Bi-lingual baby

Elle13

Hi everyone,

My little man is about to turn 5 months soon.
Unfortunately, I havent met a mam who is gonna have a bi-lingual child.. (not thinking abt English/Irish in this case):rolleyes:
My family is originaly from Czech Republic and so I want my son to be able to speak Czech as well as English.
I think it would be great to know someone who is doing the same thing with their baby even if the second language was not Czech..so if you are living in Dublin and your baby is around the same age as mine I would like to hear from you :-)
I know this can sound strange but I guess this is one great way how to find people with same set up..
Thanks. :-)

Nevyn

The way this tends to work with out confusing the child is to have them use one language with each parent or one with the parents and one with grandparents.

dan_d

I'm not a parent, but I travel a lot and often hear kids in airports around Europe, chatting in 2 different languages to their parents. I think it's fantastic, I'd just love my kids to be bi-lingual. It definitely seems to be that they chat in one language to one parent, and a different one to the other.

Mind you I was in France a couple of years ago skiing, and heard extremely fluent french coming from behind me in a queue...in a slightly Irish accent. When I turned around there were 3 Irish kids of about 9/10/12, chatting to French kids the same age, with absolute fluency. Their parents were Irish - I'm not sure whether they lived there or holidayed there a lot, but I thought it was amazing to hear.

Not much help I know, but I've no doubt you'll be able to do this with your little guy.

DubDani

Our daughter is growing up tri-lingual. My wife and I are both non-english speakers.

So I speak to my daughter in my mother tongue, my wife speaks to her in her mother tongue, and when we are all together we speak english.

So far she seems to understand the most used word "No" in each of these languages.

gaeilgegrinds1

So far we've done well trilingually. I stress the so far part! My OH was born in Germany, I speak lots of Irish with my family and obviously knowing English would be helpful. He's not speaking much yet but he definately understand the few words in each language that he hears frequently. I really don't think it's any hassle to them. We decided to leave the German to his Dad, Irish to me and English to everyone else. So far, so good.

cynder

I met a 2 year old bilingual and he was soooo funny. He would use both french and English in the same sentence. It think that it is great having 2/3 languages at that age.

Tabnabs

I grew up in a bilingual house. It is vital that even if the child doesn't speak the langauge very well, they will at least be used to hearing it and understand the majority of what is being said to them. It's not unusual, difficult or confusing for children.

gowayouttadat

My son is with a childminder 3/4 days a week. They are Irish but spent years living in the south of France and speak French to all their kids along with English. Their three year old understands both French and English and speaks a bit of both.
One of the first things the woman said to me when I met her was that both French and English are used in the house. I am delighted that DS will have the opportunity to be around a different language and am hoping he picks up bits and pieces. I never did French but am thinking of learning some now to give him the chance to learn some at home too.

My other halves brother lives in Germany and his partner is Italian. They have a little guy who is 3 months younger than ours. He will be brought up speaking German, Italian and English and I think it's great.

Das Kitty

Where do you live Elle? I have a friend who's raising her daughters with both English and Dutch.

Elle13

I have PM you Das Kitty.. thanks :-)

james1234

Our baby is due in October, and we're planning on bringing up the kid bilingually, I'm Irish and mum is Spanish, so each of us plan to speak our own language from day one... should be interesting though. Any tips you have, you could post here!

Found this interesting info about various methods of brining up bilingual kids:

http://www.omniglot.com/language/articles/bilingualkids4.htm

Elle13

james1234 wrote: »

Our baby is due in October, and we're planning on bringing up the kid bilingually, I'm Irish and mum is Spanish, so each of us plan to speak our own language from day one... should be interesting though. Any tips you have, you could post here!

Found this interesting info about various methods of brining up bilingual kids:

http://www.omniglot.com/language/articles/bilingualkids4.htm

Hi James,

thanks for your post.. more then anything else I am looking to meet mam with a baby so I have a friend and my little man has someone to play with..
As it happens I am the only one from all of my friends who has a baby so far.. they are still living the party life so its a bit different story for me all together...
We have started to speak to our little man in 2 languages from the day one also.. he is only 5 months now but I know he can recognise the difference between them two languages..
I am speaking to him mainly in Czech and daddy only in English obviously since he cant say a full sentense in Czech ha ha
The real fun starts when both of us are at home then I am speaking to the baby in both languages as sometimes I want to daddy understand too...
My parents are talking to him in Czech and the other grandparents in English... I know he will have no problem to speak both languages as kids just pick up stuff like that with no prob...
I have studied psychology so I know well that there will not be a problem as long as you keep speaking both languages on daily basis.
I will let you know how it goes when he starts saying his first bits.
The best of luck with your new born... get plently of sleep before the baby arrives as you wont get much then

Elle13

Thanks everyone for your posts...
I have to say that I have no doubt our little man will have a problem with two languages..
I mite not have said it clear but more then advice I was hoping that I would be able to meet a mam& baby to have a friend for myself and my little one...
Mite not be as easy as I thought.. will have to try one of those mother and baby groups I guess..
Thanks again. x

Moonbeam

My 19 month old has some irish and some english.
For a while a bird in the air was éan and a bird on the ground was bird:)
They work it out them selves between about 3 and 4 apparently.

crazy cat lady

Elle13 wrote: »

Thanks everyone for your posts...
I have to say that I have no doubt our little man will have a problem with two languages..
I mite not have said it clear but more then advice I was hoping that I would be able to meet a mam& baby to have a friend for myself and my little one...
Mite not be as easy as I thought.. will have to try one of those mother and baby groups I guess..
Thanks again. x

Why limit yourself to a mam and baby who are going to be raising their child bi-lingually? I'm sure there are plenty of mammies on this forum who would be only too delighted to meet up with you and your little man

I'm in Wicklow otherwise I'd definately love meeting other mammies and their babies. There just doesn't seem to be many on this forum

ebmma

I was thinking about doing bi-lingual thing with my son and decided against it. Curious how everyone else will get on though :-)

esharknz

Two of my nephews were born in Denmark and went to pre-school there (both parents speak English only). I noticed from the age of maybe just under 2 to around about 3 and a half, they were mixing up the languages in sentences, or asking me for things in Danish, which, depending on age, would be from a single word or two to a sentence. When the older nephew was just under 4, he'd recognised the difference between the two languages and would speak to people solely in the appropriate language.

I now have a wee nephew born in Japan (half Japanese), so will be quite cute listening to him for a little while there.

Elle13

crazy cat lady wrote: »

Why limit yourself to a mam and baby who are going to be raising their child bi-lingually? I'm sure there are plenty of mammies on this forum who would be only too delighted to meet up with you and your little man

I would love to meet up with any mammy with the baby around the same age as Tobiash.. just thought there would be more in common if the bi-lingual thingy was there :-)

Chuchoter

My friends are bilingual (Japanese and English) and sometimes I'd be listening to them or talking with them in Japanese and the two brothers have these big north dublin accents going on that they never have speaking English! Its so funny. I think the way they did it is they spoke Japanese with their mum all the time and English with their dad, and then knew loads of other Japanese speaking kids.

Nutgrover

Elle13 wrote: »

Hi everyone,

My little man is about to turn 5 months soon.
Unfortunately, I havent met a mam who is gonna have a bi-lingual child.. (not thinking abt English/Irish in this case):rolleyes:
My family is originaly from Czech Republic and so I want my son to be able to speak Czech as well as English.
I think it would be great to know someone who is doing the same thing with their baby even if the second language was not Czech..so if you are living in Dublin and your baby is around the same age as mine I would like to hear from you :-)
I know this can sound strange but I guess this is one great way how to find people with same set up..
Thanks. :-)

Hi Elle13, I'm Polish, a dad of a 2.5 year old girl. I speak English with her, while my wife - Polish. Our girl understands Polish but prefers to reply in English. She is immersed in English while playing in creche (3 times a week since she was 6 month old). That's why we now want to focus more on her Polish .

Good luck with your efforts!

Yakuza

My wife is Spanish. We've 3 kids (8½, 3¼ and not quite 8 weeks). The eldest two are 100% bilingual (and hopefully the 3rd will be, too (it's never a guarantee)) but the way we did it is to speak to the kids *exclusively* in our native tongues to each of them from birth.

It does take them slightly longer to talk, however. For example our eldest (a girl (and yes, girls do (in our experience) speak faster)) was about 2½ until she could speak at the same level as a monolingual 2 year old (going on our niece as a comparison) but she was speaking both English and Spanish at that level. She's been studying French in the Alliance for the last few years and she's pretty good at that too, her bilingualism has definitely been a boon when it comes to learning more languages.

The other thing about learning at a young age is they have no trace of an "foreign" accent when speaking in either tongue. I will always sound foreign to a Spaniard when speaking Spanish, and the missus will always have a Spanish accent when she talks in English, but the kids sound Spanish when they talk Spanish and they have a good old Hiberno-English accent when talking English.

KingMambo26

I've had a bit of a rough time getting my 6yo to speak Spanish (I'm Mexican, my wife's Irish) From day one I always spoke to him in Spanish and he talked back in English and his vocabulary was ok up to the age of 4 or so.
Since then, he's understanding of the language has got better - which is good - but his vocabulary has got worse. He figured out he can understand very complicated sentences without learning the individual words with the resulting effect of him forgetting basic words such as "donkey", "school", etc.