Do any of you speak two languages to your children? I'm curious about how it works in practice, for future reference.. How do you avoid the confusion with two parents speaking two different languages to the child?
kids learn fast. its really not a issue for young children at all. now i would imagine that if a child was say 10 or older and went into that situation it would be more difficult. from what ive seen if a kid is in that situation from birth or a very young age there are no issues at all..
when i was little, everyone was determined to speak their own languages to me. i coulda learned a lotta languages had we not moved away. when i was little, i had friends who couldn't even talk to their grandma's without an interpreter because their parents didn't want them to speak spanish. the more languages you speak around your child, the better. it grows their brain, gives them words for concepts that aren't natural to other cultures. awesome stuff. they'll sort it out just fine. my grandma had no idea what i was saying when i was little, it was a mishmash of cuban spanish, french, english and german. it's all gone now, and i'm so sad.
I would imagine if you spoke two languages from the get-go it wouldn't be a big deal... Don't you and Tim speak both the same language? Are you worried about the baby not being able to speak Finnish?
my french teacher brings her daughter in all the time. And at 4 years old, she speaks both french and english. I am so jealous of this little girl. And she knows what situations to use what language. This isn't really helpful, just me being envious of a child.
yeah, it shouldnt be a problem. My sister had a much harder time than me picking up the english language since she was older. We plan on my niece being multi-lingual. english, spanish, french and italian. my french could do with some polishing and Ive always wanted to learn italian.
my dads friends lil guy at age 3 knew had to speak 7 different languages fluently. Chinese japanese cantonese English french arabic italian he also knew a bit of spanish as well imagine that
Well, herbuh's family speaks german and spanish and english. When they are around his grandma speaks to our chica in german and his little sister speaks to her in spanish... I always speak to her in englislh and spanish and sign language... she knows a lot of english, a decent amount of spanish(for a 1 yr. old) and a decent amount of sign language... we also speak in sanskrit at times, and she knows one sanskrit phrase that we use a lot, and is working on singing one sanskrit chant. I'm really into learning languages so I work a little on french and italian at times, which are languages that I"ve worked with for a few years and have other friends who speak various african and native american languages as well as brazilian portuguese and japanese... I encourage people to speak their languages around me and her. We also listen to world music in many languages, a lot of native american music and since she loves music, drumming and dancing so much, I think she's picking some of that up too... we're picking up some native american languages as well, and know a few phrases that we've been using a lot since before she was born so more than likely as we pick up more phrases, she'll probably pick some up too. Nursery rhymes in different languages and children's books are great too I think. It doesn't confuse her at all and sign language really helps, because it gives her a basis for the words, when I say dance, baila, and do the sign, she knows that they all mean the same thing and will start dancing.
im pregnant at the moment with my first child, but she is going to grow up learning both English and (Gibraltarian) Spanish. i live in a very bilingual society so she will have to learn both languages (people go between english and spanish so often in a conversation and i dont think they even realise theyŕe doing it lol)
i found launguages very hard to learn when i was at school, i wish my parents had spoken to me in different languages when i was little. my partner is learning polish at the moment, i hope that when we have kids he is fluent enough to speak it to our children. apparently the best way for children to pick up different languages if for one persn to speak soley in one language & another to speak soley in another language
