Teaching baby to be multilingual?

Marsupial1022

So DH and I have decided that we want to give our daughter a head start in life by teaching her other languages, but the only thing we can't figure out is HOW to go about this without confusing her as she gets older. We don't want to sacrifice her speaking English correctly.

LO will be 8 weeks on Thursday, and I speak and sing to her in both English and Cherokee (I'm Cherokee-Irish, but raised Cherokee) and my husband speaks and sings to her in English and German (he's Italian-German but speaks German thanks to doing 15th century landsknecht reenactments). We would like her to be able to know several languages (especially German and Spanish) because we both feel that it will benefit her as she gets older, goes to school, and seeks a career...we just want to teach her the right way.

Any ideas, tips, tricks, pointers will be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

heikem87

I am in the same position right now.DH is American and I am German so I want her to pick up on both languages.The problem is that DH is gone now and she already starts "talking" and I dont know if I should switch to English now and let my family talk German to her or just keep talking German to her.   I dont know if I would speak more then one language with her I think she might mix things up to much. I would definitely encourage your husband to speak German with her because I think it?s a hard language to learn and I am grateful I am a native speaker lol

alliejoe

I can't remember for the life of me where I read it, but I read that if one parent speaks the second language exclusively and the other speaks English exclusively then they will learn both simultaneously without any delays or anything.

It's difficult if you want them to learn 2 languages and English.  I don't know what to say about that.

FWIW- when you register them for school I would recommend not putting that German or whatever else is the "primary language spoken at home" even if they are with you all day (as long as they are proficient in English).  I had students whose mother was French or Chinese or German and whose father was English speaking and they had to take a English proficiency test every year.

hepcats

alliejoe:

I can't remember for the life of me where I read it, but I read that if one parent speaks the second language exclusively and the other speaks English exclusively then they will learn both simultaneously without any delays or anything.

I wanna say I read this somewhere as well. My husband is Korean and I plan on teaching our DS both English and Korean. Let's hope it works! lol

LoCarb

you need to speak the language 100% of the time. It works great if each parent spoke a diffn't language. In my household, we devote Tuesdays and Saturdays to Spanish the entire day. DD1 also takes Spanish lessons on Thursdays in pre-school. chances are they will get a little confused and say words in another language to complete a sentence. This is normal. As they grow older they'll have a better understanding of one v. the other. Also cartoons help, believe it or not. Dora & Diego for Spanish, Ne-ho or something similar for Chinese. My 2 yo has picked up a lot by watching TV. We'll also change the channel to Univision for additional exposure.

kxp004

 MH and I plan on teaching our child ASL, German, Spanish and of course our language English... I have done a lot of research on how to make sure that none of these languages are confused and joined together and found that:

(1) both parents need to be speaking in languages they want their child to learn---A LOT!---especially since they start filing away the info really early on...here is a good article click me!!!!!!

(2) when they get older you need to set aside times to in which to use each SPOKEN Language (i.e. only German at dinner, Spanish for bedtime reading) to "force" them to use it and maintain there skills

CarlaAndJames

alliejoe:

I can't remember for the life of me where I read it, but I read that if one parent speaks the second language exclusively and the other speaks English exclusively then they will learn both simultaneously without any delays or anything.

This is what my sister (American, speaks English) and her husband (German) are planning to do with their LO.  

EBathory997Wed74688

As a foreign language teacher who will be doing something similar for my baby with Italian, get the primary language established first.  Then, you can introduce others to limit confusion.  Little kids are able to pick up other languages very easily up until age 12.  You can start at 3 and still have them be bilingual

ekfritsche

I posted about this a while back.  My DH speaks English exclusively to DD and I speak Korean and English to her.  I've been speaking a lot more Korean to her lately.  Kids pick up languages very quickly, speaking multiple languages shouldn't be a problem.  A lot of my Korean friends speak Korean and English to their kids and they speak them both fluently now.

MouseInLux

My LO will speak English and Luxembourgish. DH speaks 100% Lux to her and me 100% English. I have a number of friends who have done this with much success. One friends DD speaks Finnish, Spanish and French, she starts school soon and will learn Lux as she'll go to a local school.

I'm not concerned about other languages at the moment as DD will learn both French and German at school. 

tiff

I would try to focus a bit.  Perhaps you could speak to your daughter exclusively in Cherokee and your husband exclusively in German.  The English is going to come naturally for her through family and school and just being a part of the community (assuming you live in an English speaking area). 

As to the Spanish, not sure where you will introduce that but I believe that if children are exposed to multiple languages from a young age they are much better at picking up further languages later. 

I plan on speaking to my child exclusively in English (I'm American) and my husband exclusively in Spanish.  We plan to send our child to a French school just near our house which is billingual French/Spanish starting at age 3.  (We live in Spain).  

 Here's a link to an interesting article on raising children billingual.  It's in Spanish but maybe could help readers interested in teaching their children Spanish/English.  The author says that for a child to pick up another language fully they need to spend at least 20% of their time in that language.   I don't know if that figure is research based, but apparently it comes from a multilingual expert in Madrid. The article also says it's important to complement the one to one language time with communication with other speakers of the language you are teaching.  So it wouldn't be enough for your DH to speak in German, the child would need to be exposed to other German speakers.  

kacelle

It's critical that you begin to speak all languages you intend to teach in the first year of life.  Babies have the ability to differentiate between sounds in all languages until about a year old, when they start only focusing on sounds made in their language.  I learned this in my Child Development class and thought it was really interesting!

LuH55

  I am in the same boat as well! I am 1/2 German and my husband is American. I def. want her to know German as she grows up. I think it's fine to speak/read in both languages...that is what my mom did with me, and I grew up knowing both. I do want my baby to know Spanish as well, but I'm afraid of overloading her with 3 languages...