parents with different language background, how you teach your....?

Question

children from baby till they grow your language?
For example if the mother is a french and the father is an italian but both speak english.
If they have a baby when do they speak to their child french italian and english?
Do you talk to your child italian for one week and french another week and english...
or how do you do it? whats the best way?

Answer 1

What we do, is my husband (French-speaking) and I (English-speaking) each speak our own native language to the children. I have heard of kids "rebelling" against being forced to speak a second language, but we've never had that--probably because they were born in Montreal, and rarely went a day without hearing me speak French (my husband and I have always spoken English together), so the idea of unilingualism never occured to them.

Now we live in the German part of Switzerland, so they've had to add another language--again, no problems.

I personally couldn't speak a language other than English to my own kids--it's too much a part of who I am. Even though my French is fine, I'm never quite myself in French. It was a bit harder for my husband at first, because he's really perfectly bilingual, but I think what did it for him was wanting his kids to have that advantage as well. Our families have always been supportive, if only because they don't want *their* language to be left out. (For example, my inlaws don't complain that I speak English to my kids even if the rest of the conversation is happening in French, and even if they don't understand 100%.)

Answer 2

Speak naturally. My mother is from Sweden and my father is fluent in French and Spanish and loves to speak them around the house. Whenever they felt it was necessary they would just throw around grammar, commands or vocabulary in whichever language they so chose, even though my native language is actually English. Your baby is like a sponge and can absorb up to 1200 new vocabulary words a day. Just throw things out there and she'll learn the difference. I can now speak french and spanish almost fluently and I am passable in Swedish and know many phrases. I'm also not bad at English if i say so myself. Just speak whatever comes out!

Answer 3

It's depending on where you lives. For example if you live in English, talk with him/her in English only so later he/she can speak English fluently and can adapt his/her surrounding well (all his friend will speak English right?). When he/she grew up, it's depending on him/her which language will he/her prefer to learn, Italian of French...

Answer 4

What normally happens is that each parent speaks his or her own language to the child. After a few years and because of repetition, even the dumbest parent learns the language of the other spouse.

Answer 5

Well in my case, I grew up with English and Japanese. My mom was Japanese so she always talked to me in Japanese. And my dad is American so he talked to me in English. I imagine something in the same vain can be done with three languages. I think alternating them will just be confusing.