Bi-lingual babies?

kmtz89 · May 2016

So I've been thinking about this a lot and was wondering if anyone else is (or has) raised a child bilingually.

My mother tongue is English. DH's mother tongue is Swahili, though he also speaks some Masai. Me and DH primary speak Swahili together as I am not quite fluent and I am really pushing to be as well as his English makes him nervous/he's out of practice. At work I would say I speak 90% Swahili/10% English. One of my good friends here who has married a Tanzanian has 4 year old twins and her own and they use One Parent-One Language. Though she knows very little Swahili, her H speaks fluent English and Swahili. I've heard her husband speak to the kids in both languages, they go to an English medium preschool, and they seems to be doing well with both languages but I would say their English is quite a bit stronger.

I'm concerned I will have trouble speaking English to my own child, as all the children I work with I communicate primarily in Swahili. But anyway, is anyone else going to be raising their child bilingually? Any tips or ideas? What method(s) are you planning (or have) to use?

westcoastfoodie · May 2016

Ooooh I am following this thread. My husband is from Venezuela and speaks mostly spanish with his family so we want our baby to be bilingual. I speak a little and understand quite a bit, but I've been trying to learn more. I'd also love to hear anyone's experience raising bilingual babies!

simcal18 · May 2016

So I don't have any personal experience with this, but I have a friend who is raising her kids bilingual in both English and Russian and seems to be doing really well with it. They live in the US and use one parent - one language: she speaks to them in Russian and their father speaks to them in English. The kids are about 5 and 3 and while I don't talk to my friend often, her kids seem to be pretty smart and language-competent, and she'll often post to Facebook about funny things the kids say in both Russian and English.

If you're thinking about doing it, I say go for it -- the younger you are, the easier it is to learn a language, so if you want your children to be bilingual you might as well start them from birth, and as far as methods go one parent - one language doesn't seem to be too onerous.

annabenanna · May 2016

@Julia70286 , oooh Venezuela! I was raised there. I miss arepas SO MUCH. Ha.

I am following this thread too. I'm Filipina...and speak Filipino fluently, as well as Spanish (which I find super useful living in California). I'd love for our son to grow up speaking 3 languages: English, Spanish and Filipino... but I'm afraid we'll have to choose only 2. I've read that the one parent-one language is effective. Just worried that I won't be able to 100% implement.

LauraPCOS · May 2016

I'm a sign language interpreter so I plan on using American Sign Language with my baby. Hubby knows a few signs but he's eager to continue it as well. It would be nice to have my child bilingual but I'm not sure if they'll keep it up.

westcoastfoodie · May 2016

@annabenanna I LOVE arepas! DH spoils me with all the amazing food, so we have those quite often!

annabenanna · May 2016

@LauraPCOS , I've always been intrigued by ASL. How did you come about learning it?

Side note and very random: SO and I were discussing the lack of available daycare for our baby in Jan 2017, and that our baby might have to go to daycare in the ghetto... and we joked that instead of baby signing, our baby will just learn how to sign gang signs.

Piperella · May 2016

My friend had her baby in home with a woman whose first language was Spanish. They asked her to work with the baby on Spanish, and they both speak English at home. The baby (now 4.5 years) understands and speaks Spanish and English. :-) It's a bit different of a situation, but think it's definitely doable!

Wish my baby would speak in a Scottish accent, but I just don't think it's going to happen. Now pronouncing certain words may show his "Scottish", he may learn a bit of the Queen's English versus the Americanized English language and pronunciations.

kmtz89 · May 2016

@piperella British English is the taught English here and so I feel like LO will end up talking quite different from me anyway, though I interchange British/American words these days. My above mentioned friends twins have the most peculiar accent, I've discussed it with her she has no idea how its formed because it's not British but it's not American haha.

jkmrugs · May 2016

We are on baby 3, and we've been teaching the first 2 both English and Polish. My husband's family is 100% Polish (I'm first American to marry in), so I started learning when we were dating. My husband was born in America, but his parents had just come over and learned English from tv. He is fluent in both languages. I know Spanish and some ASL, but chose to teach the kids Polish more so they could communicate with extended family.
So, my husband talks to them frequently in 2nd language, and I do as much as I know. They are 4 and 2, and know basic words, numbers, some phrases, Polish folk songs, and prayers. Just keep at it - they'll pick it up fast!

Mintz1982 · May 2016

We will be doing English and French our 7 year old goes to French Immersion school so we will keep it up at home for him anyways. We do about 50/50 english and French our 3 year old can already listen in to outsides french conversations without missing a beat. She will probably be going to the same school when she starts grade 1. Since we live in Canada french is the second language of the country.

scostel2 · May 2016

We're going to be trying this as well. My husband is/speaks German and spent his summers in Germany growing up so he has a good handle on the language (though he may not be technically fluent). I think it would have been easier if my in-laws hadn't moved 9 hours away because then I would have just had them speak German to the baby anytime she/he was there. Now when the time comes we may have to try to find German school or something since I'm not sure that my husband will want to exclusively speak German to the baby. But I think it's important that our baby has at least a basic understanding of the language to they can communicate with their cousins in Germany and embrace that part of their heritage.

Morningstar80 · May 2016

My DH and I live in Spain and are both bilingual (I'm American from a Dominican family and he's Spanish but an English teacher ). We plan on implementing the one parent one language method so I'll be the one chatting LO's ear off in English.

booksandicecream · May 2016

We are also doing the bilingual thing. Working with immigrant children in Germany I've seen TONS of multi-lingual families with varying levels of success. We will do a variant of One Parent - One Language as well. Basically I will speak to Baby in English any time we are alone (which will be a lot because daycares here don't take babies under 1 year of age). DH will use exclusively German. DH and I speak about 95% German, so the family language will be German. German will also be spoken any time a German native is present. It's most important to me that my kid learns the language of the country where he lives, but he has to learn English in school anyway, so may as well learn it as a baby. Plus the neurological benefits of bilingualism in the first 6 months are tremendous! The more different the languages the better, but we only have these two to work with, so it is what it is

PrimRoseMama · May 2016

We wanted to raise quad-lingually. I know English, French and Arabic. My Husband knows Mandarin and English. So, what we didn't factor in was that both of our kids would have issues with expressive speech delay. It runs on my husband's side (H didn't really talk until 4) and so our dreams to teach multiple languages have stalled a little bit. We are lucky if we get English right now. Once we get some fluent English-- we will focus on adding to that.

LauraPCOS · May 2016

annabenanna said:

@LauraPCOS , I've always been intrigued by ASL. How did you come about learning it?

Side note and very random: SO and I were discussing the lack of available daycare for our baby in Jan 2017, and that our baby might have to go to daycare in the ghetto... and we joked that instead of baby signing, our baby will just learn how to sign gang signs.

After my original college plans failed (before even applying) I looked to see what my college of choice offered and saw a 1 year ASL program, which I applied for and figured I'll take that while figuring my life out. Turns out I loved it and really understood it, which led me to take the 3 year interpreting program and I've been doing it for the last 9 years

LGW2015 · May 2016

My aunt is Italian, so my aunt and uncle taught their children both English and Italian. Now their situation was a bit unique, but their method was to mostly speak Italian in the home and English outside of the home. When they moved to Italy for a couple years they did the opposite, English in the home and Italian outside. It's been really really hard on the kids switching what language school was in (from English to Italian and back to English again), but that was specifically because they moved back and forth. Other than that issue, they are all fluent in both languages and use them constantly. I would say they mostly speak to their mother in Italian and their father in English, but not always, it depends on the situation.

JaJuanY · May 2016

I'm glad I stumbled across this board, because I hadn't heard of the one-parent one-language so I'll have to look into it more. DH speaks Mandarin and English, and I started to learn Mandarin but it's HARD, I don't pick up languages well and it doesn't relate much to English. We want our kids to speak both, especially since his parents don't speak English very well, so we may end up and use the one-parent one-language method. I'm hoping I'll start to pick up Mandarin that way as well, I'm a little nervous that my kids will speak a language I can't.

mrszoess · May 2016

off topic but @kmolleltz how did you meet h? I am always fascinated by your life!

kmtz89 · May 2016

books&icecream said:

We are also doing the bilingual thing. Working with immigrant children in Germany I've seen TONS of multi-lingual families with varying levels of success. We will do a variant of One Parent - One Language as well. Basically I will speak to Baby in English any time we are alone (which will be a lot because daycares here don't take babies under 1 year of age). DH will use exclusively German. DH and I speak about 95% German, so the family language will be German. German will also be spoken any time a German native is present. It's most important to me that my kid learns the language of the country where he lives, but he has to learn English in school anyway, so may as well learn it as a baby. Plus the neurological benefits of bilingualism in the first 6 months are tremendous! The more different the languages the better, but we only have these two to work with, so it is what it is

AH! This is what makes sense! I don;t know why I thought this wouldn't be an okay thing. Since our "family language" will most likely be swahili it will just be a matter of speaking to the baby in English when we're alone. Got it! Haha. Seriously, this helped my thoughts so much.

kmtz89 · May 2016

mrszoess said:

off topic but @kmolleltz how did you meet h? I am always fascinated by your life!

I work with two of his aunts and two of his cousins! haha. One of his cousins is a male a couple years younger than me and so I would go out with him and his friends sometimes to "see the nightlife"i and practice swahili since most of his friends didn't know English, and H happened to be in that group. H was one of the few who did know English and so approached me one day on our walk to find transport and said "okay I will teach you Swahili" and started pointing out random objects on the road and saying their names in Swahili. He was very sweet and not pushing like most Tanzanian guys and I warmed up to him very quickly.
Of course his aunts were SUPER thrilled when we started dating because they had already considered me like family from working together, hah.

Paturkey · May 2016

I love this discussion! I am jealous of those of you with multiple languages. I always wanted to raise my kids bilingually but alas MH and I are both English speakers. My son goes to nursery now and I love the PPs suggestion of having a nanny who speaks in a different language (I'd love Spanish since although we live in the UK, MH's family is all in LA) but that's just not what works for us. I guess we'll have to do language classes.

I have friends here who do one parent-one language. It's common for bilingual kids to have delays in speech relative to monolingual in the early stages, but they even out by school age (or earlier?) so if I could I definitely would!

I guess my son is learning two dialects of English though- British and American. He knows that in the USA he had to say "excuse me" while in the UK he has to say "sorry" and things like that. Plus he has an English accent so there's that

BabySunshine4 · May 2016

@LGW201 that method has worked for our family. That my parents used Spanish when we were at home and English everywhere else including at school. I have now done the same for my kids 8 & 3, but the older one seems more resistant about speaking it.
I would love to teach the little one a third language since he is still little and may be able grasp it better. I just am not sure what language and/ or how to start considering I don't speak a third language.

zuzu87 · May 2016

The One parent - One language has worked for both my sisters' kids, therefore i will be using it on my LO as well. SO will be speaking English to our baby and i will be speaking spanish. SO is a slight jealous because he feels like i don't speak enough spanish to him. lol

kmvisioli · May 2016

@LauraPCOS not full ASL, but we have been doing baby signing with DS. He LOVES it and picked it up super quickly. Started with "milk" which he used consistently starting around 6mos. He is 13mos now and knows probably 10 signs, and he usually learns a new one after seeing it only 1-3 times. His verbal language is also pretty close to where most 18mo-olds we know are, which I think is connected.

msBlackandGold · May 2016

I used ASL with both my kids. Both started signing around 7mo. And could communicate with over 50 signs by the time they were 12mo. My oldest felt most comfortable with ASL, so wasn't incredibly verbal until after she was 2 (honestly closer to 3). My youngest is 2 yrs and she'll sign words that she has a hard time pronouncing, or if I have a hard time understanding I'll ask her to, "show me a sign." But she was actually verbal early. They both know well over 100 signs.

We used Baby Signing Time and Signing Time. We also watch Rachel and the TreeSchoolers. I really need to buy stock in Two Little Hands Productions!

westcoastfoodie · May 2016

Oh man this thread has helped tremendously! I was a little worried about how this would work out in our house. Thank you for the help!

kmtz89 · May 2016

Yeah. Way to participate O16! This thread is full of awesome!

scostel2 · May 2016

@books&icecream
That's so awesome! What area of Germany do you live? My husbands family lives in the Black Forest and so they speak kind of an odd dialect that makes his worried that if he doesn't teach the baby, they'll go to German school and learn it formally and still not be able to communicate very well with their cousins.

annabenanna · May 2016

I watched a TED Talk yday about what our babies learn in utero..... and one of the things baby learns is accents... There are studies that show that when babies are born. they will try and communicate with their mom by crying in its mom's accent. So fascinating!

booksandicecream · May 2016

scostel2 said:

@books&icecream
That's so awesome! What area of Germany do you live? My husbands family lives in the Black Forest and so they speak kind of an odd dialect that makes his worried that if he doesn't teach the baby, they'll go to German school and learn it formally and still not be able to communicate very well with their cousins.

I live in Heidelberg /Mannheim! About an hour north of the Black Forest. Don't worry about the dialect - unless it's really strong (ie he learned it from his farmer's wife Grandma) it will be fine. Most Germans speak in dialect unless they're in higher education or something and all Germans understand virtually all German dialects (does not necessarily apply to Swiss or Austrian dialects!) and ALL Germans understand high German. MIL speaks a strong dialect I barely understand but DH speaks perfect high German. All I care about is that my kid doesn't pick up the Mannheim dialect!!

scostel2 · May 2016

@books&icecream That's so awesome to know about the dialects! My in-laws lived in Heidelberg for a few years (that's actually where my two sister-in-laws were born). My father in law is German born but moved to the US as a kid and then joined the US army, where he was stationed in Heidelberg and met my MIL. Small world

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