Do you guys see any reason why shouldn’t both parents speak both languages?
I mean, wouldn’t the kids learn faster in this way?
The only reason is if you want to prime your kid to excel in the educational system by focusing on one language. I think it’s short-sighted reasoning though.
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He theorized that by separating the languages from the beginning, parents could prevent confusion and code-mixing in their bilingual children.
George Saunders wrote in his book Bilingual Children: From Birth to Teens that the “one person, one language” approach “ensures that the children have regular exposure to and have to make use of each language. This is particularly important for the minority language, which has little outside support."
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1853590096/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_O5vaAbZKJ38WR
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One thing I notice about growing up in a multilingual house, I seemed to able to think about things differently when I use a different language to communicate. And it seems with each language, it’s almost like I change the way I feel, think, and communicate with other.s For example, I’m much more polite and am more sensitive to others point of view when I use Korean. I can be much more aggressive and brash in English. I think there are studies that show that as a benefit of being bilingual and multilingual.
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Thank you for sharing it! I’ll see if I can get it to read a bit more on the topic.
That’s exactly my concern: Exposure
However, as @raymon75 suggested, stories and Skype calls may help to increase the it.
One thing that concerns me in this approach is that a child may get closer to the parent who speaks their preferable language, and reduce contact with the other parent. Or even develop better in the native language whose parent they spend more time with.
Have you had similar behavior as a child, @Andrew0409?
In our case, since both parents speak all three languages, we thought about using Mandarin during the day, and Portuguese at night, but we are afraid the children will get all confused…
I know of an other couple who (differently than my own family) where parents did mix the languages and the kids often ended up using a word they didn’t know in the other language… Which got worse when they grew up…
I’ve never noticed my kids to get confused about the languages, they always use the right language with the right parent… However as @Andrew0409 mentioned, thought patterns are different in each language, if I asked my kids to describe something or tell me how they felt, we would often get a different opinion in each language… This has something to do with the cultural aspect as well… Talking about sex, results in a more open minded conversation in my own language or English then if we discuss this in Chinese
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Ha, still a few years away from that, but it’s definitely coming up fast!
My kids were like this, to the point that at times they annoyingly refuse to use the other language with the right parent, if you get my meaning. They did pretty well with it so I figure the two things went hand in hand for them.
Works for me but it’s really rare and if it happens it’s usually not at home
Not in my case. My preferred language as a kid was Mandarin Chinese. Mainly due to the fact I lived in Taiwan as a kid so it’s the most useful language. However I was closer to my mom due to the fact she took care of me and spent way more time with me compared to my dad who I didn’t see much of. Not saying I didn’t like my dad as a kid, I looked forward to seeing him when he came back from his business trips and work. It a different story when I wasn’t a kid anymore, but it had nothing to do with language.
And it wasn’t like my mom forced me to speak Korean or exclusively used Korean to speak to me. She spoke Chinese as well and did most of the time taking me around. But she just made sure she did spend time speaking to me in Korean and I just picked it up. I didn’t feel like I was forced to learn, it just became natural. And she never forced me to speak Korean. I just did to her when I wanted. I would say you don’t need to force The language on your child. Just make sure you do spend time speaking to him or her with it.
Also my preferred language in now English. A language I didn’t learn until I was 9-10 years old so. I am really glad my parents and especially my mom spent time speaking Korean with me. I wished I retained more of it. I can still understand perfectly, but speaking is hard as I don’t do much of it now. My accent is also pretty off in Korean so I feel a bit embarrassed with it because I know how it’s suppose to sound but I can’t get it right.
I think this might confuse them as it’s a bit forced and unnatural. Let the whole process be natural. You and your wife can use whatever language you guys want to communicate with. But just make a effort to spend time speaking and teaching your child your native language without pushing it on them. In my case, it never got confusing. I understood how to use which language I needed to.
Also, it would great if you could let your child get submerge in the other language with their environment. My Korean improved so much when my mom took me to Korea and put me in activities I would enjoy and basically made have to try and use the language. I still remember a tae kwon do camp I went to. And my mom would do things like you can buy that candy if you can use Korean to ask for it. Simple things like that where I didn’t feel like BORING! And also my mom showed me some cartoons in Korean and some of them I loved and watched. Some I didn’t like and I just didn’t watch it. It’s a golden opportunity to show a child your native country, culture, and way of life and it makes more sense knowing some of it when you use that particular language.
Give your child a format and natural environment to learn it. If you want them to get really good, you can take them to classes later. But give them a foundation with a natural environment of having to learn and use the language. For example, don’t just throw them a workbook for Portuguese and tell them to do it. See what their interests are. Maybe the kid is really into cars, there’s lots of simple children books on cars with lots of pictures in the language. If your kid loves cartoons, show them some popular ones in Portuguese. Find a formate for them to want to learn without realizing or forced to feel like they are forced to learn. This might put them off. Children are smarter and capable of learning in ways people don’t give them credit for. You just have to find a way for them to enjoy it.
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that is what we planned to do but it was kind of impossible. it works when it is just you plus kid. but when both parents are there at the same time and place speaking two different languages… i found that impossible, so we switched to chinese only.
still use english only when it is just me plus kid.
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Also @RickRoll. I found that my mom and her family was really good at encouraging me to speak Korean with them. They gave me lots of positive reinforcement and praise for my efforts and it made me feel really good and proud of myself. Learning a language is not easy. Make sure you acknowledge your child’s efforts!
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Thank you all for your comments and advices.
It was very helpful!
I think it’s my time to share something too…
When I was looking for books on the topic, I found this website which seems to be a good source of information: https://bilingualkidsrock.com
If you know any other good material on the topic, please share it!
Maybe it’s different for everyone, but if you retained enough to understand regular speech, you wouldn’t need too much effort to pick up speaking it. My parents avoided speak Taigi to me when I was a kid. I only hear Taigi occasionally when we go visit relatives. I could hardly understand most of it, but any retention helps. It didn’t take much for me to pick up Taigi as a 20 year-old. I don’t speak it as at native level, I also don’t get to use it a lot, but I don’t feel awkward when I speak it anymore.
Once you get past the part where you no long has to pause and think about how to form a sentence, the rest sort of just clicked.