Anyone planning to raise bilingual children?

[lily28]

I'm bilingual and so is DH so we will have trilingual kids lol!

 

[EllaUmbrella]

Yes, I'm planning to raise ours trilingual - English, Cantonese, and ASL. I will just have to remember to keep using sign language!

 

[SIEGAL]

I only speak one language and it kills me -- no matter how hard I try (years of foreign language study - 2 different ones) I can't get past the level of a 2 yr old. My husband on the other hand absorbs languages and so does his entire family. My husband speaks fluently - English, French, Hebrew, German/Swiss german. He also gets by in a few languages like Italian and Yiddish. My husbands father speaks 9 Languages and his mother 4 or 5. I plan on speaking to baby in English and of course growing up in US he/she will know it. My husband plans on speaking to baby in Hebrew. Also, living in Miami I really am suffering with my half-assed grasp of Spanish b/c its hard to get a job here/talk to people whom you should be able to interact with on a daily basis (i.e. cashier) without knowing spanish. So -- I think I will immerse my child in that early as Spanish is taking over South Florida and eventually the United States by the time my child is in their golden years.

 

[sarah1989]

We plan on raising our future children bilingual. I come from a French Canadian background, and have spoken French for the majority of my life. I think it is important that DH and I pass this on to our children, as not only is it their heritage as well, but it may be very helpful for future jobs they may be applying for.

I hope to send our children to a French school as well to get them started educationally at a young age, but around here it is very hard to get into full French schools, so we will have to see!

 

[Bucket]

I only speak English and a little bit of French, but the French I do know I have known since I was tiny because my grandmother started teaching me languages before I could walk! I found it really, really helpful when it came to learning languages at school.

I'm hoping, BrightonPixie, that you might teach both me and Tinysaurus to speak French. xx

 

[Brightonpixie]

Off course. I have been reading the bilingual edge and there are a lot of tips for learning language at a young age. I believe from birth is good...we should talk about mother/baby lessons! x

 

[Bucket]

Definitely.

How are you feeling? My little rascal kept me awake all night again last night kicking my cervix and bladder. I'm starting to feel like a zombie!

 

[Brightonpixie]

Definitely.

How are you feeling? My little rascal kept me awake all night again last night kicking my cervix and bladder. I'm starting to feel like a zombie!

Very tired today, i did not get a good night sleep either. I am thinking of going to the movies at 1pm to see Gainsbourg...wanna come? Still up to go swimming later?

Have you asked other ladies on here about an overactive baby? xx

 

[Bucket]

Yeah, posted a thread earlier about it. Still up for swimming, but no time for the cinema I'm afraid (see Facebook). xx

 

[inkdchick]

Yes if it ever happens as my Hubby is Italian so yes and i can only talk so much and get by so i will be learning at the same time LOL

 

[Sparklegirl]

Wow, what an amazing thread, our kids will speak English it my first language & dh is dutch so they would have to learn that too, but they will pick that up in school anyway & ofcourse afrikaans, but its going to be hard with dutch & afrikaans coz its kinda similar.

 

[sleepinbeauty]

On top of English and Russian, I'd like to pass on Spanish as well. It is so useful in America these days.

 

[Elveneye]

Yes, we are.
My husband is Scottish and I'm Finnish.
Unfortunately my husband, like many other Scots, doesn't speak or understand any scottish gaelic so that we must exclude for now. (I'm studying the language in my free time)

So yeah.. My husband speaks English to Sophia, I speak to her in Finnish (most of the time, sometimes it's too easy to forget). We are hoping and working towards making her bilingual, mostly to respect both of our cultures and roots. Also because not everyone in my family speaks English. I could not live with myself knowing that I've raised my child(ren) so that they can't communicate properly with my side of the family

We are not entirely sure how this whole process "should" be done, we are kinda going with the gut. He speaks his language, I speak mine. The home language of course is English, because we live in Scotland and because my husband's Finnish isn't too good yet. But, to maintain the balance, I read a lot of Finnish books to her, listen to Finnish music and talk to her a lot in Finnish too Hopefully this will work! We have also been planning on making sure that she will do one year of school in Finland, if we live here, or in here if we decide to move over to Finland before then.

Nice to see so many bilingual (or more) families here!

 

[July28th]

We will hopefully have a bilingual family too! I'm from the UK and my husband's from Romania. I've heard that each parent should speak to the child in their mother tongue, but we might find that hard to stick to sometimes, as we both speak English and Romanian!

 

[wtt :)]

digging this back out lol... any updates? Our son has been growing up bilingually. i speak German with him, DH speaks English with him. He understands both well, speaks both but prefers English (i don't blame him cause it's easier!)

 

[arturia]

I'm hoping to raise my future child bilingual German, but this is going to involve improving my German myself and asking my mom to speak it with him/her.

 

[wtt :)]

I'm hoping to raise my future child bilingual German, but this is going to involve improving my German myself and asking my mom to speak it with him/her.

That's awesome! German is a very hard language to learn so if s/he gets to grow up with it, even better!

 

[arturia]

I'm hoping to raise my future child bilingual German, but this is going to involve improving my German myself and asking my mom to speak it with him/her.

That's awesome! German is a very hard language to learn so if s/he gets to grow up with it, even better!

The studying I've done seemed to indicate it's pretty easy from the German perspective, but on the other hand I'm always completely lost trying to read anything on forums.

 

[wtt :)]

I'm hoping to raise my future child bilingual German, but this is going to involve improving my German myself and asking my mom to speak it with him/her.

That's awesome! German is a very hard language to learn so if s/he gets to grow up with it, even better!

The studying I've done seemed to indicate it's pretty easy from the German perspective, but on the other hand I'm always completely lost trying to read anything on forums.

haha well it's not as hard as Chinese but yeah....

 

[M&S+Bump]

We had intentions of trying to be a bilingual household, but I was struggling enough after #1 came along that it soon fell by the way side - I left Finland at the age of 10 and we haven't really been back much, other than one single year spent living there in my teens and the occasional few weeks for holidays. I speak, read and understand it fine, but apparently the speech heavily depends on another person who also speaks it being there to keep it flowing. Faced with a new baby and no-one else in the house, I quickly decided it was better to speak to him in English as that came much more naturally, than not speak to him at all, which is what I found was happening. So I gave up on it and have no intention of revisiting the thought - we're never moving back there, my husband doesn't speak it, all relatives we might visit speak very good English. If it was Chinese or Spanish (or even French or German), anything that might actually be useful, that might be different..