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Parents with bilingual children, how did you do it? (lemdro.id)

submitted 5 months ago by governorkeagan@lemdro.id to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

38 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Although I mention parents specifically in the title, this isn’t just for parents to respond.

My wife and I are trying to raise our child to be bilingual (English and Portuguese). Currently we’re both speaking a bit of both to our child and when they eventually go to school we’ll speak more Portuguese as they’ll be exposed to English everywhere else.

Is this a good approach or is there something we can do better?

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[–] BadlyDrawnUnicorn@sopuli.xyz 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Same for me but exchange French with Russian.

I think one thing I feel we should have done different is to tell the kid I don't understand you if you are not talking my language. All of us know a bit of the other languages, which was super helpful as my wife didn't have to translate when she talks to our baby about something.

But the downside over time was that our child after being in daycare would start speaking Swedish to us, and seeing as a toddler doesn't pronounce words correctly we had a hell of time understanding that as non-native speakers. Lots of frustration in that one. So maybe it would have been better from the start to act as if we understand no Swedish at all.

Counterpoint, being outside we of course have to understand what others say to us in Swedish, so that might have looked weird for the kid then.

But what worked so far is that I speak my mother tongue, my wife hers, and our child mostly speaks Swedish since that's the main language surrounding her. She understands all we say but is not great at speaking either our languages right now.