Any multilingual families?
CarolynTheRed
member
I was raised bilingual, and my husband learned english as a teenage immigrant, so we've got three native languages between us, and family speaking them all. We're planning to try for some kind of split of three languages at home, maybe dropping one if it doesn't work out.
Any other multilingual families? Any thoughts on how to split things? My mother claims she spoke French with me, as did her father, and then English when my father or her mother was around. We're thinking of doing the split something like that, each of us speaks to the kidlet in our language when we're alone, and we speak english, our common language, when we're together. I'm entirely undecided about sending the kid to english or french language schools when they're old enough, both are options.
Re: Any multilingual families?
Yes, we are a multilingual family! My husband speaks fluent Spanish and I speak fluent French, but English is our native language. No one else in either of our families are multilingual. We plan on splitting, just as you say. My husband will be speaking to our son in only Spanish when they are together. I will speak to him in only French. As a family, we'll speak English. We'll be moving to either Spain or Brazil when our son is 2-3 years old, where he'll probably start school in Portuguese.
ETA: He'll start school in Portuguese if we go to Brazil. If it's Spain, obviously it'll be in Spanish.
I've read that babies are very good at picking up and distinguishing languages, so you can mix and match.
We are a trilingual family-- I'll speak one with the baby, in-laws will speak another when they take care of them 1 day a week, and then DH and everyone else will speak English with them. We'll just see how it goes.