My wife and I, we are both multilingual (native). My mother tongues are Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese. My wife's mother tongues are German (dialect), German (official) and Polish. The common language we share is English. We are now living in the UK and we will soon have a boy. After browsing through some of info. you got on the website, I am still left with some questions in regard to multilingual learning. Things like how to teach our child our mother tongues as well as English, and how many is too many as I have heard there is a possibility that learning too many languages at a early age can lead to a jack-of-all-trade-master-of-none situation... I am wondering have you got any information on this matter. Any help will be much appreciated. I am looking forward to hearing from you.
Kevin Tang, UK
Have you had any experience of raising a child with more than one language?
Fill in the form below to let us know what you think. We will publish your answers here.
We are speaking Thai and English in our family and to make the matter worst, we are also living in foreign country - Japan. My daughter is 2 years old. She seems to pick up a bit of English and Japanese, but she can communicate very well in Thai. We were told to speak only in our own languages and she would pick up both languages as her first language. However, my husband who is a British English native speaking has much lesser time to talk to her due to long working hours. As we will return to the UK for her education in 2 years time, we are very worried that she does not pick up English as well as other languages. I have been speaking both English and Thai to her since last Christmas, she seems to understand more English. But she mixed 2 languages in a sentence and when she speaks English, she has my strange accent which her grandmother could not make any sense of it.
Has anyone have experience in teaching English in your bilingual family? Also any suggestion with language development impair? I would like to ask for advice and recommendation on what would be the next step to teach my daughter British English in order to prepare her to entering a school in the UK when we return in the next 2 years. Also home material resources, books and activities.
Sue, Japan
I totally disagree with the person who says that you shouldn't teach a child a foreign language. You have no idea I am sorry. I am from New Zealand and my husband is Spanish. Our daughter was born in Spain and is bilingual. I speak perfect english and have spoken to my daughter since she was born in english at all times. My daughter speaks english and spanish, and is now 7 years old, and I have started to teach her to read in english and she is having no problems what so ever. I think it is very small minded of people to think that a child will suffer with her native language if you introduce a foreign language. I know off hand because I have a bilingual daughter and have the experience to tell people that they should speak to their child in other languages. My daughter has two cultures, two languages. One parent has to speak in one language and the other parent in the other language. The child will understand perfectly and you should do it from birth. That way it is natural to them to hear two languages. Also the child can watch tv, in the native language and dvds in his/her second language. Kids are sponges and they learn loads. Don't listen to people who have no idea of what they are talking about they haven't had the experience of having a bilingual child.
Tracey, Spain
I am from Gori and I have a boy. He is studing at the third form and he study Georgian, Russian and English. I think it is not bad to learn three lenguages together beacous he remember every words which they learn at school. What do you think about this?
Gaiane, Georgia
