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Two years of raising a bilingual daughter

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Re: Two years of raising a bilingual daughter

#61

Post by Gud »

oh_nice_marmot wrote: post #60

We have a similar configuration at home. I am from Brazil, my wife from Finland and we live in Sweden. We speak English to each other. To our two and half year old daughter, we speak our native languages and she learns Swedish in daycare. In the beginning we showed some YouTube for her. The Brazilian Mundo Bita is great with catchy songs and amazing animation. My wife wanted to show the Moomins and we got some Swedis…

Thanks a lot for this info. I will be in a similar situation down the road. I speak Swedish, my girlfriend speaks an Indian minority language and we live in Switzerland.

I was always worried if the kid would be able to manage 4 languages. This gives me hope

Re: Two years of raising a bilingual daughter

#62

Post by herewulf »

zwieback wrote: post #15

This is great, hopefully OP can keep it up. I spoke only my native German to our first daughter and it went great but when the second one came around she wanted to have nothing to do with it. "Stop speaking Spanish!" was her reply (all foreign languages were spanish in her estimation) so I slacked off. Even with my older one I stopped the German when she was a bit older because I didn't want to be the only one having…

I advise you not to give up. It's never too late to learn a language (further).

I have two elementary aged kids who are German/English bilingual and have always lived in an English speaking country.

What has worked for us:

- I always speak to them in German -- I'm not the stay at home parent so every word counts

- Media in German (their favorite shows of their choosing -- it's too easy with Netflix and YouTube these days and they watch almost nothing in English)

- Playtime related to these shows' themes is usually in German because the kids assume the characters only speak German

- We participated in a bilingual German playgroup composed of around 10 families in a metro area of one million people -- larger areas no doubt have even better opportunities

- We believe any additional language is useful for opening up a child's mind and making foreign language learning easier in the future

My kids seem to have a good attitude towards being bilingual but maybe that will change as they age. I hope they will find it to be an invaluable gift when they are grown. It certainly is fun to share something special and unique with them.

Re: Two years of raising a bilingual daughter

#63

Post by stevekemp »

oh_nice_marmot wrote: post #60

We have a similar configuration at home. I am from Brazil, my wife from Finland and we live in Sweden. We speak English to each other. To our two and half year old daughter, we speak our native languages and she learns Swedish in daycare. In the beginning we showed some YouTube for her. The Brazilian Mundo Bita is great with catchy songs and amazing animation. My wife wanted to show the Moomins and we got some Swedis…

I have many fond memories of our child, who speaks Finnish and English, switching languages mid-sentence.

"saisinko milk", or "Where the maito is?"

That happened for the first 2-3 years, but less often these days. Though Finnish is his native language he'll sometimes say "I don't know the English for this word" rather than just substituting the Finnish word.

Re: Two years of raising a bilingual daughter

#64

Post by CogitoCogito »

Gud wrote: post #61
oh_nice_marmot wrote: post #60

We have a similar configuration at home. I am from Brazil, my wife from Finland and we live in Sweden. We speak English to each other. To our two and half year old daughter, we speak our native languages and she learns Swedish in daycare. In the beginning we showed some YouTube for her. The Brazilian Mundo Bita is great with catchy songs and amazing animation. My wife wanted to show the Moomins and we got some Swedis…

Thanks a lot for this info. I will be in a similar situation down the road. I speak Swedish, my girlfriend speaks an Indian minority language and we live in Switzerland. I was always worried if the kid would be able to manage 4 languages. This gives me hope

> I was always worried if the kid would be able to manage 4 languages. This gives me hope

What makes you worry exactly? I mean in the case your child can't really manage 4 languages, is that a problem?

Re: Two years of raising a bilingual daughter

#65

Post by CogitoCogito »

prmoustache wrote: post #28
kwanbix wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My kids are Spanish native, and learned German and English at their 4 and 6 years of age. Never a problem. Very common here in Europe. I don't get how that could cause trouble.

It is unlikely to be the cause. A kid can learn as much as 5 languages at a time as long as it is context related (like one language with one parent, another with other parent, another at school, another with a grand parent, another in another context). Sure they may be times when the kid will mix'n'match because a specific word comes in his head in a language but he will still be fluent in all those languages after…

> Problem arise when there is no boundary in how which languages need to be used. Sometimes the brain feels like a piece of furniture full of drawers. I speak 4 languages and understand well 6 but when my mexican speaking partner ask me something in spanish right after a teams meeting in english I sometimes answer to her in english because my brain didn't have time to close the english drawer and open the spanish one. Same when we are at dinner and me and my daughters speak in spanish although we're all french but talk about what happened that day, which happened in spanish. At lease that is how I visualize it.

Is that really a problem though? It's true that sometimes I can't find the right words in a certain language, but have the perfect words in another. But so what? I mean I know many people who only speak a single language that know exactly what they'd like to say, but can't quite find the right words. Is it really that different?

Personally I find the fact that two people can have a conversation in two separate languages and that they can understand each other great. I mean would it be better to both stick to the same language even if one of you has more trouble speaking it? What exactly is the advantage to that?

Anyway I might be reading too much into your post, but I often hear many similar worries of people when it comes to speaking multiple languages and think often they are overthinking it. You're likely to be stronger in some languages rather than others. You're also likely to be better and listening to some languages rather than speaking them. These factors will also change due to context (what language is spoken around you, whether you're tired, etc.). To me these aren't problems. These are just the limitations of our brains and it's all just fine.

Re: Two years of raising a bilingual daughter

#67

Post by quectophoton »

bnralt wrote: post #26
kwanbix wrote: post #3

Good for him. Being bilingual myself (Spanish native, English learned) I always wonder why so many Americans/Brits do not speak Spanish as their second language, or any second language for that matter. Now I live in Europe, and here it is very common for people to know 3 or 4 languages. Being able to communicate on any other language is so great.

Most people learn languages for a reason. English is the global language now, so a lot of people learn it, native English speakers already speak the global language. The U.S. has a sizeable amount of native Spanish speakers, so it also has a fairly sizeable amount of native-English speakers that can speak Spanish with some degree of proficiency. Probably more than most European’s learn minority languages in their cou…

> I don’t think I’ve met any people from Madrid that study Catalan or Basque just to speak with the minority of people there who speak those languages.

Can confirm. I'm currently living in Catalonia. I don't speak Catalan, only English and Spanish.

My employer is based in Catalonia. They pay for English classes for any employees that want to take them. But also, they have zero interest in paying for Catalan classes for the few of us that don't speak it, and I have zero interest in learning it during my free time when I could be using that free time to learn a more useful language instead.

But the higher ups travel a lot between continents just "to meet people in person", so there's that.

Re: Two years of raising a bilingual daughter

#69

Post by prmoustache »

CogitoCogito wrote: post #65
prmoustache wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is unlikely to be the cause. A kid can learn as much as 5 languages at a time as long as it is context related (like one language with one parent, another with other parent, another at school, another with a grand parent, another in another context). Sure they may be times when the kid will mix'n'match because a specific word comes in his head in a language but he will still be fluent in all those languages after…

> Problem arise when there is no boundary in how which languages need to be used. Sometimes the brain feels like a piece of furniture full of drawers. I speak 4 languages and understand well 6 but when my mexican speaking partner ask me something in spanish right after a teams meeting in english I sometimes answer to her in english because my brain didn't have time to close the english drawer and open the spanish one…

I didn't mean it as a problem but as an illustration on how our brain can struggle switching contexts. It is funny because it is exacerbated at night when you are tired.
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