On a similar line,
We are English but live in Spain. All Spanish friends talk in Spanish to our two year old. He also goes to a Spanish nursery. At home we mainly speak English.
Will me speaking badly spoken Spanish have a bad affect on his language skills? I try to speak to him in both when it’s just the two of us, but am far from fluent in Spanish.

From the start I’ve always spoken English, and my wife Spanish – at the end of the day the kids don’t get confused between the two languages.

That said, living in Spain with a Spanish mother (who spends more time with them from the start) they both definitely prefer and are more fluent speaking Spanish.

. 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

That may be true in France and Germany, but it certainly isn’t in Spain. They’re nearly as bad at languages here as we are in the UK 🙂

Edit: Another thing: if you don’t speak both languages from the start at least one set of grandparents is going to get pretty pissed off with you…

Will me speaking badly spoken Spanish have a bad affect on his language skills? I try to speak to him in both when it’s just the two of us, but am far from fluent in Spanish.

Don’t bother, he’ll pick it up at nursery, from the TV, out shopping with his parents…

The problem is I have to speak Spanish. I am learning so need to practice but also most people don’t speak English.
I’d hate to think he starts to speak like me. 😯

The misses grew up in Sweden in a Finnish household only speaking Finnish at home and Swedish at daycare/school.

We now have a little girl, the misses only speaks Finnish with her, I only speak English with her and she understands both of us perfectly. To complicate matters further, when she starts daycare in a few months time, she’ll learn Swedish!

roper if he’s learning it at nursery / with friends etc he’ll soon be in the position my brother and I were with our parents. We were far more fluent than they were and I’m afraid just used to mock their attempts :oops:. Which is why I don’t speak it any more. They tried to speak it at home when me moved back to England, but it just didn’t work.

French people are bad with languages too .
it is starting to chnage though , and english is taught at a much earlier age than when i was at school .

I don’t think it’s ever too early to start talking, in however many languages. I remember being at school with children who could speak 4 or 5 languages at a very early age.

As someone who is mixed race, but not bilingual, I very much wish I could speak two languages.

My mother is british and my father is HK chinese. My mother only speaks english and my dad speaks both english and cantonese.
I was only ever spoken to in English, and though I lived in Hong Kong for 7 years, I never picked up Cantonese. I feel somewhat ashamed that I can’t speak the language, and it is embarrassing when a chinese person approaches me, assuming I can speak cantonese.

I am now making the effort to learn the language (at the grand old age of 21) – As I don’t live in HK anymore I’m guessing it’ll take a while, and I really wish I’d been exposed to it more as a child.

My brother is English living in Sweden with a Swedish wife. From day one he spoke English to the kids and his wife spoke Swedish. Both kids are not even in their teens and speak English better than most English people.