Is it wise for me to teach our baby many languages?

Question

I'm South-African, and my wifes Hungarian. My mother tongue is English, but I also speak Afrikaans, German, Zulu, Hungarian, and Spanish. My wife says we should only teach our 22 month old son Hungarian and English, at the moment. The problem is that: we live in Hungary, therefore our child hears this language every day, and I'm an English teacher, so I don't think he'll have a problem with Hungarian or English. The question is: should we also teach him the other languages that we speak?

Answer 1

It is pefect to start teaching your baby now, it is so much easier and they will pick it up faster, my parents spoke to me in many different languages when i was small, and now i am fluent in them all. The older ya become, the harder it is to learn a new language.

So teach you kid new and many languages,. Good luck with it and have a nice life.

Answer 2

Of course! Teach your child as many languages as you can.

1) One reason being that your child will be more valuable on the job market as an adult.

2) In college, they can test out of language classes.

3) Babies learn languages BEST when they are young. Don't just do a few now, then hold off for the rest later. It will be harder for the child later. Do it now. Studies have shown that babies ARE able to differentiate between languages even at this young age.

I would love to be able to speak more than just English.

Answer 3

Definitely teach him. Language acquisition becomes much, much much harder after childhood, thanks to changes in the brain. If your wife is worried about him getting confused, just try to be careful about when you switch between languages. Make sure he hears coherent strings of whatever language you're speaking at a given time. That is, speak Hungarian, or Zulu, or English - not, say, Hunglish or Zurman.

Answer 4

Maybe you should try and expose the child to various languages. The earlier you expose/teach them to other languages, the better chance they will of understanding the languages and speaking them fluently... I am not sure however if the child may be overwhelmed with all these different languages... Maybe you can ask a Psychologist

Answer 5

I don't see any harm in it. I was brought up with Spanish father who spoke Spanish and English. My mother is Irish and speak Gaelic and English and french. My Nanny was Swiss so she spoke four languages French, German, Italian, Plus Russian. Introduce the child to different words in these languages that you know. It great that you have encourage your child to these languages remember children pick up languages quite fast

Answer 6

yes you should teach him other languages but not at this age of course because by that way he won't be able either to learn English nor Hungarian.........a person is lucky if he speaks many languages it will help him a lot trust me

Answer 7

Absolutely.

Simply because it will work out his brain. Which is good because it keeps it working.

Also, languages are quite easy to learn as a child because you're not accompanied with failure. You don't even acknowledge failure as a child. So i would defenitely teach the different languages.

Spanish especially because it's a common language in the US and Mexico and obviously, Spain :)

And don't you want to be able to talk to him in all your languages especially if he can understand and talk back?

And it can be really beneficial in terms of education later on as well as travelling around the world

Answer 8

yes absolutely children learn best when they are young i would start out with a base language but once they have a solid understanding then you can teach them the rest he should be able to communicate in one or two first so that you can explain the other languages but yes absolutely i wish someone had taught me something other than English when i was younger it can be so hard later on in life to learn new languages.

Answer 9

As this age, it's very easy to learn new languages. You should focus on 2 main language, than start to introduce another once the first two are well known. It can't hurt to know all these language... Too many at once may be overkill tho.

Answer 10

I think its a good idea to speak diffrent languages and they do say that children catch on to things better than adults maybe you should wait until the baby is a little older and then introduce him to another language one at a time so he does not get confused.