Dual languages

robh71

Hi

Our 16 month old is having the benefit of having parents from two different countries so is hearing 2 seperate languages. Am I right in thinking that due to this reason she will not start speaking, as such until a little bit later than children hearing just one language at home?
If anyone has any experience in this area and can share any tips, do's & don'ts it would be appreciated.

silverharp

its been a while now so memory is fading , some kids skip the baby talk phase and go straight into talking (later) so the bilingual may or may not affect this, either way dont stress it , a month or 2 seems an eternatity at that stage but everyone catches up and evens out. My wife worked from home so she had more time to reinforce the second language and we had plenty of contact with inlaws which helped as well.
The general rule is that you talk to the child in your native language. In our case it was obvious with grandparents etc who spoke which language and it was fun a bit later to see a 3 year old becoming interpreter between his grandparents. we led ours to believe that the inlaws couldnt speak English so that they didnt get lazy. If its clear to them which language everyone speaks, they dont think twice about swtiching language depending on who they are speaking to.
It requires more work if the father has the second language for obvious reasons.
You may need to clarify if English is not the native language of either of you as this would put a different slant on it?

hope this helps

robh71

thanks Silverharp

English is my native language and my partner's is Latvian. I know some other parents whereby the mother speaks to child in her native tongue and the response back from child is always in English, which I find slightly unusual! Anyway our one will obviously benefit from having 2 languages growing up. Be a good thing probably if we had this growing up! Start em young I suppose!

silverharp

robh71 wrote: »

thanks Silverharp

English is my native language and my partner's is Latvian. I know some other parents whereby the mother speaks to child in her native tongue and the response back from child is always in English, which I find slightly unusual! Anyway our one will obviously benefit from having 2 languages growing up. Be a good thing probably if we had this growing up! Start em young I suppose!

they go through phases where they will only answer back in English, I remember that but stick with it, my eldest is 6 now and he has no resistance in switching languages, although he gets to speak it at school which helps
I know one family in Dublin where the mother (now grandmother) was Swedish and they kept it up even though they would have had little reason to use it except for holidays, her daughter now speaks Swedish to her son, so pretty good going to keep it up through the generations.

DubDani

My wife and I are both "non-nationals", and we speak three languages at home with our 15 month old. My wife speaks with her in her native language, I speak with her in my native language, and when we are all together we speak english. She also attends creche, which is of course in english.

From everything I have read kids that are raised with multiple languages from birth will usually start speaking a bit later.

Currently our daughter speaks only a few words so far (Water (in all three languages), Mummy, Daddy, Barney :rolleyes:, Hungry, Elmo), but she clearly understands all three languages. We have tried it a few times, and she is able to follow instructions (like for example "Get your shoes" or "Give me a kiss") in all of them.

I think most important part is that the parents speak to them in their native language if they are alone with the kid(s).

robh71

many thnaks for the replies

SurferRosa

Hi Robh,
I have a 2 and a half year old boy. I'm Irish, and my husband is Swedish. He was initially very slow to talk. By 22-24 months he could only say two Swedish words. The health nurse wanted to refer him for speech therapy assessment. He understood everything in both languages,so I wasn't too worried. Sure enough, after his 2nd birthday his speech has come on lots. Not everything he says is clear, and he sometimes mixes his sentences ie half English half Swedish, but mostly he is already distinguishing between the two and saving the Swedish for daddy.
Also, I'm actually half German, and grew up there for the first 7 years of my life. My mam said in Germany I rejected English ie. wouldn't speak it, but answer in German, and as soon as we moved to Ireland I started rejecting the German - at least in public where other kids could hear me. ( Now this was back in the 80's were even Germans were considered quite exotic in Ireland!). Although far behind all the other kids in my class in Ireland, and frankly quite terrified when I moved to school here, I quickly caught up with the rest of the class in terms of reading, and also started learning Irish. By the time I did my leaving my best subjects were Irish, English and French ( and German of course !!), so I really think think this early exposure helps kids a lot - which is why I will try to get my sons in to the local Irish school too while I'm at it. I don't remember finding it too hard to learn English, and I really enjoy learning languages. (trying my best to learn Swedish too now).
I would say to make sure to speak to your child LOTS in the non-English languages so they stick, as by the time they're in school, they might stop showing an interst in it, so it might be good to have a good foundation in them by then that wont be lost.
Ps. I have a half Irish, half Austrian cousin who happily spoke English and German throughout all her childhood without rejecting either, and now speaks both languages without an accent