Anyone Bilingual?

Ashleysred

My Spanish isn't fabulous.  I don't have the greatest accent.  But I can get around.  It is important to me that K is around Spanish...and not my broken, terrible accent Spanish, but the real deal.

How are you going to introduce your kid to the second language?

I lived in Mexico when I was a kid.  Unfortunetly, I don't think Timm will go for that for the Kikmonster. 

 

libertadw

I would maybe try watching sesame street or kids cartoons in Spanish. You can then repeat what they say. We like to watch Pocoyo on Youtube, its really cute.

Carolyn might be better at answering your question though, she is a Spanish teacher. 

trevess

All the recent research says that if you want your child to be TRULY bilingual that one parent must speak to the child in Language 1, and the other parent in Language 2- exclusively.  DH doesn't speak any Spanish and I am not willing to forgoe speaking to Hayden in English, so we are not doing that. 

The research also says that kids who grow up bilingual sometimes have a language delay because there are two competing language "systems" going on in their brains. 

Because of all of this, I am going to wait until Hayden is maybe 4 or 5 to start REALLY getting into it.  I will introduce her to it little by little before that, but I want her to have a good foundation in English before I start her on Spanish. 

In the meantime, expose K to as much or as little as you'd like...as Lib said, with books, videos, songs, etc.  (We will be doing all of this with H, just no hard-hitting stuff till later).  I hope all of that makes sense!  Let me know if you have any other questions!

MissMex

DH just speaks spanish to E. He mixes it in with english. I kind of feel like this will confuse her, but at least she is hearing it. I 2nd Lib on SS or cartoons in spanish. We play spanish kids songs on Pandora a lot too... I'm hoping Carollyn will have some input on this too...

ETA: we must have posted at the same time Carrolyn, hehe.

Butterflie6381

We have two toys - I think both are Leap Frog - One is the alphabet Caterpillar and the other is a sit to stand music and lights table.  Both have a button to switch from English to Spanish.  The Caterpillar says the alphabet and three colors, plus melodies.  The table does the alphabet, numbers 1 -10, colors, shapes, open and closed.

I'm not a language expert or fluent in Spanish by any means, but I know/knew enough to get by in work situations.  It seems to me that since these toys were meant for either English or Spanish speaking kids the pronunciation is correct.   I don't know that Lil Miss will learn any Spanish from playing with these, but at least she will be exposed to the sounds of the language, which is what I understand to be important at this stage.

MelVic

I only speak English, but DH speaks fluent Spanish, so our plan is that DH will speak to her in Spanish and me in English...But like pp have said, there are so many videos etc that can translate to Spanish, I plan on using those as well.

As far as the language confusion I am the ESOL coordinator at my school (English speakers with other languages) and so I work with children who need help learning English because there parents only emphasized the Spanish OR I work with children who have a language delay because of learning the two languages at once....BUT I have also had many students that can differentiate between the two languages with no problem....So, my decision is to teach her both Spanish and English as she is growing up.... 

funny bunny

I am Multi-lingual (if there is such a word).

I speak read and write in 3, and understand 2 more.

My mom and dad spoke one language to me, and my grandma spoke another. I was a late speaker, and mixed words together from the two languages (literaly half of the word in one language, and the other half in the other).

This proved to be quite good, as I am now very skillful at picking up languages.

I watched a show about children that were raised by animals, and they said that there is a part in human brains that is responsible for language development. That part can only grow until 5 years old, after that it can never develop further. They were saying that the more languages a child learns when they are young, the more developed that part of the brain will be, and this will help with language capacity in later years.

Hope this VERY long response helps  

Butterflie6381

Fanny, you are a polygloit.

I finally get to use that high school sat vocabulary word. YAY! 

MmeBP

I'm probably a late response.  I speak and write 3 languages (truly bilingual in 2) and DH speaks and writes 5 languages.  With that said, our DS will never speak!  I currently speak to DS in English only and DH speaks to DS in Romanian, while the nanny speaks to DS only in Spanish.

He will become even more confused when he attends the daycare and it will be 100% in French.

Ashleysred

Hmmm, thanks ladies!  I am trying to work it out.  I can say simple sentences so I will continue doing that with her and reading her books in Spanish and English.  Maybe I will stick with that and the Spanish/English toys.

I think I will also look into finding a Spanish speaking preschool.

nataliejp519

As some of you know, I have a 5.5 year old half brother, Dominick.  My stepmom is Polish and spoke to him mainly in Polish since he was born.  My dad only spoke to him English, being his only language.  D has not had any difficulties with confusing the 2 languages or any delay in language developments from learning both since birth.  He was even able to translate what his mom said to him in Polish to my dad from about the age of 3.  It was really cute  

We'll see if the same holds true for my 3 month old half sister, Annie

niuchick21

I used to baby sit for a boy whose dad was italian and mom was american.  From birth they spoke both languages to him, but as a result he was much slower to speak then other kids (more to process maybe) he would also say sentences half in English and half in Italian.  It worked out for me because I speak both, but it was frustrating for his teachers when he would only speak Italian lol.  I'm pretty sure both parents spoke a mix of languages to him though, maybe that's why?