Question about teaching babies to be bilingual (See below)...................................................?

Question

Will they still learn how to be bilingual properly if the mother only speaks her native language to the baby all day until the father comes home, and then he speaks his language to the baby? Or should she try to mix it up? I wouldn't want my baby to learn any mistakes I may make in Spanish, esp since I speak English perfectly. Does it even matter? Help!

Answer 1

Kids are infinitely flexible. I have a nearly 16 year old who speaks four languages (the one she was born with, english, german and french from living in Switzerland, and Swedish after we moved here to Sweden), and a 7 year old who is completely bilingual. We didn't do anything special to try, they pick it up anyway, if you let them, and they are given enough exposure to both (all) languages.

My 7 year old was born in Sweden, but I have always spoken English at home to my older daughter, in order to help keep her language skills sharp, so I continued speaking English to her as a baby. My partner and older daughter on the other hand, speak Swedish at home, as do the rest of the family and of course other children she is around. She gets additional english exposure from television, and I often buy her movies with the english soundtrack instead of the swedish one (although, movies here often have both, now that we have DVD's :)

One thing that was noticeable, is that she started speaking much later than my other daughter, she was nearly three before she began really talking more than a few words. THAT IS OK! In fact, it's very common for children learning two languages, they have a lot more to take in. I did take her for speech assessments every few months, but at no point was anyone worried about it.

When she did finally begin to speak, it was in complete sentences, and in the 'right' language. That is, she completely processed´the differing grammar, and never mixed say, Swedish words with English word order, or vice versa. She also automatically spoke English to me, and Swedish to other family members, and can switch in mid sentence.

As she's gotten older, we've switched to mostly speaking Swedish at home, as she prefers Swedish to English, but I make sure she does get exposure still to English. She will often watch a movie in English, and when I ask her what she's laughing at, she'll explain the joke to me in Swedish.

In her class at school (first grade), there is a little girl who is Italian, and speaks quite good english and only a little swedish. My daughter happily translates English<->Swedish for her on the playground, to the point we've had to ask her to stop, because the other little girl is not learning very much Swedish thanks to my girl :)

Don't worry about making mistakes either. If she's getting exposure at all from a native speaker, she will very quickly pick up what's correct. My youngster often corrects (gently and politely!) my Swedish if we are out shopping and I make a mistake.

So, that got really long, I'll summarise:
Yes, it's ok if they get more exposure to one language than the other, especially if the second language is coming from a native speaker (quality over quantity)
It's very common that kids learning two languages seem slow to start with either of them, or choose one that they "like" better than the other, that doesn't mean they are having trouble or aren't learning the other language at all.
Don't worry about mistakes, getting your head around two languages is plain hard. Baby will sort it out eventually, be very gentle correcting mistakes (just repeat what she said, the right way, the same as you would a monolingual kid, they'll get it, eventually)

Answer 2

In my experience, if the ONLY exposure children get to the second language is from the father, the children do NOT end up "perfectly" bilingual, although generally they understand the father's language well and may even speak it, probably with an accent.
If the father's language is the community language, or the child has other sources for that language (relatives, tv to some extent, books, visits to the other country), the one-parent-one-language system works very well indeed. Otherwise, it may be worth it for the mother to "mix it up", preferably in a very systematic way. (Stories in the second language before naptime, say.) Better yet, get the father as involved as possible!
My children are very balanced bilinguals (English and French) and fluent in their third language (German) as well, and I credit my husband's great job as a dad (ok and my mother-in-law...) for a lot of that. But crucially, they were born in the bilingual city of Montreal and lived there until ages 5 and 2. So it was never JUST up to Papa.

Answer 3

I once read an article where Japanese mothers were trying to teach their children English and Japanese at the same time. The result was many of the children fumbling and combining English and Japanese. (Either with imputting English words in their sentences or vice versa, or by confusing English grammatics with Japanese and having a real mess of a sentence.)

I think, instead, you should focus primarily on the language that is most used in the country/area you are in, especially when you leave the house and are outside. Inside the home, however, I don't think it would be too big of a problem to speak the other language you want your child to know on many occasions.

Just keep in mind it's your most important task to have your child understand the language of the country he's living in.

Answer 4

It'll be difficult for a baby to learn to speak a language if he/she isn't regularly exposed to it. Not only will it be easier to forget whatever he/she learns, but the temptation to use another language instead of the one you're trying to instill becomes very strong. One of the rules of language is that if you don't use it, you lose it. Even children who speak Tagalog at home but use English everywhere else tend to have a hard time speaking it, although they can usually understand the language quite well. If you want your child to grow up speaking Tagalog fluently, you'll need to put in an extra and consistent effort to make sure that she gets the opportunity to speak it as much as possible. You can also opt to enroll her in Tagalog classes or buy her some language packages from the library or bookstore. It is possible if you really want it.