My wife is Chinese, and I’m English. We are both fluent in both languages.
Our little bean in due in November, and have been talking when/if should start speaking dual languages to him/her. Or when we should introduce another language to them.

Anyone had experience or know of anything about this?

Cheers

No experience, but my advice would be speak both from the off.

What I have usually heard is that it is best if you speak your language and your partner their language, always, from Day One. We didn’t do that, we just spoke English, and now it’s too late 🙁

Having studied psycholinguistics and language and child acquistion at uni the best way to study foreign langugages if from the get go. Both parents need to speak to him in their own language. You will find for a short space of time (when they begin to speak/understand) your child will be behind their age range development as they are struggling with two languages. However with perserverance your child will catch up and acquire both languages fluently. The prime age for a child to acquire this is 5 years old and they reckon once you reach 13 years old you are past the “good age” at which to acquire language.

I did the same as dr j here and have monolingual kids :(. And my uncle and aunt did french parent/english parent very successfully on the other hand. In fact when they had an italian nanny, one of their kids managed three languages for a bit. It seems simplest to have a parent in each language. Do be aware that your child will be less good at speaking english for his/her age until about 4 years old. This is just because their little brains will only have room for so many new words a day and quite normal for bilingual toddlers to seem a bit behind. I’m not so sure they have any trouble understanding either language though will inevitably have a go at playing one parent off against the other by feigning not understanding one parent. But then that’s what kids do.

My wife helps run a project at Edinburgh University on just this subject, and says pretty much exactly what Munqe-chick says.

http://bilingualism-matters.org.uk/

Munqe-chick – which uni were you at?

Speak both. The kid will work it out. No university degrees required.

My brother (English) and his wife (Dutch) have a 1.5 year old. She has spoken to the baby in Dutch almost exclusively from the beginning, even though her English is pretty perfect. My brother speaks to him in English only. My nephews first words have all been Dutch as far as I know, but he always takes English books to my brother for reading to, which shows the high level of comprehension that young children have.

dave360 – You’re absolutely right, but the problem is that a lot of people believe it is detrimental to a child’s development to bring them up bilingual, due to them being a bit behind their age group in terms of language development.

Those University degree’d peoples can actually prove the opposite; Bilingual kids have advanced social cognition – are better able to understand that other people have a different perspective, and learn to read more easily. They are better able to ignore irrelevant information, and this benefit seems to last into old age.

I used to work with a Beglian Guy who had an English wife.

He used to alternate between Flemish, French, German and Dutch when speaking to his kids, never English (which he was fluent in), his wife spoke to them in English. Both kids were mutli-lingual before they started school.

Agreed, speak both.. My dad used to use Dutch/ Afrikaans and my mum allways used to use English to us kids..

Bizarrly they both spoke french to each other alot while discussing things..

Good news is, I can now converse pretty well in all 3 lanugages.

I once met a small child in Geneva who’s parents were British and Ecuadorean. The kid spoke Spanish to his Mum, English to his Dad and French to his mates. He also learned German at primary school.

His only problem was knowing what language to speak to strangers 🙂

My wife is french and we were advised to speak French as much as possible in the early stages because the child would pick up english at nursery/school. We pretty much immersed him in French at home and left the english to his nursery. He became fluent in both pretty quickly. Now we speak both languages to him, with me speaking more English and the wife speaking more French.

I would normally say talk both straight from the beginning but my wife is a scouser and our lad can neither hot wire cars nor make off with our neighbours video recorder so we went wrong somewhere.

having grown up in Wales, I was only ever spoken to in english at home, picking up the odd bit of welsh here and there untill I was 3/4. Then learnt Welsh at nursery/school where its the only thing spoken. At school there was the full spectrum, from people who spoke no english to some kids from Botswana (sp?) who spoke no welsh at all. By the age of 11 everyone was about equal, no real differences between those that picked up one or the other first. I was well ahead with reading by the age of 7 or so, but never realy caught up with writing, and to this day i can’t spell for toffee. And my accent is unplacable.

Ohh and as for what to speek to strangers…………
Welsh, then if they look at you blankly, tell ’em to fek off back to England where they belong, in welsh (Joke)

suntingwang my little one is 6 and she speaks Cantonese, actually she is picking it up far quicker than I did 😉

She has no problem separating the two languages, if this is a worry of yours and certainly it does not seem to confuse her.

Can be fun when we are out, as Mum often will talk to her friends in Cantonese, watching my little will jump into her conversation then hop out to chat to me 😉

Christmas last year, we had two French friends staying and with their broken English, our broken French, Grandparents and kids speaking Cantonese & English, it was quite funny how the conversation flowed in and out of one language into another 😉

Oppps, forgot to add, hope it all goes well for you and your “little bean”.

😉

His only problem was knowing what language to speak to strangers

ah yes, the geneva contention.

edit. that pun doesn’t make sense. 🙁

on a serious note, how often do kids speek to strangers?

No idea how you learn, must be like the formal/informal bits in french. You just know whether the person in front of you will be speeking in one or the other, and at that age (junior school) I had no concept of welsh or english, i’d read or speek in either without having to “translate” it. The downside was i’d often be saying something then know the word in one language but not the other and splutter to a halt before starting up again in the other language.

my wife is english and I am french . when our first boy was born , i only spoke to him in french and my wife in english . he was late speaking so i started talking to him in english . it was a mistake .

our second boy has only french from me and english from my wife . he can understand french , but wont speak it . he gets a lot more english through family and friends .

but the older is picking some of the french too , so i am hoping that both ( and our baby girl ) , will be fluent in both soon .

Used to know a bloke who was North African (French/Arabic) and his wife’s native language was German. The grandparents took one language each (inc English) and parents did a bit of everything.

KIds were fluent in all 4 pretty early but for quite a while could only speak the “right” language to the relevant grandparent – weird, but understandable

Militant biker I did my degree at Essex Uni, at that point it was the only place in the country that did a full degree in Psycholinguistics (rather than just an option within a linguistics degree).

Language acquistion has long been thought of as a process of imitation and reinforcement, children learn to speak by copying the utterances heard around them, and by having their responses strengthened by the repetitions, corrections and reactions that adults provide.

There is a widespread popular impression that the children of bilingual parens are linguistically at risk. It is said that their brains will not be able to cope and they will grow up “semi-lingual”, confused or “retarded” (a few years ago they thought that!!!!). There is no justification for this pessimism, as is evident from the confident fluency displayed by millions of bilingual/trilingual/multilingual children around the world. Look at French, Spanish, German children, they all learn English from when they are tiny (even if their parents don’t speak English), they all hold a far higher level of competence (most are even fluent) in English than even a small percentage of British children could hold in the opposing language at the same age.

By the time your child starts school this is when they will normally have caught up in their linguistic development and will be at the same stage as other kids.

Children learning 2 languages, learn to speak in a different way to other kids. Phase 1, the child builds up a list of words, as does a monolingual child, but the list contains words from both languages. It is rare for these words to be translation equivalents of each other.

Phase 2, sentences begin to contain 2 or more elements, words from both languages are often used. The amount of this mixture rapidly declines. At the beginning of their 3rd year nearly 30% of their sentences contained mixed vocabulary, but at the end of that year it is less than 5%.

Phase 3, as their vocabulary grows in each language, translation beings to develop. But the acquisition of grammatical rules takes longer. For a while a single system of rules will be used for both languages until finally the two languages diverge. This is usually at the 4th year and they are well aware that the two languages are NOT the same.

Children will typically use each language to the parent who speaks it, if one parent uses the language of the other to the child, there may be quite a reaction. This is when the child may start playing the parents off against each other, this is usually around 4 years old, by this point you will find that it is unlikely they will be having any problems.

Studies show that trying to become bilingual from 13 years onwards is extremely difficult due to our linguistic programming. Once a child is bilingual they easily understand grammer and subsquently normally find it easier to learn futher languages. As is evidenced by lots of people above who do/their children speak 4 odd languages! Impressive if you ask me!!

From first hand experience with my kid – from the go.

When I was a child three languages were spoken in my house – english, french, and spanish.

My father banned english (well at least tried to) and forced us to speak french, although he spoke spanish to my mother. Me my brother and sisters spoke english between us, but I always had to speak french to him – it did my **** head in. We would sometimes ‘borrow’ words from other languages (and we still do sometimes) which made for interesting sentences.

English was in fact my third language (when I was six years old), the first words I ever spoke ever in french. Then I leant spanish, before finally learning english. I now however only speak english, and have completely forgotten the other two……. you work it out 😕

Ernie .. very interesting study though for us linguistics (or ex …),

I am militant_biker’s wife, not him. I’m a researcher in Edinburgh working on bilingualism. Bilingualism is pretty good for a child, as they develop theory of mind sooner, that is, the ability to understand that other people have different perspectives and knowledge to them. This is probably because bilingual children learn very early that not everybody speaks both of their languages, and they have to learn which language(s) to use with whom.

There are other cognitive advantages to bilingualism. Bilingual children and adults have been shown to be able to ignore irrelevant information better than monolinguals when performing tasks. This is a cognitive ability that seems to get worse with age – sadly after the age of 30 we start to get worse. The bilingual advantage lasts into old age, if you keep using both languages. It helps if you have learned a language later in life – your cognitive decline won’t be as bad (on this sort of thing, at least), but the earlier you started using two languages, the better.

Some people think that children get confused about which language they are using. They don’t – studies show that even very young children know which language they are speaking, as they vary which language they use appropriately. When they do seem to mix languages, they actually do it in a very systematic way, and often for effect, not because they are confused. The ability to play with language like this (and some other evidence) shows that bilingual children are very aware of language, and how language works. This is a good thing when they reach school; bilingual children are often good readers, even if they are acquiring languages with two different scripts.

The important thing for parents is to make sure your child hears enough of both languages, and gets plenty of opportunity to speak both languages, and realises that both languages are important and valued. Some children will go through a phase of only wanting to speak one language – usually the language of their peers. You just need to keep speaking in both languages, and they will keep both languages.

Munqe-chick – I’m guessing you were taught by Harald Clahsen? That must have been an experience 😉

If you want any more info/advice on bringing up your child bilingually, take a look at Bilingualism Matters You can email us with questions too.

Dr (and Mrs) Militant_Biker

Perhaps I should have pointed out Munqe-chick, that whilst I now only speak english, my brother and sisters who are older, are all fluent in three languages. Mind you, my eldest sister was 16 when she first learnt english, the other one has lived in Madrid for over 20 years, and my brother who also lived in Madrid for many years after getting married, first learnt english when he was about 14 years old.

EDIT : when we lived in Argentina, everyone in my house spoke french !

thank you for all the extra informations .

the trouble with mine is that they get a lot more english than french as my wife deosnt speak french at all .

Mrs Militant Biker .. yes yes to Harold Clahsen … good though! I still love linguistics and if I was a copper I would definately go back to that field of work/study. Problem was when I left uni I had no idea what I could do with my degree. Always wanted to get into Forensic linguistics now though.

anyway sorry for the hijack!! Chris .. perserve with the French as even though your child more exposure to English, they will soon learn that they have to speak/understand French to get past you!! Definately worth becoming bilingual especially in this economic climate, more job opportunities speaking more languages, often more freedom to live abroad etc. It’s the one thing I strongly believe we should do in the UK and that’s pick a language, Spanish and insist it is taught from the age of 4 at primary schools … like a foreign kids and their language acquistion and ability!!! They a laugh at us ignorant one language only Brits!!!

Ernie your linguistic/family background sounds fantastically interesting!!

we go to my familly in france 3 times a year and my familly dont speak a lot of english , so they practise a bit .

Munqe-chick – there are MSc courses in forensic linguistics at York now – there may even be some funding. I’d be curious to know what Clahsen was like as a lecturer – I’ve only encountered him in all his fury at conferences and as a visiting speaker. Were you taught by Claudia Felser?

cchris2lou – it would be worth finding other French families/groups to increase the amount of French your children hear/speak. http://www.mantralingua.com/ sell books and other resources in a range of languages, including French, which might be helpful.

we have loads of books and games in french , and the older is going to a french club at school once a week .

I see Cardiff and Birmingham also have Masters, I thought about it a while back but I don’t know really. It’s having time and dedication to do it along with a full time job. To get promoted about I think it’s Inspector you often need to do a degree, well that’s some pulling power I could use to do the Forensics. we’ll see though as I’ve still got to get up to Sergeant!!!!

Claudia Felser taught me as well, trying to remember which courses!! Essex always appeared renowned for good linguistic lecturers however being 18 and not much clue in the subject I’d randomly picked it didn’t mean too much to me!!

Still completely fascinated by linguistics, the think that go me into it was “The Cambridge Encyclopedia of language” by David Crystal which I was given to have a look at when I was 16. Still go the copy as it’s very interesting introduction to all things linguistics.
Are you doing research in linguistics?
Just thought if you want to e-mail (rather than hijack this thread) then franwhyte AT hotmail DOT com

thanks everyone for the info. From the word go it is then.
We initially weren’t to sure, when to introduce the 2nd language, we had heard from 2yo was a good age, but as you have all said, from the go.

Once again, thanks a lot from all 3 of us.

I had no concept of welsh or english, i’d read or speek in either without having to “translate” it

This is certainly true. we moved to holland when I was 3 and I started at a Dutch speaking playschool straight away, as the only English speaker. I was bilingual ver quicky as at that age you’re just learning new words all the time and don’t know it’s another language. I would switch from one to the other depending on who I was talking to with no hesitation at all, but in my memories now it’s all English – my brain obviously just didn’t think of it as another language.

Pretty much all forgotten now, but my Dutch colleagues at work tell me I have a very strong local accent when I do speak it!

My friends are French and German, both speak English almost as their first language. They spoke to their newborn (well two years ago!) in THREE languages from birth!

Babies absorb alot more than you think 🙂

I think THE most important point made above is the one about both languages needing to be shown as valued. We spend loads of time reinforcing how “cool” it is to be bilingual. I know a lot of families who have not done this and have kids that are not interested in speaking both languages.

I had a short period where I mixed both French and English as a small child but once I’d become aware of the difference (I’m told around 3 years old), it was never an issue.

Definitely speak both around your new arrival, you’ll regret it if you don’t.

All very interesting – we’re due to have a bilingual baby (they come out like that don’t they?) in 2 weeks.

Mum is planning on speaking only Spanish and me only English. Hopefully my Spanish will improve, but I will now be careful not to speak to the baby in Spanish until it is a bit older.

Hopefully there will be lots of chances for it (don’t know what it is yet) to practise Spanish as we have Spanish friends who have a 6 month old son who live very close. We are also planning on Spanish DVD’s, Books etc.

I think that we’d be crazy not to follow this route – I know it might take a bit longer to speak etc but the benefits are massive, and it’s essential for speaking to Grandparents and family.