Hello everyone! I am new to this channel ☺️. Me and my husband are Brazilians living in Germany. We have a 2 year old boy, that came with us to Germany when he was one. Before coming to Germany, me and my husband would speak a lot of English to him, since my husband works for a North American company and works fully In English and I’m also fluent we thought: why not teach him already? We would also put some cartoons for him in English to watch.

When we were in Brazil that was working really good, cause he would also have many people speaking Portuguese to him. But then we moved to Germany. So current situation:

He learns German in his kindergarten, pretty much he already understands most of the commands of the teachers and also speak a few words.

At home: we now are prioritizing Portuguese, since we are his only reference to it at the moment but he seems to prefer speaking English. (Mostly because it’s much easier to speak 😂)

We also have two older kids, so from his siblings he also gets Portuguese. His older brother (9 year old) is also fluent in English and Portuguese and learning German fast at school, but at home mainly speaks Portuguese with us. I’m now also putting cartoons in Portuguese for him.

At home he also mixes all 3 languages in the same sentence when speaking… like: “where is chupeta?” Or: “oh nein! The ball caiu”.

My question to you is: is this too much? Are 3 languages going to make such a big of a mess in his head? Also I would like some tips to still teach him English as a third mother language, in a way that will not be conflicted with Portuguese. (German he will pretty much learn from the environment).

Is there like a teaching guide? A method? Please help me out😅.

Hey everyone,

I have a 3 month old baby. His father's mother tongue is Arabic. I studied languages and I love them, for me it's very important to talk to your kid in your own language. My mother tongue is different (I do talk to him in my mother tongue) and we live in a country where the local language is our common language.

I feel like my baby will be missing out a lot. My partner denies that and says there are more important things. He has his own reasons why he doesn't want to do it, but honestly it makes me so angry and I can't do anything to change it. I have talked to him so many times already. So he talks to him in the local language (which he knows very well but not perfectly either). Here I must say my partner doesn't have a family (so my baby wont communicate with anyone on his side).

I am trying to find positive sides about all this but I just can't. I feel it's such a pity. I will obviously have to accept his decision, just trying to cope with it in my head as I don't want to be unfair to my partner and damage our relationship because of this.

Any thoughts on this?

Hi everyone! I’m a trained linguist and polyglot, fluent in Russian, English, Hebrew, and French, raising my daughter in 4 languages: Russian (my native), Hebrew (my husband’s), English (community), and Spanish (useful + fun).

My academic research focuses on how early exposure to multiple languages helps babies differentiate phonemes (sounds) and primes their brains for multilingualism later in life —and I couldn’t find a single board book that works for all our languages. So, I’m making one: Baby’s First Words in 4 languages, tailored to your family’s unique linguistic landscape.

Here’s a list of language combinations that my friends and acquaintances have already pre-ordered:

• English, Hindi, Marathi, Bengali
• English, Polish, French, Arabic
• English, Armenian, Russian, Spanish
• English, Korean, German, French
• English, Hebrew, Amharic, Russian
• English, Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian
• English, Portuguese, Swedish, Somali
• English, Ukrainian, Russian, French
• English, Italian, German, Arabic

You can pick any four languages as long as one of them is English.

Would you use something like this? What language combos would work for you? How much would you pay for a personalized board book?

Thanks in advance—I’d love your input!

Hi! I'm a soon to be FTM and am interested to know how other multilingual families manage having various languages in the house.

At home we will have three languages:

1. I will speak my maternal language to baby (an african language)
2. My partner will speak his maternal language to baby (Es)
3. My partner and I speak English to each other (both of our second language)

We don't speak each other's maternal languages but I have been learning his language for a while now as my 4th language, out of interest before meeting him. I have a base but not fluent enough to fully engage in conversation. I suppose he will learn fragments of mine through me speaking to baby.

We also live in a country where the baby will constantly be exposed to two other languages [FR/Arabic]. We both speak French as a third language.

Five languages seems crazy, though I am a specialist in language education (catered to foreign students) - for context I'm not just a teacher, I have additional advanced university degrees to support this. Working here, I see children from early childhood effortlessly switch between at least four languages, so I know it is possible.

I am curious to know how other families who are in somewhat similar situations manage their family dynamics to support the development of multiple languages.

My parents are from Argentina and they wanted to Americanize me as much as possible, so I grew up only understanding Spanish but never speaking it. I want my baby to be bilingual, since he is half Argentine and half Irish. However, like I said, I only understand Spanish and don’t speak it, so it would be hard to do the “one parent one language” approach. Any tips on how my baby and I can learn Spanish together?

Edit: he is 9 weeks old at the time of posting this.

My husband is French and I'm American, although I'm also fluent in French. We live in the US. The plan always was to do OPOL but we lived for a while with my non-French speaking parents and my husband just never ended up speaking to them consistently in French.

Our kids are now 11, 5, and newly 3. We spent a month with family in France who doesn't speak much English and the kids picked up a good amount, enough to understand and say basic words/phrases. I've always felt guilty not teaching them French but being there and seeing them struggling to communicate with family made me realize that not teaching them French is the biggest regret of my life.

Since coming back, I've spoken to them almost entirely in French, despite the fact that they don't understand it fluently. I've told my husband he really needs to speak in them in French, too, but he doesn't really follow through so I feel like it's on me.

It's not easy. I work full-time and the kids are in an English-speaking school (there are no bilingual French schools near us and French isn't even offered in our district (!)). Sometimes when I need to communicate really important information I switch to English (or, for example, if I'm putting out sibling fires!). But I'm doing my best. When they don't understand what I'm saying I use gestures if I can and sometimes translate into English.

My questions:

1. Has anyone started this late in this way and found that it worked? My oldest doesn't need to speak like a native without an accent (I still have an accent!), but I want him to be proficient enough in the language to speak with his family.

2. Is translating some phrases into English defeating the purpose of speaking to them in French? I do this when it is important information that I need to convey.

This might be silly, but I'm worried about it affecting my relationship with my kids. It feels weird at this point not to be able to have an easy conversation anymore without issues of comprehension. But I don't want to give this up--it's too important.

We are planning on spending as much time as we can in France and are even thinking about sending the eleven year old to France for a few weeks alone this summer to live with his grandparents (only one of whom speaks English). I know this will help, too.

Anyway, thanks for reading and I'd love to know if anyone has any tips or had any similar experience!

Our LO is 16 months and still hasn’t said a word, just grunts and “ugh - ugh!” When pointing at things.

I know, everyone says chill and don’t worry. But first child syndrome kicks in regardless.

We live in an English speaking country, but speak L2 at home mostly. I speak to LO in English, wife speaks in L2. LO doesn’t go to nursery and is at home with mum and sees Grandma (English) a lot.

Just curious what other bilingual parents have experienced?

My son turned 2 in November. We're in a household that uses OPOL with my husband speaking Hindi and I speak English.

Around his 2nd birthday our son started stuttering when speaking. He seems to get stuck on a word like "mama mama mama mama mama mama mama sit right here." He can usually say 3-4 sentences in English but does not speak Hindi. He does understand Hindi though. Now he's stuttering when speaking, especially when we go to his grandparents' house where they all speak Hindi to each other. Should I be concerned or is this pretty typical of bilingual kids?

My partner and I are expecting our first child. I’m German and she is Filipina and apart from a few words and phrases we don’t speak each others language at all, we talk to each other in English. We both would love for our child to be fluent in Germans and Tagalog which means OPOL is the best approach. We currently live in New Zealand, but have plans to move to the Philippines in 2 years and then eventually to Europe in 4-5 years. Since we both don’t speak each others language I’m curious to hear a few tips and stories of other parents in similar situations that tried OPOL. My main concern is if we are home spending time together and each of us speak our language to our child but we don’t understand what the other person is talking about (and eventually what the responses of the child are). Does it get frustrating for the other parent when that happens? Eventually we will have to speak English as a family because that is the only common language. Will our child be able to get fluent in German and Tagalog if we do OPOL only for the first few years and then switch to English only if all 3 of us are together but continue talking our own language when we are alone with our child? Any tips of how to approach OPOL when the parents don’t understand each other’s language and speak English to each other?

My daughter gets exposure to my first language through my parents once a week when she goes to spend the night with them (and random occasions during the week). It’s a language she’s been exposed to since she was a baby. She can count reliably to 10, some foods, and she understands most of what they say to her.

I’m not as comfortable speaking it on a regular basis but I can def speak a decent amount of it and my husband knows a few things. The other day I tried to speak only that language to her and she kept yelling at me to stop. So what’s a good way to naturally work it back into our daily life? Or should I just start sprinkling it in without making it a big deal?

Hello,

I've been raising my baby using the MLAH strategy and one day ago I asked a question in a subreddit ( r/idiomas -- a subreddit about languages, but in portuguese -- https://www.reddit.com/r/Idiomas/comments/1i8t8yy/algu%C3%A9m_aqui_tenta_criar_o_filho_de_forma_bilingue/ ) and most of the comments said we were crazy by raising the baby like this. I had done some research about mlah and thought it could be a good idea. Thus, to free my head from this worry, I want to ask some questions here to validade our strategy.

Background:

- My wife and I live in Brazil and portuguese is our native language.

- We speak english reasonably fluently and with a reasonable vocabulary (though my English is better than my wife`s). In 2013 I got a 103 grade in Toefl and my wife and I lived for 4 years in the USA after that (I studied at a university there, but since I lived with my wife at that time we mostly spoke portuguese at home. We had the oportunity to practice English there, but not as much as one would expect).

- We now have a 14 month baby and we`ve been speaking mostly English (our target language) with him (99% of the time) at home.

- From time to time (maybe each 2 months) my wife travels with the baby to her home town, where they mostly speak portuguese (because her relatives there speak only portuguese). The baby has contact with some cousins there (speaking portuguese).

- My wife stays 100% of the time at home and I have contact with the baby only at night during the weekdays. We don't go out a lot and, thus, the baby has a lot of contact with our English (sometimes we also let him watch some Ms. Rachel on youtube and some music channels, such as Super Simple Songs). We thought OPOL could not work well with us (mainly during the first years) because he would have much more contact with the community language than with the target one.

- When we go out (this does not happen a lot) and are around other people we speak portuguese to the baby.

- We want to continue with this strategy, hopping the baby would learn English from us (though we are not native speakers) and eventually learn portuguese from the community after he gets older).

Several people on r/idiomas said we were crazy by trying this. -- We got comments such as: "with all due respect, this is ridiculous", "this is the worst idea I've ever seen in my life", "your English would not express enough affect" , "your vocabulary could be limited and he would learn a wrong english", "he could have some traumas because of us "forcing another language"", he could quickly forget the English after starts school, he could have trouble at school (he would not understand other kids), etc. I was not expecting to see so many negative comments from a community about languages and this raised some concerns.....

Questions:

1. Do you think this strategy could work?
2. Have you tried something similar?
3. Would it be a good idea to wait until he is 2 year-old to put him at a pre-school/nursery, to have contact with portuguese?
4. Would it be a good idea to switch to OPOL (my wife talking in portuguese) after he is 2 year-old? or maybe 3 year-old ? The idea is that he could get some portuguese before going to preschool (though I think this could be risky since my wife has much more contact with him them me and, thus, he would have much more contact with the community language than with the target one)
5. Is it really ok to use MLAH, considering our English is not native?

Hello there!

Context: I'm a Spanish-speaking mom living in the US with a 12yo and an 8yo. Dad speaks Marathi as his first language, but we use Spanish around the house. Kids' stronger language is English and they use it when they communicate with us, but we answer in Spanish 90% of the time. Dad and I speak Spanish all the time. Now, living in the US means learning another language isn't easy. In our district, a world language is only introduced in Middle School and this is usually Spanish.

I would like to learn French with my kids. My level is A2 as per the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages), so I think this would be OK to get started from scratch with them.

Question: Do you know of any program/platform/app that comes with printable materials or books that we could use? I've tried DinoLingo and Muzzy (this one has printables), but I don't really think they're a great option. I've looked into online classes for them, but they're pretty expensive, and I'd like to have hard copies to work on. This would be self-paced. I feel a curriculum would be a good idea to get started, and they we can spice things up by putting into practice what we've learned with movies, games, etc.

I'm thinking this could be a good option I've found an interesting self-paced Latin program that has both a platform and textbooks (I have to take a Latin course next semester, and I wanted to refresh my Latin before the semester starts).

Any suggestions or ideas?

Marathi is currently out of the question. We tried with online classes but they were boring. There aren't many options out there, and my husband doesn't have the patience to speak to the kids in Marathi. We speak English with his side of the family.

Hello,

I am an Italian Dad living in Germany.
My baby girl is now 8 months and a half, and boy she is fast as a lightning. she started turning at 3, crawling and eating at 5, and now she is starting to get on her feet, and her babbling is getting more complex, going from 'mamamama' to 'babbbaabaa' to a moltitude of phonemes.

It really seems like some of these words-of-sort have meaning now, as in they are very reliably used in different contexts.

I think she is developing a language, and I am worried that she won't be able to speak Italian.
As many dads I did not spend the same amount of time with her as her mom, plus my language is already the minority language.
On top of that, in our playing together I make a lot of sounds, ask some questions, but do not speak with her a lot. I usually find it easier and more reawarding to make her laugh by some other mean.

I would like to hear from other Dads, or moms whose husbands were in a similar situation as mine.

Did your children learn your language despite being exposed to it less than the other language?
Do you guys think that I am still in time to help her learn my language? Other than reading her books, what should I do to expose her to more Italian? do you have a strategy for when you are not sure what to tell her, what to talk about?

Thanks in Advance :)

Just looking to hear people's thoughts and experience, I know ultimately there's no one size fit all choice and every family is different.

We currently only have a 2.5 year old toddler and pregnant with a second one. We live in US and are a bilingual family (Chinese + English). We're doing OPOL at home but she also goes to Chinese immersion daycare, which makes her Chinese a bit stronger than English but her English is also excellent from her father, English speaking school friends and neighborhood kids. As we're thinking school choice when kid enters school, I find it that there's virtually no school that meets all of our needs and I'm kind of in a bind. Would love to hear people's thoughts on this, the list of choices are:

1. My daughter's current Chinese immersion Montessori School/Daycare

Pros: It has been great in helping her build a strong Chinese foundation in a community setting. Also she gets Asian culture exposure too. It also is a pretty diverse school, with a lot of multi-racial kids, trilingual family, etc. I also really like the Montessori aspect of choice, independence, etc for her young age.

Cons: This school is very very very small and only recently start to add elementary school program. The current highest grade is 4th grade and has maybe only 1 or 2 students. Because of that they're also mixing all elementary kids in one class from grade 1 to 4 (some bigger Montessouri schools tend to do age 6-9 and 7-12). They're also very faithful to the Montessori approach and kids don't have homework (not even the 4th grade kid(s)). As an Asian parent I do value academia a lot. On top of that I have a little bit of a concern with the social skill development with a super small school. Also I know the head teacher of the elementary program can speak Chinese but not entirely sure if it will still be immersion, bilingual, or English only education. They're also a private school but somewhat affordable.

2. Public school: we live in a city so the other option is city public school. While there're some charter schools out there but I haven't seen one that jumps out to me. Our Neiborhood school is the closest, relatively small with an OK score. There're a couple better public schools but all requires us moving which we're not really interested in doing.

Pros of the public school: closer to home, free, our neighborhood school while only ok right now is kind of rising and I have heard good things from parents. Also for a city school they had very low turnover rate in the past few years which usually is a good sign. It is relatively diverse, as we live in a relatively liberal Neiborhood close to a university campus.

Cons: The academia aspect is still not satisfying to me, and I imagine I'll have to pay for extra curriculum. Also this school is small so I'll need to find my own aftercare program (I don't get how people in US can work 9-5 and have kids off school at 2???). And while I don't want my kids living in a bubble I do worry about impact from environment such as access violence, etc. And the last and my most concerned problem is that the city school curriculum doesn't include any foreign language until MIDDLE SCHOOL! To me, a community that values multi-lingual and diverse culture is important, I don't want my kid to feel she needs to act "strictly American" to fit in. I just imagine it will be an uphill battle to try to convince my pre-teen or teenager that they need to go to extra Chinese school while none of their school friends speak other language. And this is going to be an issue even if we're willing to move to a better school district.

3. Other more traditional private school. Where we live there're some really Elite, "old money" private school, a lot are still girls only and boys only, some are religious. Think the one Luigi Mangione graduated from.

Pros: the Academia aspect is usually very very good with these schools and after-school programs are excellent too, as well as interesting school trips, etc. Foreign language starts at age 5-6, some has Chinese in lower grades some only has French or Spanish in the beginning but add Chinese as an option later. Overall good education.

Cons: My kid will be in a BUBBLE. None of them are very diverse in any shape. I personally have a strong preference for co-ed school and dislike girl only or boy only school (especially boy only school). I also would never do religious school. With these private school I worry about my mix-race middle-class kids being bullied or feel alienated from the old money family kids, or they just grow up super disconnected in their elite bubble without knowing the real world. And the cost is insane. We can technically afford 1 or 2 of our kids going to those schools but money will be so tight we'll have to give up a lot of fun spending like family trip, etc.

4. A mix of the above. Which I imagine will be the most likely choices we'll make. But then we'll have to decide which is a good age to move them and to where, with the most benefit and least disruption; between academia, social skill, language, cost, adjustment period, convenience, then ultimately personalities of each child too, so many factors to consider it's exhausting...

What would you do? What would you consider?

Hi.

I’m sure this question has been asked before. Currently I have a 4 year old attending TK at a mandarin immersion school. They currently teach 90/10 Chinese/English with every year increasing the amount of English taught 80/20 70/30 and so forth until it is 50/50 around 4th grade.

My concern is that both me and my wife don’t speak Chinese. So helping her on homework will be a bit tougher. My wife is really trying to learn with her. I went to Chinese school growing up, but because I never use it— it’s pretty much useless lol.

I’ve read studies that immersion kids may lag in English but by 5th-6th grade they surpass peers who do not.

My entire family (aunts, uncles, parents) are extremely concerned and worried that she will essentially be left in the dust by her English learning only peers.

I won’t lie, I feel like other parents in her class are very good at Chinese while we are not.

We don’t want to put our kid at a disadvantage and hurt her confidence due to our lack of knowledge.

Please let me know what you guys think!

We had to migrate to a city when my daughter was 2 years old. We always talk in Tulu at home. Until then she knew only as we were at our hometown where everyone speaks Tulu. She could construct sentences and talked well. When we moved to the city, kids here were talking in Hindi Tamil or English and this had a direct impact on her. In the first week, she tried to talk to many kids and she could not communicate as she spoke Tulu. She immediately stopped playing with other kids and in the school too she was silent. Teachers used to complain that ahe doesn't open her mouth. Now it's almost 1.5 years in the city and she has slowly started speaking English , Hindi and a bit of Tamil. But compared to her school mates her English is bad.

A friend told me that we should have started talking in English at home when we moved to the city so that our daughter would not have got confused with many languages at such an early stage. Is there any truth in it. ? For a two year old, who is still learning her first language is it bad to introduce more languages. Does anyone know about any research in this space?

We live in the US. Husband knows and understands most French. I am the native French speaker. Husband does speak some limited French to her here and there (he knows French but his vocabulary isnt great so is limited in his ability) I used to be home from work more and speak only French to her but now I work more and my almost 3 year old is in school (English only there). I have failed and slipped in terms of speaking English to her more and more. She understands everything I say in French but refuses to speak it. She says she doesn't like French. She speaks English to me and her dad and uses French words only when she genuinely doesn't know the English version of it. We read solely in French and she watches limited TV in both languages.

I'm at a loss. I don't know how to 'force' her to speak French. She is advanced in the English language. If I tell her I don't understand when she speaks English, she knows better. If I tell her to tell me in French instead, she says she doesn't know how. Should i just refuse to do anything she asks if she doesn't tell me in French?

Have I completely ruined our chances here for her to be bilingual??

My parents (French speaking only) are coming go visit for 3 months. Last time they came, when she was 20 months, she was using mainly French but all that seems lost now.

Before my son was born I was planning to do OPOL with me speaking Japanese and my husband and community speaking English. Once he was born, I became really hesitant with speaking Japanese and really only spoke to him in English. I guess I was feeling the imposter syndrome. For context, I grew up bilingual with a Japanese mother. After we moved to the US when I was 6, my mother was the only exposure I had to the language. But my mother is good at English too so overtime we developed our own Japanglish. So I have native pronunciation but I do make childlike Grammer mistakes. After my son was born, I was over thinking everything I said to him and temporarily gave up. I did sing him japanese songs often.

I figured that I could try again when he is closer to two when he could already communicate a lot of his needs in English.

Well he is currently 16 months old and he is picking up language so well. He's at about 45 words and learning how to count.

I'm regretting not speaking to him in japanese but I'm figuring that since I can't go back in time, that I should start like now. I don't want to completely switch on him though. I think that being one year old is tough in that they don't have all the words to communicate effectively and I don't want to make him frustrated that he can't understand me anymore.

I'm here looking for advice and to hear your stories.

I'm also wondering if it is okay to repeat words and phrases in English and then Japanese? Like he knows what it means when I say "come here". What if I start saying "come here, おいで". Will that help him hear both and then eventually I can drop the "come here"?

Hi all -- please excuse me if I am not using the right terminology here. I am looking for advice on language development, especially when it comes to books and reading.

Our family lives in the U.S., but my first language is Portuguese. I exclusively speak Portuguese with my daughter, and we have some family that uses both Portuguese and English with her. My partner only speaks English. Occasionally we will do music and screen time in Portuguese as well.

For the past 3 years, I have acquired whatever books I could find in my native language. Our library does not have any children's books in Portuguese, and although I have asked, they cannot fill any requests currently due to a ban on purchasing due to "divisive topics".

We read to her very often, and I have translated impromptu when she picks books in English -- but that is becoming burdensome. Plus, there are books that I simply cannot translate in the moment, at least not well.

Would it hurt her second language development if I also read to her English books while still only speaking to her in Portuguese?

And side questions: what else can I do to help her learn a second language more proficiently? Our community does not have any Portuguese classes or a large Portuguese-speaking community. Is she too young for some online class? (i.e music with a Portuguese-speaking professor, etc).

My husband and I have a quite difficult decision to make in an au pair for our daughter and I’m curious what others think. We live in USA and my husbands native language is Cantonese. While there are many schools and resources for learning Mandarin, Cantonese is quite rare in the US. Our baby will be 4 months old when the au pair arrives and they will stay for 1 or 2 years. We have two finalists: a good candidate with some relevant experience who we like who speaks Cantonese fluently, and a great candidate with lots of experience who does not. I am struggling with just how important the additional language exposure is at this very young age. If she were 2, I think it would be a no brainer to hire the Cantonese speaker over not but for a tiny baby, does this make such a difference? I know once she starts to be out in the world more it will be important to model to her that Cantonese is “useful” but not sure about these very early years. We do OPOL at home of course.

We are bilingual family. From the birth of our son, we have been practicing, to a large extent, the OPOL method. However, as he has become older, more people are involved in caring activities. Namely, grandparents and pre-school teachers, who speak the majority language (Polish). 

I also speak and understand the majority language, but I only speak to my son in the minority language (Spanish). In fact, although he knows that I understand Polish, and sometimes he speaks to me in Polish, I always only answer in Spanish and ask him to repeat the question or statement in Spanish. So far, this has been working, and although his vocabulary in Spanish is smaller than in Polish, I think that we get by. 

The problem has arisen when he tries to speak with the grandparents, on my side, who speak only Spanish. My son is excited to see them (even through video calls), and wants to interact with them, but he speaks to them in Polish. I tried explaining him that they don’t understand when he speaks to them in Polish, and help him with the missing words, but recently he just loses interest and goes away. This is heartbreaking to me, because I feel like I’m failing at transmitting the language, and that, if I don’t do something to correct this, the Spanish that he has learnt so far will just fade, and he won’t be able to communicate with my family. 

We have arranged play dates with other bilingual kids, with the same situation that ours, with the hope that they would speak Spanish between them. However, my son initial strategy is to speak in Polish (which is natural, because in any other situation he’s been, that’s the successful strategy), so he ends up speaking in Polish with the other kids that also speak Spanish. 

Do you perhaps know about some resources that I can use to help us overcome this barrier? I will be grateful of any help. Thank you!

Hey everyone! So my wife is pregnant in her 2nd trimester and we are starting to research the topic of language at home. I’m English living in Poland and my wife is Polish, we speak English to each other as my Polish is not super advanced. At first we had thought that I would speak English with our child and my wife Polish, but are now leaning on only speaking English as the minority language. How strict should we be with this? We’d like for her to be fully bilingual so wondering how hard a line there has so be, no Polish at home at all?

Hi all!

First of all I apologise for formatting, I am on mobile.

Our situation is as follows, and I would appreciate insights on how to best support our children!

We are my partner (Greek) and me (German) living in Germany. We are learning each others languages and are both at the point to be able to roughly follow casual conversation, but both speak only slowly and with a lot of thinking. The language we use at home is English, as we are both fluent.

We have my 5yo daughter from my first marriage with us 50%, the other 50% she is with her dad (German). She also speaks English as a second language to my partner/her stepdad, obviously with a lot of mistakes and German words thrown in when she doesn't know the English, but they can understand each other and communicate relatively well. If they really hit a roadblock I translate, but it's not needed often.

Now we are expecting a baby in summer this year, my daughter is very excited to become a big sister. We are planning to do OPOL with the baby in Greek/German, but will still use a lot of English as a family language.

My question is now how to best support our older daughter, who will be 6-7 and in primary school by the time the new baby will start speaking. Greek is hard to learn and she is over the age of "just picking it up" I think, especially with not having a lot of exposure. At the moment she is completely uninterested in learning Greek, and we are not pushing it, because we don't want to turn her off of it. So right now she understands some basic phrases like "come here", "are you hungry/cold/thirsty", please, thanks, bye, goodnight. But she is never using them actively to my partner. When he says goodnight in Greek, she answers English.

On the other hand, I'm afraid she will feel left out for her sibling having a "secret language" with his biodad/her stepdad. At the same time we do want to encourage the baby to use the minority language as much as possible, since we can only visit with the Greek side of the family 2-3 times per year.

So far I am looking into bilingual books and reading them in Greek and German to both kids. But of course with a 5 year age gap they will not be at the same level for a lot of time and also my daughter is already showing interest in reading by herself more (right now more "reading", but she recognises all latters and will probably be able to figure out words before she starts primary school).

Or am I just overthinking everything?

In the future if I ever reach that point, how could I expect my children to learn my native language (Bengali) if me and my wife speak in English to each other here in the U.S.? This is assuming I also marry someone who speaks Bengali, I just don't see how it would work out since I only learned the language because that's the only one my parents speak at home. I don't my children getting a lot of exposure between their parents unless they're at their grandparents a lot.

I have a bit of a complicated question regarding raising a trilingual child.

Sorry it’s a long one!

I was born in Lithuania, but moved to the UK when I was 10. I consider myself to be fluent in English (or at a near native level) and my Lithuanian is so-so.

My partner is a native German speaker and we live in Germany.

We use OPOL: I speak exclusively in Lithuanian with our baby, my partner in German and to each other we speak in English.

Our daughter is now 8 months old, and I have found that my Lithuanian has improved since, however, I’m still struggling to find words to describe a lot of situations and generally do not feel ‘myself’ in this language. I cannot imagine having Lithuanian as the base language for our relationship.

On the other hand, it is more important for me that she is fluent in English (speaking, reading, writing) and I’ve heard that being exposed to a language passively is not a sufficient basis for this.

Ideally I would like our daughter to have a solid foundation in Lithuanian but use English as our main language. Therefore I was thinking of switching to English once she’s three, but keeping reading time and media consumption exclusively in Lithuanian.

Has anyone experience in this? Would love to hear what has worked in practice.

What are your biggest challenges in raising your child bilingual as a non-native or non-fluent speaker?

My daughter is almost 11 months and I’ve been using Time and Place to teach her Spanish. I’m trying to progress with my own knowledge to be able to do full OPOL but I’m feeling frustrated by my lack of ability to communicate fully.

It almost feels like our relationship would be richer in English because I could express myself with more depth and authenticity.

Does anyone else struggle with this? What other things do you find difficult as a non-native or not fluent parent?

I speak Chinese and English, my partner speaks English only. We live in an English-speaking country. I understand that this means I should prioritise Chinese at home, since bub will learn English virtually everywhere else he goes. However, I do still want to be able to speak English (it's my main language), and obviously any communication with my partner will be in English.

I'm wondering how much English I can get away with speaking in a day without hindering bub learning Chinese?

He is nearly 7 months old.

Hi all!

I am trying to reintroduce my language (Serbian) to my 2.5 year old and I’m struggling to figure out if I should be speaking in Serbian only or if I should be translating everything I say back in English. I’ve tried to speak just in Serbian and she will ask “what is mama saying?”. She is as fluent as a 2.5 year old can be (in English) and knows many words in Serbian. We listen to Serbian music and read books in Serbian so I’ve already put that in practice. I just want to make sure that I am introducing it in a way that she will feel comfortable and be willing to learn.

Would love to hear what others have done with toddlers that have gotten a grasp of English and are trying to teach them another language.

Hi everyone, We are a newlywed couple. Myself (native language:Vietnamese) and my husband (native language: English) will be living in China for a medium term of 5-10 years. I’m wondering what strategy I should use to help my future babies with developing language skills.

1. I will be a stay at home mom until my child is 2 years old. I plan to only speak Vietnamese during the day to him/her from the moment he/she is born. My husband would be working during daytime so in the evening it would be the time he speaks English to the baby.
2. At 3 years old the baby would likely go to a kindergarten where all the other kids and the teachers talk in Chinese (the baby would not get any exposure to Chinese before kindergarten). Me and my husband will keep talking in our own languages with the baby at home.

Do you think my strategy would work ? I’m wondering if having mom as the only source of Vietnamese and dad as the only one speaks English around the baby could actually make the baby learn the languages? Will the baby get confused?

How about when the baby get to kindergarten and has never exposed to Chinese, can the baby learn Chinese?

Do you have any other suggestions or better way to do?

Many thanks,

I've lived in the UK for most of my life but Russian is my first language. I speak it exclusively with my parents but my vocabulary isn't great and sometimes I mix up tenses. I am determined to do OPOL with my kids, with me speaking Russian and my husband speaking English. However I'm nervous as I sometimes default to English especially when speaking to my husband. Any tips for getting your own language skills up to speed and being very strict with yourself to uphold this? My husband is really keen and speaks some Russian but I know this is on me to maintain.