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S/O multiple languages

SocialworkgirlSocialworkgirl member
in Stay at Home Moms
I noticed in the thread about French school a few people said they are raising their children to be multilingual. If so, what languages? Why? How are you doing it? Are your kids speaking/understanding the second language yet?

DH is half Puerto Rican on his Dad's side but was raised monolingual English. We both minored in Spanish is college but were never fluent and forgot alot. We are both working to improve our proficiency. I currently try to speak to DD in Spanish for at least 2 hours a day and I am trying to increase it. I am looking for opportunities to expose her to more native speakers and programs in Spanish but there are fewer opportunities than I expected for her age group. Our church has Spanish services and lots of ministries in Spanish so we will participate in some of that at some point too.

I would love to send her to a bilingual preschool that does 50% English/50% Spanish but I have only found one in our area so far. But our local system does have a bilingual program in elementary school. I haven't looked into it yet though because we have quite some time. (DD is only 14 months)

I am not sure how much Spanish DD is understanding yet. She will point correctly to my nose if I ask her where it is in Spanish and sometimes my mouth. Today I told her to stand up in Spanish and she did it but I am not sure if it was a coincidence. There have been a few other occurrences like that. We also play peek a boo in Spanish. We just started speaking in Spanish to her 2-3 months ago.

I'd love to hear others' experiences!
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Re: S/O multiple languages

  • dizzycooksdizzycooks member
    I read to my DD in Spanish and we sing Spanish songs, but her primary language is English.  I hope to send her to a bilingual elementary school.  There is a preschool program here that does a Friday Spanish program, but I don't know if she'll be able to get it and it's only one day a week.
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  • MinipenguinMinipenguin member
    edited August 2013
    My family is Greek. I will send her to Hellenic school when she is 5ish, and they do learn Greek there. For the most part, I am sending her so she can be exposed to the culture.

    With French, I do want her to be fluent. I am not planning to do anything special. I guess I just assume she will learn French the same way she will learn English... By having it spoken around her and by speaking it herself when she is older. DH's family is monolingual so I do make a point to speak more French than English most days. We'll see how it works out. I might be changing it completely in a couple years.

    Oh, and I don't think she has any idea what I'm saying in either language.
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  • shortstuff15shortstuff15 member

    My husband doesn't speak French but his dad grew up speaking French and the rest of his dad's family speaks both French and English.  We have talked about doing French immersion but the only French immersion schools are 30+ minutes away and don't bus to our area and driving that far 2 times a day isn't in the budget.  The public schools here do start French in Grade 3 or 4, so they still will learn French, it just won't be from immersion.

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  • SocialworkgirlSocialworkgirl member
    Gastro said:
    I am fluent in English and Korean. DS gets exposure to Korean from me, his grandmother and we have some Korean ipad Apps and lots of books. 
    There are lots of preschools/kindergartens that are taught in Mandarin or Spanish here. We are thinking of enrolling DS in a spanish speaking preschool. It is 100% Spanish and English is only used in a serious/health related situation if the child can't communicate/understand. I don't think 50/50 is important, she is going to pick up English so you might as well expose her to as much Spanish as possible. The school understands that many parents are not fluent or know anything about Spanish and the kids do just fine!
    She really needs to be immersed to become fluent, otherwise she will probably just have conversational knowledge of the language. I would try and speak to her in Spanish only and if you allow TV let her only watch Spanish shows. If you ever get a babysitter try to find one that will only speak Spanish to your LO.

    Yeah, I know she will need more exposure than she is getting now to be fluent. I am not proficient enough to do it all the time though and I know it is even more important for her to have a linguistically rich environment and I don't think I can provide that to her well enough in just Spanish. We don't really do TV yet but I have thought about watching programs in Spanish with her.

    you are probably right though that a 100% Spanish preschool would work. I just was worried that would be too much for her since English will be what she knows best when she starts, but it may not matter that much.

    thanks for the perspectives! That is awesome that you are exposing your DS to so many languages!
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  • SocialworkgirlSocialworkgirl member
    Minipenguin said:
    My family is Greek. I will send her to Hellenic school when she is 5ish, and they do learn Greek there. For the most part, I am sending her so she can be exposed to the culture.

    With French, I do want her to be fluent. I am not planning to do anything special. I guess I just assume she will learn French the same way she will learn English... By having it spoken around her and by speaking it herself when she is older. DH's family is monolingual so I do make a point to speak more French than English most days. We'll see how it works out. I might be changing it completely in a couple years.

    Oh, and I don't think she has any idea what I'm saying in either language.

    I don't think DD started understanding much of anything until at least 9 or 10 months!
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  • pevilapevila member
    Sophia is going to attend a trilingual school (English and German are taught in one I'm considering, and another one teaches English, French and Chinese), so I'm not too worried about teaching her English. 
    She can say "Yes," "Okay" and "I love you" in English, though, and it melts my heart ;)
    DH's dad is German, but he never taught German to his sons. My MIL doesn't speak German either, despite having lived in Switzerland for years. Such a waste... 
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  • karen_loykaren_loy member
    We live in Italy and my family is from Venezuela so DS and then DD hopefully will learn Spanish as well. DH learned Spanish awesomely fast when he went to Venezuela 5-6 yrs ago for the first time

    At home we mostly speak Italian but we often watch some Toy Toons or MMCH in spanish, I have a few "learning to read" book in spanish that we use to do simultaneous translation reading and I always speak Spanish with my mom and sister and DS has picked up from that; he understands fairly enough, uses a few words in spanish (colors, 1-10, some verbs and nouns, expressions) and always asks us what X or Y word means. 

    He's a chattebox in Italian

    They'll study English at school and then I plan to send them as exchange students for a year to any english speaking country in HS, as I did (If they want, of course)
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