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Toddlers: 24 Months+
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Bilingual or multilingual families.. question!

hollandmamahollandmama member
in Toddlers: 24 Months+
Hello ladies!

I am a FTM of a 7mo baby boy. I reach to your board because I figure most of your LOs are speaking at this point.

I am Mexican and my husband is Italian, we live in Holland which is where we met and got married. I am planning to teach our child our 2 native languages and Dutch. We don't know much Dutch so we are relying on DC and school for that. At the moment I speak to him in Spanish and DH speaks to him in Italian. I and DH speak in Italian to each other. What a mess, huh?

Our LO's name is Gerardo which has different pronunciations in Spanish and Italian, he responds to both 'names'.

My questions are, if your LO speaks more than 1 language:

how did you teach him?
do you correct him/her when s/he mixes up words from different languages?
at what age did s/he start speaking?
do you recommend any books explaining how to raise multilingual children?
do you have any extra recommendations from own experience?

TIA!


Daisypath Anniversary tickers     Lilypie Second Birthday tickers
Surprise BFP on 11/02/12 EDD 07/06/13 --> Express wedding on 12/29/2012 --> G was born on 07/15/13
*Multicultural family raising a multilingual toddler: Spanish, Italian, Dutch and English


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Re: Bilingual or multilingual families.. question!

  • JenniCollinsJenniCollins member
    We don't speak multiple languages in my house, but when I was growing up both French and English was spoken. I was fluent in both French and English, however until I was about five I would sometimes mix up the languages (had one English word in a French sentence, things like that). I was never corrected per say, sometimes they would repeat my sentence back to me using all of one language. Now is the best time to teach all these languages, so I would keep it up. One thing to remember is that children from multilingual homes tend to speak later, but they understand things just fine.
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  • fanofannefanofanne member
    we are a multilingual family.  our kids speak a mix of spanish, korean and english and they do blend the three languages often.  as pp said, this is the best time for children to absorb/learn languages.  i learned in one of my classes that children may mix up their languages, but over time they will learn to compartmentalize the langues, especially if its consistent.  for example, if you keep speaking to him in spanish, your husand keeps talking to him in italian and he speaks dutch at school, he will learn to keep the languages separate.  however, i also learned that if you aren't consistent, the grammatical "rules" will confuse him.  good luck!
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  • hollandmamahollandmama member
    Thanks ladies, I need to be patient and persist haha
    Daisypath Anniversary tickers     Lilypie Second Birthday tickers
    Surprise BFP on 11/02/12 EDD 07/06/13 --> Express wedding on 12/29/2012 --> G was born on 07/15/13
    *Multicultural family raising a multilingual toddler: Spanish, Italian, Dutch and English


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