear the language enough.

Have any couples gone through similar experiences that can share what they learned or how it went? Doesn't have to be Italian/Sicilian, I'm sure a speaker of Catalan/Spanish or any other country with differing majority/minority languages that emigrated would have similar questions.

Our little boy is 5 months old now. We live in Belgium where French/Dutch are the spoken languages. My wife isbtaking french classes and so will I at some point. We both are fluent in English and our mother tongue (Tamil)

We want the kid to speak French(tought at school) and English preficiently. We also want him to know Tamil as we are very proud of our heritage and want him to stay in touch with his roots.

How do I approach this in these early days and in the next few years.

FYI-he will start French daycare when he is 8 months old.

Any toy recommendations? Really difficult to find toys that don’t speak English or have multiple languages. Particularly looking for Arabic.

Thank you!

Hey everyone, I grew up in naturally multilingual environments as a child (in Singapore, India, the US etc with family speaking a rather niche language called Assamese) but as an adult I now live in a monolingual English-speaking environment. I've sadly noticed my heritage language skills decline over the years as my husband doesn't speak Assamese and there's nobody I speak it with on a regular basis.

I'd like our future kids to be proficient in my heritage language but since it isn't a "mainstream" language like Spanish, I'm curious how others in my situation do it. If you're a parent who 1) wants to raise your kid bilingually/multilingually but 2) aren't SUPER proficient in the language yourself and 3) are in an environment where the language isn't commonly spoken either in the community or with your spouse/partner, I'd love to learn how you're doing it!

If there are enough of us, I'd love to start a support group, especially for heritage languages where resources aren't plentiful: comment (or DM me if you prefer) if you'd like an invite. I aim to keep it purposeful!

Edit: here's the link to the niche-language bilingual parenting support group: https://chat.whatsapp.com/JlHqsMNtpAmJKCuzNAxdg4

I was wondering if any mamas here have some tips, tricks or advice on what’s the best way to raise a little one bilingual.

How to start ? What’s the best way to do it? When to start ?

We live in Turkey, and while I'm a native Turkish speaker with English as my second language, my husband is native in both Turkish and English.

Although our aim is for our daughter to be fluent in both languages, but we're worried about language mixing, which could lead to social challenges later on, as we've already experienced these difficulties ourselves in our social lives. To tackle this, we've decided that we will speak strictly Turkish with her, aiming for it to be her mother tongue, while my husband and I converse in a mix of Turkish and English, and later we were going to teach her English. And now it’s obvious to us she learns a lot faster when she is younger plus many benefits of bilingualism, so we want to teach her to speak both languages fluently.

However, we've encountered a few challenges:

•   My English isn't very strong (many pronunciation and grammar mistakes) but I am speaking anyways, and since I spend more time with our daughter, she might pick up on my mistakes.

•   Whenever my husband or anyone else speaks English, I naturally join in, so the OPOL method isn't practical for us.

• Speaking English at home (Minority Language at Home method) is quite against to our ‘mother tongue’ goal, we expect her to firstly think and process in Turkish.

Our ultimate goals are for our daughter to have a strong command of Turkish with no mixed sentences, no accent and to also be able to speak English fluently and correctly.

SO WE ARE STUCK

We're seeking advice on the best approach to achieve these goals while navigating our language dynamics at home.

I think too often we see problems online so I wanted to post my success story and see if anyone had any advice.

I have 2 girls- oldest turned 2 in Feb and youngest was born in Feb. We live in Germany with my German husband though I am Irish. I don’t speak very good German so our family language is English. Husbands parents live next door and their family language is German. Mother in law is also foreign and English is her mother tongue so she speaks English with the girls and her husband only speaks German. My eldest has been talented with language for some time now, but as I don’t speak German I can’t appreciate how she is in that language. However recently I noticed how good she has gotten at switching. She almost never makes a mistake and talks in the wrong language to the wrong person. We were playing some silly game yesterday and over the course of 5 minutes I noticed she switched perfectly every other sentence when talking to husband and me. The baby funnily enough she only speaks to in English. It makes my heart so happy to hear her so fluent so young.

Now for the question- she’s so clever that none she’s getting to the stage where her German is starting to be better than mine. So what should I be doing here? Should I be out there also learning German too or is that confusing to her?

Hi folks, I have a family member who is pregnant; she and her husband are both bilingual in English and Spanish. They're looking for baby books that are bilingual in English/Spanish AND introduce ASL signs. I would love to find this for them, but haven't had any luck, so I'm posting here in case one of you lovely people have some ideas!

Living in the US, dad is American but knows some French. Mom is French and knows both languages. I try to speak French to my 2yo 99% of the time but I changed work schedule and went from spending 4 full days with her to a 9 to 5 job with the weekends off. Now she used to speak a lot more French but now it's all English. She understands French but will respond to me in English. If I tell her "non, dis moi en francais/no, tell me in French" she will try to say it in French but often she doesn't seem to know how. If I say it in French and ask her to repeat, she does. My MIL who watches her only speaks English.

I've heard if I don't force her to speak it, she'll understand it but will never speak it. I don't want her to lose out on the bilingual benefit plus my family doesn't speak English.

I told her she needs to learn French because Mami and Papi don't understand English to which she responded "Mama knows Anglais" 🤣🤣

What can I do to boost her French? Ignore her when she speaks English and pretend I don't understand? Force her to repeat in French? She does see me speak English to my husband and in laws.

Dear all,

As part of my PhD project, I have created a short, anonymous survey for heritage language speakers focusing on personality and emotions related to language use.

I hope that heritage language speakers of all languages, ages and at all levels (beginners to fluent) would like to fill out the survey! It takes 10-15 minutes.

Link to the survey: https://www.survey-xact.dk/LinkCollector?key=MKLV683MUKCK

You are a heritage language speaker if you live in a country where the mainstream language differs from your home language (you could be a 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc. generation im/migrant).

The survey includes background questions and scales related to personality, emotions and language use (speaking, listening, writing and reading) as well as one open question about challenges in maintaining your heritage language.

Thank you so much in advance!

Hi all! I'm curious to hear your suggestions on the best way to raise a trilingual child. My baby is 7 weeks old now, and I'm just trying to figure out the best way to do this long term.

My husband and I both speak English with each other as this is how we met when we were in high school. We also both speak German, and I speak Spanish.

We live in Germany, so the community language is German. However, in our household, the main language is English, as my husband and I do not speak in German to each other. My German is also not perfect as I grew up outside of Germany and went to English speaking schools my whole life. But my grandparents from my fathers side are German, and my husband's family is German, so I do need to speak German with them. I speak Spanish with my mother and that side of my family. However, we don't live close to my mother, so I only speak to her once a day on the phone in Spanish.

I've been reading the other posts in this community and came across the OPOL method. We plan that my husband speaks German with our son, and I speak Spanish, and when we are together, we speak English. Do you think this is a good approach, or would it make sense to just do English and Spanish at home, as he will need to learn German anyway for kindergarten and speaking with our German family. I'm a little confused about how to integrate English into this since we just speak it with each other.

Thanks for any suggestions! :)

Edit: fixed spelling mistakes. Also, I meant Trilingual, can't fix the title tho :') Breastfeeding and typing with one hand isn't easy 😂

My partner and I are both fluent in each others mother language, Norwegian and Dutch (my language). Our 2 year old is exposed to the minority language Dutch when we’re at home together (usually only on weekends and 2-3 hours during work days). I guess it’s a OPOL / Minority language at home hybrid, but the majority of her language exposure is still Norwegian.

Lately I’ve been concerned about my daughter’s bilingual progress, but I’m unsure about what to expect at this stage. It’s obvious that she understands both languages perfectly, but she mostly speaks Norwegian when speaking spontaneously. There is of course some code switching and I’d say the Norwegian : Dutch ratio is somewhere around 60:40 or 70:30.

When I’m alone with her or when my parents are visiting she doesn’t seem to switch to Dutch automatically. I had expected that if she says a word in the dominant language multiple times and for example my parents don’t understand her, that she’d try switching languages more readily.

I’m aware that the most important thing for me to do is to maximize exposure to Dutch. I guess I’m just concerned that the language imbalance I’m seeing is a predictor of a “failed” bilingual education. But maybe I’m setting the bar too high for a 2 year old…

So, I like to track data about my child's development, possibly excessively. I've been keeping a running record of how many words she's said so far, but unfortunately the app I've been using is designed for monolingual kids. I'd really like to be able to categorize entries by language, so I can compare how many words she knows in each language more easily. Anyone have any suggestions?

Hello all! Just a curious one really as I find multilingualism fascinating.

We have practised OPOL with my three year old since birth (English and another Germanic language).

Community language is English and she is the only bilingual child at her nursery. She speaks mostly English with a smattering of words from the other language but fully understands both and is happy to watch cartoons and read books in either.

Recently she has started speaking in a third, made up language for fun - she switches to it when she’s being funny and I’ve overheard her speaking/singing it to her toys.

The ‘language’ sounds like nonsense but there is a definite pattern of intonation, stress and rhythm with lots of shhh sounds. It’s very cute.

Does anyone have an insight as to why she’s doing this? We aren’t concerned at all, I’d just love to understand how her brain is working (I’m the monolingual English speaking parent for reference).

Hello everyone!

I'm a Spanish native speaker currently living in Italy, and I'm eager to introduce English to my 4-month-old child. While I speak English at a C level, I'm uncertain about the best strategies to create greater exposure to the language for my little one.

Currently, I read to my child in English almost every day, but I'm wondering what else I can do to enhance their English language development. Are there any specific activities, games, or resources that you have found particularly effective in introducing English to your multilingual children?

Additionally, I'm curious about how to balance the exposure to multiple languages without overwhelming my child. Any insights or experiences from fellow multilingual parents would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you in advance for your advice and support!

Hi! I speak Malayalam, a language that is spoken by roughly 35mn people in India. I’ve lived overseas since I was 9 and currently live in England, away from family who are in India. For the past two decades, I’ve not had the opportunity to speak in Malayalam to anyone. As a result, I find that my vocabulary is quite simplistic and not as advanced as a native speaker. While I can understand fairly well, I find myself stammering and pausing to find the right words on the rare occasions that I do have to converse in Malayalam.

My husband and I converse in English as he is English and doesn’t know any Malayalam. What is the best way to teach the child Malayalam?

I’m concerned that if I stick to speaking in just Malayalam (OPOL), I would never be able to express myself as vividly as I would in English. Arguably, having a mother who is able to communicate effectively in various situations could be more useful for a child than developing (stunted) bilingual skills?

Any tips or advice for this situation is appreciated as I would like my child to have the benefits of being raised multilingual (as I was).

My eldest daughter speaks English, Mandarin and Mongolian fluently. She started correcting my wife's English (her first language is Mongolian) when she was 6. Naturally, my wife didn't like this. While I personally wouldn't mind my daughter correcting my Mandarin or Mongolian (particularly my pronunciation since I know it's pretty poor), she almost always seems to assume I'm correct.

Like I said, I don't her correcting me but I also don't want her to accidentally make her mother uncomfortable speaking English.

Has anyone else had this kind of situation?

Edit: the only thing I can think of might be that I often help her with homework and learning to read & write. Even when we lived in China, I was usually the one helping with her kindergarten's homework. My wife only stepped in when it came to reciting texts aloud.

So, in our multilingual household, English is the common language between my partner (Russian speaker) and I (Portuguese speaker). In the past year, I have been speaking to my stepson only in German, a decision we made since we live in Austria and his progress in the language was a concern at school. As for my partner, she has been speaking Russian to him since birth and there's constantly Ukrainian on TV (cartoons, TV shows, etc.), which he also understands well.

Now that my daughter is about to be born, I would like to speak to her only in my native Portuguese so that she can acquire the language (OPOL). The issue is, I already speak to my stepson exclusively in German and I am pondering how to make this transition from German into Portuguese with him as well. He is definitely interested in learning the language, which helps, but I am out of ideas of how to do this change since in the beginning our communication will be limited if I stick to the OPOL strategy. Has anyone been through something similar and can give me some advice?

And the funniest thing was seeing him assign a language to my 7 month old. My partner and his family all speak greek together so naturally my daughter will also eventually speak greek in that environment. The kid however is used to speaking greek with adults and german with kids, and a third language with his father. His English is completely passive, he has no reason to ever speak it but picks it up from listening to his parents. I didn’t speak with the kid much because our only common language is English and I was assuming he didn’t understand it.

Yet as the adults all got up and left the room we’re in, and it’s just me and my baby, he immediately switches language and starts explaining things to my baby in English. Showing her games, explaining the different colors, counting pieces, “this goes here”, “this one we don’t use” etc. It was quite fascinating to me that he would already have placed a non-talking infant in a language group he never speaks at all.

I like reading everyone’s stories of how your kids slowly grasp different languages so I thought I’d share!

Hey. So following situation. Im german and my girlfriend is from czech republic. But we me in the US so be both speak english well. We dont have kids yet since were still in college but we were wondering if there is a good way to raise a kid with learning all three languages native.

I thought about making a „dad“ and „mom language? So when im with the kid alone i speak german. And vise versa. And whenever at the eating table for example we speak english together.

Is there a better way? Does anyone know something about it? Thanks!

We’re raising a trilingual child in India. Me and my husband speak to our daughter in our native languages (Bengali and Telugu), and we converse with each other in English. Grandparents speak the native language mostly.

I am struggling to find good books for babies in our native languages. Most books are things I can read but not interesting for babies because they don’t have images. Or they are books with alphabets, fruits, vegetables etc- more information based rather than stories.

Any recommendations for good books for small babies in Indian languages?

Both my husband and I speak Spanish and English, and we’re both speaking Spanish and English to our newborn son (him with slightly more Spanish, me with slightly more English). Given that both languages are being spoken by both parents, what’s the best strategy for reading bilingual books? Read the whole book through in one language and then the other, pick a single language per day, or read the page in one language and then read the same page in the other? Or some other strategy I’m not considering? I’m currently reading each page in one language, then the other, and then pointing out vocabulary words in the illustrations in the same order, but I want to make sure I’m not confusing him. Thanks!