Bilingual Homes: Raising Children

Does anyone have any firsthand or anecdoctal experience raising a child to be bilingual?

Basically the logistics involved. My wife and I are planning on children some day and have agreed we’d like to raise them bilingual. English/Korean. We’ll be living in an English speaking country.

My thinking is, if we speak Korean only at home, then when the child starts school he/she will be at a disadvantage. If we speak both, the child may be confused as we may end up causing them to speak some weird pigen Korean/English.

Yet I know that hundreds of kids grow up in Multi-lingual enviroments and do just fine… so how is it done?

My ex-roommate was divorced from her little guy’s dad. When little guy spent time at dad’s, it was strictly Spanish. When he was at home, all English. He was five years old, and handled both languages flawlessly. I was always amazed by it, as I still find one language challenging.

I’m interested in this question myself, being as someday Mrs atarian and I plan on adding our contribution to the overpopulation of the world.

I’ve sort of planned that one parent (me) will always speak English, and the other will always speak Czech to the child.

If we can hold to the discipline I think that will be a very good method.

I don’t have first hand experience in raising a child in a bi-lingual home…but…

My mother was born in Austria (I’m first generation), father born in Hungary. They spoke mostly German to me at home (basically my first language) and some English. Thank God they did not attempt Hungarian. Although I wish they would have, now.

When the babysitters could not understand me (oops), my parents started speaking more English to me (around age 2-3 I think). My grandparents continued to speak German to me until I started school.

I have had no problems with English or school— now my German is quite broken…but I manage to get by. I also managed to pick up other languages fairly easily in high school and college.

I think it’s wonderful that you want to raise your child bi-lingual. It will definitely benefit him/her in the future.

My parents plan on speaking German to my children as well (when I have them).

Personal experience and all the literature I’ve read suggest that each parent/primary caregivers speak an “anchor” language almost exclusively. Do not attempte even days french, odd days english method or a mixture of the two.

China bambina speaks Mandarin very fluently, Shanghaiese second, and English a distant third. At 2.5 years old, she is making an effort to speak English and gaining some ground. We live in Shanghai, nurshery school in Mandarin, mom speaks a mix of mandarin/shanghaiese/english, I speak exclusively in English to bambina (I speak mandarin fluently but do not speak to bambina in Mandarin), and we only let her watch english language videos.

At 2.5 years old, she’s only now figuring out that there is such a thing as different languages. She can use languagess interchangeably in a sentence.

It takes some serious effort for bi/tri lingualism. Definately worth it though. plan on summers at Grandparents or something like that.

Kids naturally go with the flow as long as you are consistent. I think that is the key. I knew lots of amerasian kids in taiwan that spoke English with caucasions, mandarin with chinese and taiwanese with older/grandparent types because that was what they grew up with.

I’ve observed quite a number of bilingual households…I think the key is consistency. My college roomie grew up in El Salvador with Spanish as her first language, and moved to the U.S. at the age of 12. Her household was wildly inconsistent from a linguistics viewpoint; I stayed there a few times, and they switched languages every half a sentence. Her youngest brother, born in the U.S., understood both languages completely, but couldn’t form a sentence that was understandable either to monolingual English or Spanish speakers. The school district actually ended up putting him in special ed classes because of his language difficulties.

OTOH, my roomie in Russia was Kazakh, and she had a 2-1/2 year old daughter who was flawlessly bilingual in Russian and Kazakh. She alway knew who understood which language, and never had problems with consistency. I think this was because Mom stuck to Kasakh with her 100% of the time, but Russian was strictly for daycare and non-Kazakh friends, so everything was perfectly clear. I also know a couple of Hungarian/American mixed couples who have pulled this off; Mom sticks to Hungarian (her native language in both cases), Dad sticks to English (his native language; even though he’s also bilingual, his Hungarian is learned the hard way, and they don’t want the kids to pick up his mistakes), and everything seems to work out just dandy.

OTOH, a good friend of mine spoke nothing but Croatian until age 6…even though they still spoke only Croatian in the house, his Croatian is now pretty darn bad. I don’t know how it’s possible to forget large chunks of one’s native language, especailly if one still hears it on a daily basis, but apparently he’s managed.

I grew up in a bilingual household. Same deal as above – my dad spoke primarily one language, my mom primarily the other. Occasionally there would be a little bit of crossover when they were talking to each other or the three of us were talking together.

I was never confused. Even when I was just learning to talk, I knew implicitly that the two languages were distinct ways of communicating, so I would use either without muddling them.

Two things my parents did NOT do:

  1. They did not speak to me using a mix of the two languages. It was strictly one or the other. An English sentence contained all English words. Though sometimes they’d repeat the entire sentence in the other language.

  2. They never used “baby-talk.” Saying “baba” instead of “bottle” never happened, lest I start thinking that “baba” is a real word.

We’ve got two bilingual boys, ages 8.5 and 2.5. I always speak English to them when we’re home, but outside the house I may speak Norwegian, depending on circumstances. Fella bilong missus flodnak is less consistent, but he always finishes a conversation in one language anyway. They go to a Norwegian speaking school/pre-school. Both boys are fully and comfortably bilingual; the elder is also bi-literate (i.e. reads and writes in both languages), although his written English needs improvement.

I grew up in a household where my mother spoke both English and Icelandic around me. Of course, this led me to understand Icelandic almost fluently, but gave me absolutely no skills as far as constructing sentences or speaking it. She had spoken Icelandic with one of my older brothers almost exclusively when he was young (I hadn’t been born yet at this stage), and he still speaks it with good proficiency at age 34. It initially gave a couple of problems with using the wrong language in preschool with him, but he learned quickly which language to use when.

I agree with the other comments on having each parent speaking one language almost exclusively. It got confusing for me sometimes because my mother had lots of Icelandic friends who’d switch languages in conversation with both me and anyone else around who understood both languages. I never really got a grasp on how to use the one that wasn’t used exclusively, although I could still manage to get around Iceland just fine using my broken Icelandic in favor of English… unfortunately, at this point in time, they figure out you don’t speak it fluently, and then try to practice their English on you half the time. It’s interesting but fun.

Good luck on the bilingual child project. It’s a good thing when it’s done properly, and it helps a lot with learning other languages outside the home. I’ve become a bit of a cognate because of it.
-Indigo-

I have some answers, from my experience: Let’s go back to the minute he
(our son) was borne. Baby pops out and the doctor lays him on mom’s chest, she starts cooing to him in Portuguese. Some minutes later, time to time to meet dad, as I’m holding him, I coo to him in English - and that is the way it has always been. The first 2 and a half years of his life, the day care center and lots of his social contacts in Southern California were Brazilians, mom also only spoke to him in Portuguese. But all his Television, videos and such were in English, as well as all interaction with me.

FF 5 years. We now live in Brazil. He goes to a Brazilian school and all his friends are Brazilian, so he speaks Portuguese with no accent, you wouldn’t know he was not Brazilian even if you are. At home we only converse in English, yet he and his mom only converse in Portuguese (even at the dinner table). So I might say “Pass the salad” in English to him, but his mom would say the same thing in Portuguese. He would respond to me in English and her in Portuguese, but my wife and I only converse in English, and he absorbs that as well.

Still ALL kid vids, Television, conversation with me and his mom together are in English. He has no accent, you would not know he spent more years in Brazil than in the US. The duel languages thing seems to need to be constant, and not at set intervals, like special classes and what not, 50/50 seems to be the way to go. Also having lived in 2 countries probably helped as well.

Now a days at 7, he gets lazy with the languages, mixing Portuguese verbs in his English sentences, so he might say “Dad, what’s “Escret” here", I say what? Then he might say “I mean, what’s written here”, have to always correct this or he may develop poor language habits.

We were worried that this system may have some unforeseen ill effect, but at this point there is none evident, its just the way of life around our house. In fact, he seems to be able to grasp abstract concepts better then you would expect, but that may just be a proud daddy crowing about a kid who is smarter then he was. A Psychiatrist I used to work with said that as the brain develops we assign names to sounds and images we see daily. A mono lingual person hears a “Meaouwww” and sees a 4 legged fuzzy animal, mom and dad say “nice kitty” so we learn the thing is a “kitty”, but in a house where one group of information says “kitty” and another says “Gato” the person learns 2 words for “Cat” and for all other things too. As the language centers grow and the persons conversational skills grow more complex, the person learns two groups of words that signify the same thoughts and meanings, and uses these selectively depending on whom they are talking to. Again, I have nothing to support the above theory except my own experience. And the words of the Shrink I worked with.

We have been told by his teachers here that in their experience its best to alphabetize a child in only one language, then when the information is solid in the kid’s head, start formally teaching the other language. So for now all ‘readin ‘writen and ‘rithmatic are in Portuguese, when he gets older we will start formal English classes.
In any case he has turned just fine. But you never know, he may just sprout a third eye yet, I’ll keep you posted.

I grew up in a bilingual household.

My Mom is Mexican and my Dad is American.

As a child I spoke spanish first.
My mom only spoke spanish to me, my dad mainly spoke English (he also knows spanish as he studied it, but English is his primary language).

Even though my Mom only spoke Spanish to me and I only spoke Spanish, I understood English perfectly. Once I went to pre-school, I spoke English. I now consider English my primary language.

As long as you are in an English speaking country, you don’t have too much of a worry about your child picking up English. What with TV and playmates, it will come along on its own practically.

I think that the main thing to remember is:

a) be consistant.
b) don’t mix the languages.

my maternal grandfather spoke 4 languages fluently (german, yiddish, hebrew, english) and was proficient in several others (spanish, portugese, zulu, ndebele, shona, afrikaans).

my maternal grandmother speaks english as a first language with portugese and afrikaans as second and third, although she doesn’t have the need to speak them much.

my mother and her siblings were brought up in a monolingual (english) household, but all three speak german, afrikaans and ndebele to some extent.

my mother really regrets that they were never encouraged to speak german at home.

i have many other friends who cannot speak the same languages as their grandparents, or who cannot read or write the language they speak at home.

so i’d say go for it, teach the kids korean and english, and how to read and write both, they can only benefit!

Hmm, I grew up bilingual, and I think one thing to know is that you don’t need to worry that much about the weird mixing of languages. Heck, among the bilingual families I knew, the children would deliberately mix gramatical structures and make bilingual jokes starting pretty young. By the time they normally would sort out the grammar of one language, or a bit later, they’d have hashed out the grammar of two languages.

There can be some issues. My brother generalized spelling rules from one language to another sometimes, but at that age, he might have had spelling troubles if he were not bilingual. I had some trouble learning different sounds for reading in two languages (it seemed unfair to me), but, heck, I was about 5 and learning to read in two languages.

Learning a second language as a child has also given me a good base to learn other languages. I remember reading some research…hmm, found this:

http://dogbert.pitzer.edu/~mshah/acquisition.doc

about how bilingual children acquire language differently than monolinguals. Amazingly enough, there hasn’t been much research on the subject.

I wouldn’t worry about the possibly disadvantage at school. By the time the kid is in school, (s)he will have interracted with many people who don’t speak korean, and at least witnessed you speaking with them many times. TV will probably be in english. You probably will teach him/her/them some english rhymes and songs too, so they will have exposure.

As this is only academic, for you, I’ll mention that any theoretical kids my husband and I might have will have both danish and french spoken at least part-time at home, english as a main community language, and would be enroled in the french school system. I wasn’t the child most gifted at languages in my classes, or even nearly so, but as an adult I’m comfortable in four languages so far. I’m hoping for the same for my kids.

I agree with the other posters here: don’t mix the languages. Here are two more stories to demonstrate this…

My boyfriend Paul was born and raised in New Orleans, but both his parents are from Cuba. They speak a mixture of English and Spanish ALL THE TIME. His older sister, being their first child, was a trial that went wrong. They tried to teach her both languages, but since they spoke Spanglish all the time she got confused when she started school. It got so bad that they had to give up on Spanish all together. Now the other two kids (Paul and his brother) were never taught Spanish at all. Even though their parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles always speak Spanish/Spanglish, neither boy can understand too well nor put a sentence together. They always HEARD Spanish - but they weren’t encouraged to use it and were always spoken to directly in English.

On the other hand a Spanish teacher at my old high school had three children. He and his wife were both American but had spent many years in Spain and Mexico (also travelling to other hispanic countries), and they both taught Spanish at the high school level. When the kids were born, the mother ONLY spoke to them in Spanish and the father in English. Now the kids are fluent in both languages.

I only wish my parents spoke more than one language. Even if they hadn’t started me on it from the start, at least I’d have had someone to practice with!

IIRC, based on evidence in some study or other, children can live in a household with up to SIX primary languages spoken and pick up on all of them. Any more and it starts breaking down. This was mostly based on children living in share houses in eurpoe however so I’m not sure how mixing linguisitically different languages would complicate things.

I would mix the language, keeping seperated somehow, like Mom speaks one, Dad speaks the other.
Usually, the kid will be catching up Mom’s language faster than the “outside” world will bring the kid enough for him to catch up without being late or disadvantaged.
I will speak only French to my kids and there dad, school and others will do the english part.

A couple of points.

  1. Everyone here is correct in that the most effective way to promote bilingualism is that one parent should (exclusively) speak one language and the other parent should (exclusively) speak the other. There may be a little mixing initially but kids are actually really good at figuring who understands what.

  2. Eventually, the outside community will play a major role. For example, a child being raised in an English speaking community but has a French speaking mother will learn French and English. However, without further reinforcement of French (other family members, church, shopping, vacations, etc.) English will quickly come to dominate especially when the child figures out that Mom understands English as well as French. Comprehension of the second language will always be very high but production will begin to lag farther and farther behind the primary language. It is very difficult to raise a child in a true bilingual environment as the language environment eventually extends beyond just Mom and Dad.

I was brought up in a French and English-speaking household. There was some Greek too, but it was primarly French and English.

I spoke only French at home. I spoke some English at kindergarten, but realistically, not all that much.

When my parents tried to get me into school, a few of them refused to take me because I didn’t speak English - claiming I was intellectually retarded. My parents’ argument that I spoke fluent French was dismissed. Eventually they found a school that would take me and I never had any problems. By the end of grade one, I spoke and read/wrote English better than all the other kids.

For what it’s worth, I found learning English as a second language has made me far more aware of proper use of the language than most native speakers. YMMV of course :stuck_out_tongue:

Max :slight_smile: