Multilingual Parenting

Q&A: How to start speaking your native language with a 2-year-old to make her trilingual?

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How to start speaking your native language with a 2-year-old to make her trilingual?

Question

Hello

Me and my husband: I was born and raised in Latvia (Latvian native language), and my husband was born and raised in Italy (Italian language). We both learned English in…

Question

Hello,

My question is the following. I speak English, my husband speaks Russian, Hebrew and English. We would like to be able to give our daughter as many languages as possible. Is there a best way for one partner to teach two languages to the baby? (Also, my husband travels a lot, so at least from when she is one, he will be away for stretches of time during the year.) Russian is the…

Q&A: Three languages in a family and a fourth in nursery – would it work to raise a multilingual child?

  Question

Hi,

I have a 5-month-old boy to whom I speak Swedish (my mother tongue). We live in Scotland and my husband speaks English to him. We can sort out this bilingual equation, as I consistently speak Swedish to him and sing/read/listen to music and will mostly watch TV programmes in Swedish, and travel to Finland, where he will be exposed to Swedish (and Finnish, my other home language).

  Question

Hello,

I am a Spanish-speaker, my husband is a German-speaker and we live in England. Our three-year-old speaks very fluently both Spanish and German. She is remarkably good in both; I would say at least as good as children being raised with just one language. Her English is getting better but much more slowly and less fluent, since she doesn’t watch television (we don’t own one). She…

  Question

Dear Family Language Coaches,

We are a bilingual family living in Germany near the Dutch border. I speak my native German with the kids and my husband his mother tongue Dutch. Our two eldest kids both went to German kindergarten until they were four and are now attending primary school in the Netherlands. Dutch is the majority language at home because the kids use it with each other…

  Question

Hello,

and thank you for all the useful info on this website.

My question is on how to approach raising a baby in a foreign country, exposing him to three languages, and if talking to him in my non-native language or not. I found many relevant discussions already, but none addressing our specific case.

Both me and my wife are native Italian speakers. We just moved with our…

  Question

Hi,

I really would like to get an answer from you about our particular family language situation – four languages 🙂 I am Lithuanian, my husband is Italian, we communicate with each other in English and we live in Norway. We both speak Norwegian at our jobs, but at home we prefer to use English with each other.

We are raising an 11-month-old daughter. Till now she has heard 90% of…

  Question

Hi Family Language Coaches,

Thanks for sharing so many useful tips and resources – I just discovered your website’s Q&A section and I really love it! I have a question about raising a trilingual child.

I was raised bilingual (English and Italian) and grew up in Italy and the US. I was very lucky in this sense, because I did get enough exposure to both languages besides just hearing…

  Question

Hi,

I am Wadha from Kuwait. My partner and I live in Kuwait (Arabic is used in the community) and are bilingual parents: Arabic native speakers, but we both speak English as a second language.

We have a two-month-old child and are planning to send her to an English international school where all subjects are taught in English, but Arabic language classes are given too. She will learn…

Question

Hello,

I’m a Russian mother living in the U.S with my two sons, ages 13 and 9. I may be an odd one out compared to other parents in regard to languages. My husband and I speak a mix of Russian and English, and though my boys understand Russian, they prefer to speak in English. I am personally fine with this and don’t feel this pressure to force them to speak in Russian (but I’m very…

  Question

Hello!

We are Americans living in Kuopio, Finland (for over 10 years). We have a daughter who is almost 19 months and goes to Finnish päiväkoti (=kindergarten). I was told by the neuvola doctor (paediatrician) to not mix languages and only speak English. We are not fluent (sadly!) anyway, but I am confused why we can’t encourage her speaking the majority languge, Finnish, at home.

We…

Q&A: Should parents raising bilingual children avoid code-switching?

  Question

Hello,

My name is Benedicte, and my husband and I are expecting a baby boy in the next few weeks. We live in France and are both bilingual French-English. My husband was raised by an American father and French mother. I was raised by French-speaking parents in Mauritius but went to English-speaking schools. We tend to speak English to each other, but with a lot of French thrown in and…

  Question

Hello

I´m a native speaker of Spanish and fluent in English, currently raising a 14-month-old boy in English. I speak to him in English 100% of the time while my husband speaks in Spanish (the community language as we live in Spain).

My question is how likely it is that my son will become bilingual since I am not a native speaker of English. Most of what I’ve read is about native…

Q&A: How to introduce a family language to older children?

  Question

Hello!

Thank you for the helpful articles!

My husband’s mother is Finnish, and all her family is living in Finland or other parts or Europe. Fortunately, they all speak English well so we all can communicate well. However, my parents are Korean American and although they have lived in the US for almost 40 years, they prefer to speak in Korean, their family language.

My kids are now 11…

  Question

Hello

I’m British, living in France for the past 13 years. I speak French to my French husband, and we have two girls, a 3-year-old and a new-born. Our 3-year-old was a late speaker (first words at 17 months) and I am the only person who speaks English to her regularly.

I am terrified she is going to become or is becoming, a passive bilingual. She understands everything I say to her,…

International Day of Multilingualism 27th of March #multilingualisnormal

Are you multilingual? If you speak more than one language or dialect, then the answer to that question is YES and this makes you part of a majority people in the world who can communicate in multiple languages and/or dialects. #multilingualisnormal

As there are so many of us, shouldn’t there be a day when we can all together…

  Question

Hello,

My wife and I were ethnically Chinese, but she was mostly raised in Japan and considers her native language Japanese. Before we had our first child, we spoke a mix of Mandarin and English at home. While I have familiarity with Japanese (just catching keywords and such), I do not know the language well enough and unfortunately am not interested in learning.

We now have two…