I am a native frisian and dutch speaker. I speak English and german as well. Girlfriend speaks Hungarian natively and English and she is learning Dutch. We have some planning to do for our future kids..
Thank God I found your video! I've been trying to come up with how to speak to my 18 month old. I am mixed in culture. At home we speak English (UK and US versions), Turkish, Polish, and with family Spanish, French and with my culture exposures Hindi and also Japanese. I feel very connected to Hindi but also my other languages. My child speaks a mish-mash of words of each rather than fully in one. Now, at home we understand but outside of home I fear no one else will as he really mixes them up. Your video is what I've actually been thinking how to come up with a solid plan: Pick 3, reduce to the three for six months minimum and then expand. Knowing he will passively catch on anyway, but focusing on how to teach with intention. Yay! You video helped me make sense and confirm exactly what I was thinking to do! Xx
So your family is pretty much mixed up with different languages and cultures. I still can not imagine what your family tree looks like with languages from all different countries and continents. Every generation brings 3 languages on average, but the next generation can not grasp all if the speaking environment is too different. There will always be family members being left out. I wonder how much languages should be taught for children and how many more they should learn in their future.
I'm French and Mexican and my husband is Puerto Rican and Italian. Both of our first language is English and would love for our future kids to know their ancestors languages.
Andrea, muchísimas gracias!!! This was so helpful! So I think you helped me nail this down: I speak to him in Spanish, my husband, in French, English he will learn passively via play dates, listening to me and my husband speak, day care, and community and finally, for Arabic, my husband should use the OAOL method (I will watch those videos to learn more). Thank you again for answering my question via video! I really enjoy all of your videos - You are brilliant!
Hey great video! I speak 4 languages - Russian (mother tongue), English, Spanish and Turkish, living in Spain and married to a Spanish (haha what a mix 😂). I have always dreamt of having multilingual babies (I was raised with just one language, and learned all these afterwards). And now I am pregnant and recollecting the information about how will we do it! Thanks for your amazing videos!
Great! Please join my mailing list to stay in contact. I'm working on wonderful things that will come out in the next months for multilingual parents like you! www.multilingual.family/sign-up
My native language is Spanish but we speak English at home. I curse in both languages, I dream in both languages but it depends where I am. If I am visiting my Spanish relatives, I tend to dream and wake up thinking in Spanish. It's the opposite when I am "home" (in the US). For some reason speaking to my baby in my native language feels strange. I feel clumsy and I feel the words are too long. I never spoke to any babies in Spanish. I have been speaking to her in English but I really want her to learn Spanish. Perfect Spanish, (not the type of Spanish that just sounds like a translation of English). I read and interact with my baby in Chinese only when we read books in Chinese. I don't expect her to learn this language as a native language or maybe not even as a second language, I just want her to be familiar with it and love it too. I grew up in Spanish but always liked English and it was part of my everyday life growing up in Latin America.
I'm bilingual English and Egyptian Arabic speaker, and fluent in German My husband is a native Spanish, basque and dutch speaker. We communicate in English. The majority language is German. I would love it if my future kid can grow up speaking all of them.
I have recently started thinking about this topic a lot and surprisingly, the content on this topic is pretty scarce. I was raised in a trilingual environment and somehow I Never realized how it happened. My parents spoke our native tongue - Telugu, my country speaks Hindi and English. So I was exposed to this from various sources. But I am now in Germany, where many German kids only learn German. So if and when I were to have a kid, the environment wouldn't teach them as much which brings it to me to teach them and hence I am here watching this video 😂
Hi! I thought I had it figured, but now with your video I'm confused and a little bit dissapointed. I'm Venezuelan, my husband is Mexican, and we live in Mexico. So obviously, the main language our son will learn is Spanish. My husband speaks English and French, of those two his strongest language is English, but he does not like speaking in English unless he HAS to, and he likes French and understands it perfectly, but he is very rusty with it. Even though I'm a native Spanish speaker, I think my strongest language is English, I was an English teacher for about 15 years, (I started teaching at 15) and apart from teaching all other jobs I had required me to speak mainly in English. I also speak, in order of strength, Italian, Korean, French, Japanese and German. I love languages in general, but if I had to choose my favourite is Korean, I constantly listen to Korean music, watch Korean shows. And sometimes read a little in Korean. My brother lives with us, and he speaks Spanish, English and Japanese. Our extended family speaks English, one of my sisters lives in the US, and my sister-in-law lives in Canada. My plan was for our children to learn Spanish naturally by the environment, as we live in Mexico and my Mom who also lives with us. English also by environment cause most of our closest relatives speak it. French, through my husband, Korean through me, and Japanese with my brother. But according to your video we should be sticking just with Spanish and English, with maybe French as a minority language. I'm due with our first around December, January. And my husband was brushing up on his French, I've doubled down on Korean even learning a few nursery rhymes and getting a few story books. And my brother has also been practicing more Japanese. But by what you say we shouldn't do it. And just stick to our strengths.
You can introduce other languages using the OSOL for example but you need to have one main language to communicate to your child and that should be your strongest language. What you also need to bare in mind is TIME. Our days only have 24h of which half of the time the kids are sleeping (in the beginning) and to develop well a language a child need to be exposed to it many hours a day. The more languages you introduce at the same time, the less exposure the child gets in each language. The risk is that your child might develop a little bit of a lot of languages but non well. That can be dangerous. So, crafting a plan carefully is really important. Consider a consultation with me to help you out with a safe and strong plan to reach your multilingual goals for your child. You can contact me via mail if you wish: info@multilingual.family
Wow! I finally found someone who can speak Korean as one of their languages. I’m Korean myself, although fluent in English because I’ve spent 10 years living abroad in the US. I also have a baby who just turned 17 months old as of yesterday. I don’t come from a multi culture / language background like you, and it’s been also very difficult to find someone who’s interested in raising their children bilingual or multilingual in Korea as it’s a strongly monolingual society. Honestly, having learned bits of European languages such as Italian, German, French and Spanish before, I’d have to say those languages are super similar to English. It’s nothing like comparing English and Korean as they’re drastically different from one another as far as grammar structure and pronunciation goes. That’s why whenever I speak English, I only think in English and when I speak Korean, I only think in Korean. It’s nothing like going from Spanish to English. So I really admire you for speaking lots of different languages, including Korean cuz I know how hard it can be! Just wanted to give you a huge compliment for that! How’s it going with raising your baby multilingual thesedays?
Ok, case five! My case. My husband is German and speaks German and English. I grew up speaking Spanish and English. We live in Sweden. My son is 1.5 and attends a Swedish preschool, he has a nanny who is Swiss and speaks German and French natively. She has decided recently to speak to our son in Swedish as well. My husband doesn't speak any Swedish because he works in Denmark. We will be moving to Denmark in the next few years. Currently, I speak English to my son, my husband speaks German, we communicate in English, his nanny speaks to me in English, my husband in German, and to our son in Swedish. He attends a Swedish preschool, and in a few years will start school in Danish. He has a stuffed animal who plays in Spanish, and another stuffed animal who plays in French. At 1.5 he seems to understand EVERYTHING and has really amazed his teachers. He doesn't say a lot, but has words for each language. Although, sometimes he says things like, "Titta da oben mama, thanks!" When he wants a snack. :) How can we introduce Danish?
Hi Betsy, the good news is that his Swedish know-how will come in handy when learning Danish, as those languages are pretty similar. You could start introducing Danish by exposing him to Danish songs for kids. When you move to DK you should put him ideally around 2-3 days in a Danish daycare so he learns the language there but you still have enough time to expose him to German and English. Your baby is still very young, if you stay in DK he will know enough Danish before starting school. Need more help, here you can find me: www.multilingual.family/services
I am an 11 year old and I come from the USA, and I also have a goal of being fluent in a lot of different languages, so when I grow up, I want to pass these on to my child , so my child can be really knowledgeable about culture. Idk why I’m watching this rn because I will not have a child anytime soon
Case scenario: Both parents are of Greek heritage but born and live in english part of Canada. Husband knows enough Greek to understand very basic conversation but not great at speaking but can read and write it. Wife knows greek better than husband but English is still stronger. Husband also knows french pretty fluently (enough to get by in a french country) from learning it grades 4-12 but also english is stronger. Grandparents all great at Greek. The solution I thought of is: Both parents speak english because that's their best language and both speak to each other in it. Enrol the child in french preschool until the end of high-school to learn french from good teachers instead of husband who knows it well but not amazing. Then have baby spend time with grandparents telling them to only speak greek to baby. also enroll in Greek school once a week at the earliest time possible. Let me know if this makes sense, thanks!
Hello Andrea, Thank you for your work. I’m not a parent already but i’m starting to think about it because I speak French, Arabic, Spanish and English but my wife speaks only French. Plus i plan to learn another language so it’s kinda worrying me about our future children. Your strategy is very interesting and seems very helpful. I will certainly be trying it someday with my child Inchallah. Thanks again and Happy new Year.
Dear Andrea, thank you very much for your very valuable and important content. I am so happy that I found you. I would like to ask you for help. I am Turkish-German, although my strongest language in writing and speaking is German, but my favorite language is Turkish. My husband is Italian and half Taiwanese. At the moment we still live in Italy. I have started learning Italian, but I am still at the very beginning and am not particularly talented. My husband does not speak German. He also tried to learn, but lost motivation relatively quickly. So we decided to just speak English in the family and raise our children in English. But then I came across your videos and you say that everyone should speak their own strong language. Now my very important question to you, very very important. We have a son. He is already a year old now, and I made so many mistakes completely unconsciously, because I was simply not aware of the consequences. I spoke to him in Turkish, German and English and assumed that he understood me anyway... now you are absolutely right. Why should a child lose the language of its parents? My question to you: can I still correct this? We would like our son to speak Italian, German and English perfectly. My husband's mother speaks fluent Chinese, she always speaks Chinese with him. My parents always speak Turkish with the baby. I don't know if it would be too much if the child learned Turkish and Chinese too. Here is the big challenge. We are moving to Thailand in a few weeks and the plan is for our child to go to a private school there and we can get support with the language there. However, as I have heard from you, the biggest responsibility naturally lies with the parents. Now I need your professional support: how many languages can the child learn at most by the age of three? The even more important question: how should I behave? Should I speak Turkish and German? No more English? And would Thai and English, as the language at school, then in Thailand, be too much to ask? Thank you so much for your great videos. They are worth their weight in gold. Ah yeah, another important detail is that my husband is speaking with him in Italian thank you very for your professional help ❤🙏 please keep doing this videos and I will follow you the best I can. I do appreciate so much your informations.
For swearing I wouldn't be so sure I swear in my second langauge. However counting especially subtractions and other arithmetic exercices are the most telling about which langauge is the strongest one.
This video is great! But unfortunately, I'm kind of convinced that our almost 3-year-old son is doomed. We live in Japan and I'm Japanese, and my wife is Chinese and can also speak the local language of her hometown, but she keeps speaking Japanese. What is worse, we used to live with my wife's father, who can only speak the local language, but since he came back to China when our son just turned one, he's never been exposed to that local language. But I still want my son to learn Chinese, the local language, and hopefully English other than Japanese.
This is a good video as I'm planning to adopt kids from China, Korea, and maybe Japan and I would like them not only to remember their native language but as well as learning English, Spanish, and Hebrew
I just found your channel and am liking what i hear and see. Am just starting out in my own journey . I learnt french as a student and thus am fluent in it. My husband speaks english and yoruba , actually, we both speak those. When my son was born, i wanted to start right away with French, but my hubby discouraged me that it might confuse the baby, and i listened .(i wish i didn't 😂). My child is 10 months old now, and i want to commence speaking french. I am so excited coming across your videos. So i am starting off with a plan to only speak in french with my child, my husband will speak yoruba to him, and myself and my husband can continue to communicate in english then he can learn english passively from us and from others in our community. My mum who stays with us is very fluent in igbo and hausa, so we might have to choose which one she can use as the language of communication with him. I plan to learn Spanish later, though. I have to look at more of your videos to see how to incorporate that later later. I hope my plan makes sense? Thank you so much ❤
i'm native in French and Arabic and i speak English, Italian and Spanish as well, so my children just with me they'll speak these languages because in my life I speak all of them. And maybe they'll know also Portuguese bc i'm learning it. ( I'm only 15 ahahaha )
Super helpful, thank you, gracias, danke, 多謝，謝謝, obrigada! I love your comment about building a child's identity and self-esteem using their roots and native language. I grew up speaking Cantonese, Mandarin, and English, and my husband speaks Spanish and English. We'll live in Costa RIca and would love our child to learn a native indigenous language at some point. Thanks so much for your tips!
Hi Violet, I might start shooting in the future in German as well. At the moment I just don have enough time to do both. Since my followers are from around the world, many of them would be excluded if I just did videos in German. Liebe Grüsse
I speak Arabic natively n English , Spanish 2nd n 3rd n my wife speaks the same languages just like me so I asked her to speak Arabis to our 3 kids 'cause she has a better n more spread accent n I speak Spanish n since we live in Broklynn they'll learn English too my family speak an indigenous language of my home country 🇩🇿 so I expect'em to learn it to some degree since I'm not fluenty 😅 in that language n it doesn't have a standert form
Hi! I am Polish, my Husband is Slovenian. We communicate in English. We live in Luxembourg, where are three official languages ( Luxembourgish, French - and baby is already exposed to both, and German, that will come later, at school). We are bit scared how to proceed..:)
Hello Malgorzata, yes, I can totally understand your fears. It´s a lot of languages that your baby will be confronted with at once. In your case you really need a plan to make it work smoothly. To what school are you planning to send your child? Are you going to stay there or are you planning to move to another country? How old is your baby now? Please consider booking a consultation with me to analyze your case in depth and help you craft a plan. www.multilingual.family/services
This my case Im from colombia my husband is Lebanese we leave in usa We speak English each other But now we have a child that born in the 🇺🇸 he is 1year old Since he is a baby i talk to him in Spanish and my husband Lebanese My all family talk to him in spanish and my husband family in Lebanese But now we started he leasing tv in English
First of all, you do a really good job. My wife and I were wondering during the dinner how we should continue with all languages. And I couldn't get the question out of my head so I TH-cam... Randomly I found you. Instead of watching only a short video, I have watched several 😅 -So my wife is Chinese and speaks pretty well English, she just moved to Germany and is going to learn German this year. -I'm a germanese, so my mother tongue is German and a Chinese dialect. My English is fluent but not perfect. My Chinese is even worse but getting better the longer I live with my wife together. -Outside i speak mostly in our daily life German when my wife is not with me. Also our friends, babysitter and teachers from the crip speak German with him. ... If my wife is with me we speak English with our friends, kindergarten... Cuz she doesn't understand any German yet. -At home we speak mostly Chinese and 5-10% English. But my Chinese has a lot mistakes and poor grammar in comparison to a native speaker. Our son is 7 month old. It would be amazing if you could give us some advice :😊
Thank you! Glad to hear that you found my channel. Hope that you stick around to help you on your journey! A power tip for you: Continue speaking Chinese at home as much as possible. Speak German with your children (wife Chinese). German is not going to be a challenge, they are going to get enough exposure. Chinese, on the other hand, will need a lot of attention.
Thanks a lot for your answer. Just to make sure, so we should both speak with our son Chinese at home? Or only my wife Chinese and me German? Another thing is that we need to switch to English sometimes cuz of my boundaries in Chinese in certain topics. Should we wear a hut or do a handsign if he is with us? We just had a long discussion what we should do if we sometimes need to switch to English for some deep
You're very welcome. No, you should speak to your child in German because that is your strongest language. When you talk to your wife, you can try to do it in Chinese (then you would have Chinese as a home language and your child would profit from more exposure). If you need to switch to English to be able to speak more fluently at times, by all means do it. You can also speak to your wife in EN and let her reply in Chinese. Please stay posted, as I'm soon going to release training videos with lots of more helpful information to raise successful multilingual children. Alles Gute und bis bald!
awww so happy to see this video finally come up. Thanks Andrea for this advice for our family, we will apply this plan soon in the beginning we thought we dont really like our own language to be taught to our child because english is better since we communicate in english everyday at home and we want for both of us can speak same language to him without leave one of us behind (the reason behind I meant before) and your answer based on your experience said the other hand :). success for your channel, stay safe with your family and once again thanks for your advice :)
Very interesting tips and advices, Andrea! I've found your channel looking for videos on bilingual kids and bilingual education, because our children (they're twins and are 12 months old now) are rising in a bilingual environment, wich is very common here in the basque Country. It's not exactly the same case as people living abroad, but has some common elements. In our case, my strongest languages are spanish (primarly) and basque (it's not my first language but almost, I have full competency). So I've talked exclusively in basque to my children since they were born, including songs and games. My wife also can speak basque but her spanish is stronger and tends to speak in that language to the children, even thought she uses also basque, mainly when we are all together. Me and my wife speak mainly in spanish to each other when we are alone, but i speak only in basque when the kids are present, and as i said, she tends to speak basque in that situation. On the other hand, the community language ir our village is spanish, even basque is also there as a minority but official language (education is ONLY in basque). Finally, grandfathers&grandmathers are spanish speakers, even tought my parents can understand basque. A pretty complex situation considering there are only two languages at home xD In addition, i can speak pretty good english, french and catalan, but so far these languages are excluded. My main doubt is wich language do you think, based on your experience, will the kids speak with us? and to each other? Should I use one (of more) of my other 3 languages in some way with muy children? When should I start doing that? Gracias de antemano y un saludo.
Hi Xabi, Your kids are exposed to both languages quite often, but since Spanish is the majority language, it might develop in the first years faster. That is, until they go to school. Once they are immersed in a basque surrounding, that language will probably catch up. It´s not clear what language they will choose to speak to your wife, since she mixes. I´m almost sure that if you are consistent in speaking basque with them, they will reply in basque as well. That will depend on how many hours of quality exposure they are getting per day. Between siblings it is also not 100% clear which language they will choose. Kids use often their strongest language or the one that they go "used" to speaking with each other. As you see, there are some surprises awaiting you! :) I recommend that you start with the other languages once you have a strong relationship to them in basque and they speak well spanish. There are a few things you need to be careful with when adding new languages. But that is another topic... Have a lovely one and don´t hesitate in contacting me, if you need more help or support (www.multilingual.family/services).
@@MultilingualFamily Thanks for your answer and the link, Andrea. I'm sure your advices will be so helpful in adding some foreign languages in the future :)
I speak Hindi, and English, my husband speaks Tamil and English, we speak English with each other. But we live in Germany and the social language is German . We are worried that 4 languages will be too much for a kid, and are not able to decide which one to give up. Because we want our parents to be able to speak with our kid, If we give up English, it seems like a big compromise, because the world opened up to us because we were fluent in English
Yes, you will need to analyze very well your situation and weigh up things to make the best decisions for your kids. Contact me if you want me to put you on the waiting list for the next free consultation slot to help you further with your case. www.multilingual.family/contact
My husband and I live in Taiwan (majority language Mandarin) and have very successfully used the OPOL method to teach our son (2yo) English and German, so he is now trilingual. We are expecting a second child and are trying to figure out, what language will our children speak to each other when not speaking to their parents, and are we supposed to try to influence that? My husband and I speak to each other in all three languages by the way (for practice reasons) so there isn't a consistent relationship language between us parents, though English is dominant. This doesn't seem to bother or affect our son. I would also like to say that we agree 100% with your opinion about only teaching native languages, because we see a lot of people here in Asia who raise their children with weird English. They think they can do it, but they really can't, and the result is children who speak no language well, as well as other weird problems. The best case scenario I've seen with this is a mom who has indeed almost perfected her American English and is raising a son who sounds American, however on closer inspection uses English that is very inflexible and missing lingual creativity, soulless English you could say.
Hi Andrea! We will have our first baby this month and I would like to have your advice. My goal is not to maximise the number of languages my baby will speak but actually not to confuse her too much. I am native Portuguese and for the time being we live in Portugal so that language she will be exposed to. Now the trickiest part, my husband grew up in Mauritius where both English and French are official languages and there is also Mauritius creole which is a spoken only language with a French base. His mom being South African mostly spoke with him in English and his dad creole. Between us we speak English and French using mostly French for small chit chat and English for more serious conversations but we include Portuguese and creole words here and there… My husband plans to speak English to the baby but creole will be there as well. Also, her nanny will be Indian and while she speaks a bit of English it isn’t her strongest language so I’m pretty sure she will be exposed to Hindi also. Should we limit her contact with so many languages and focus on Portuguese and English leaving creole for the grandparents when we visit them once a year and phone conversations?
I am Turkish, my partner is Dutch, we currently live in the Netherlands and speak English with each other. We are both very comfortable and fluent with English, to the point in which I wonder if it has become my stronger language. We are thinking of moving to another country (for work). That would make 4 languages, I believe this is similar to your personal experince. I definitely want to teach my future children Turkish, but I'm not ready to change our "home language" to whichever country we live in. What should we do? 😅
Hi Andrea, I am Croatian, raised bilingual Croatian-Italian. I speak English and Portuguese as well. My partner is Swedish, speaking also English. We speak English between us and we live in Switzerland, in the German part. Our baby will be exposed to three languages at home (Croatian, Swedish & English) and to German in kindergarten. Can you develop a strategy for us and give us any advice not to overwhelm our small human to come ?? 🙏🏼❤️ I appreciate your help!!
Hi Nika, nice to meet you! Your case is the clasic multilingual family. What I can offer you is access to a series of training videos about crafting a strategy by subscribing here: www.multilingual.family/sign-up The training videos to craft a strong strategy are coming out at the end of this month! So stay around because you come at the right time :0).
Hi Andrea! We have moved to Germany from Pakistan. My husband and I speak Urdu fluently, thats our mother language. We also speak English. Living here in Germany, our baby (12 months old) must be fluent in Deutsch (German language) but we want him to have a command over English language as its very important. The rest of our families, the baby's grandparents and everybody are still in Pakistan and we want him to understand Urdu as well to make it easy for him to communicate with his grandparents and all. Can you please guide us?
Hi! You just came at the right moment. Right now my Multilingual Family Success Program is on sale just until Thursday. So go ahead and take advantage of it. You get lifetime access to on-demand videos, pdfs, Group Coaching Calls where I can answer to all your questions and guide you on your multilingual journey! Here you can find all the info: multilingualfamily.my.canva.site/one-time-sale2023 See you in there!
Just found your channel... I don't have kids just yet but am interested on how I should handle it... So first of all. I grew up in Germany. My family spoke German... so basically everything was german. However the first 2 years of my life my mom spoke English towards me whenever she was alone with me. But she got too scared of raising me bilingual so she stopped. She herself were raised multilingual - without any structure (Portuguese, English, French and German - though she rejected German and forgot everything and had to relearn it as an adult) Then because I have English speaking relatives I was exposed to English again at the age of 8. After that I tried my best to learn it (as a kid I hated German). Now my English level is near native and sometimes I'm getting mistaken for a native speaker. I can't decide which one is my strongest language... it basically depends on the topic (medical stuff... german is strongest but for emotional things... it's English..... ) I dream in all of my languages... but mostly English and German... I don't really swear at all but if I definitely would in English... Also speaking a language depends on what language is someone talking towards me... (I tend to switch to the language of the other person) So if someone speaks English towards me I'll have no effort to chat in English. If someone speaks German it's the same... But what feels strange is if I am suppose to speak English while someone else speaks German towards me...and vice versa Technically I want my kids to learn English and Chinese as their first languages (thought about getting a Chinese nanny or something) and depending on their exposure also German and Spanish... (I know German and English. Also know a bit Chinese and Vietnamese and also a bit American Sign Language) I hope English would be okay to use with my child... Also if my mother would remember her Portuguese could she speak Portuguese with my future kid? Or should she stick to English or German as well? (Portuguese and English were her "first" languages that she spoke properly)
Hi Sam, thanks for explaining your case. I can't answer your questions in just a few lines. Please contact me to set up an appointment (www.multilingual.family/services).
Great video here - we have a 1 year old at home and we are both mother tongue Croatian speakers in a French speaking part of Belgium. So, for now we both speak Croatian to our son - however, we would like to pass our other languages to him as well (for myself Italian and for my wife German). Do you have any advice whether it's a good idea to mix languages when speaking to our son, or any other tips on how to approach this?
Sure, check out my other free videos, they are full of helpful tips. Also, join my mailing list to get more helpful content and get notified when the next course comes out (gonna happen soon and is only open for a few days a year). Join us here: www.multilingual.family/sign-up
Hi Andrea. I have a 2y 8m old daughter and a 7 m old son. I speak Polish to her, my hubby speaks English. We are currently living in the UK, yet are planning to move to Poland in 4 years time. Every so often I read books in German to my daughter, or we sing German songs. (I am a native Pole). Currently English is my strongest language, Polish is right behind it and I am brushing up on my German. My hubby is British. How do I comment on the German books we read, do I do it in Polish or German? Ps. I do read her books in all 3 languages as she is the one who chooses the book. When we read English, we comment in Polish. She recently started mixing English with German words f.e. by saying 'What noise does a hund make'. Ps. We also use alexa and google to which I speak in either English or German with my daughter. I would like to separate Polish from German when I speak to her. Have you got any ideas how to do it? Thanks in advance.
Hi again, it sounds really good what you are doing. Keep on reading in those languages. I would comment and explain everything in Polish - always. Code-Switching is really common and normal in multilingual children. Just make sure that you use consistently Polish with them when speaking freely (OPOL method) and sing songs and read in the other languages. Since your husband is a native English speaker, he can take over that language. It is not necessary that you do it too, most of all because you are planing to move to Poland, it is particularly important that they learn that language from you. Great job! Watch my other videos, they contain lots of ideas and tips that are going to help you. If you want, you can join my mailing list. I share with my subscribers every now and then games , activities and tools to print for free (www.multilingual.family/sign-up). Talk to you soon! Andrea
Hi! I am Russian. She is Thai. We live in Serbia. I can speak Russian, English and some Serbian. She speaks Thai and English. We talk with each other English only. We expect a baby. Our priorities will be Russian and Thai. English will be additional input for a kid. But what to do with Serbian? I am afraid about kid’s socialising :(
Hi, I can understand your fears. Don't worry, just make sure that your baby is in contact with children and caregivers that speak Serbian the latest at the age of three to help your child learn the majority language well before starting school. Consider joining my newsletter to get continuous support on how to raise your baby in multiple languages with success here: https:www.multilingual.family/sign-up Also, I'm about to release a unique offer in the next weeks. Join out community so you don't miss it! Kind regards
Hi Andrea, thank you for the informative video. I'd love to hear your two cents if you have a moment. My husband and I have the somewhat lofty goal of raising our son to speak four languages: English, French, Italian and Welsh. My husband is bilingual in French and Italian but he has decided to speak exclusively in French with him as he finds it easier to handle. I've committed to speaking with him in Italian, despite being a native English speaker who learned Italian as a second language. Because we live in Wales, he will naturally pick up Welsh in school / English from his grandparents and the environment. My biggest concern at the moment is his Italian. Because I do not speak it perfectly, I fear that my efforts could be more damaging than helpful. I also worry that our relationship might suffer in the future if I don't speak my native language with him. I should add that I am very keen on him learning Italian so that he can, at the very least, communicate on a basic level with his relatives in Italy. Unfortunately we live in a small town in the countryside, so relying on other people to provide Italian input isn't an option. What would you suggest? Should I persevere in spite of my fears? Or should I start to mix English and Italian as he gets older?
Hi Heather, thank you for your message. I strongly recommend that you stick with English as your main relationship language but also teach him Italian using the OSOL (or what I like to call the OAOL) method. It's a bit complicated to explain it all in one message so please consider booking a consultation to help you build up a strong language learning strategy for your family that I guarantee will work. My kids are also growing up trilingual and I use the OAOL with my own kids and have done it with my students too. In our meeting I can answer all of your questions anx explain to you: - Why it is important that you stick to your strongest language - Many proven ideas on how to support the minority language (Italian). - What OAOL method is and what options you have. - How to implement the method. - ... Having a good strategy since the beginning will make your lives much easier and you will probably be more satisfied with the outcomes. Consultation: www.multilingual.family/services Have a great day and hope to talk to you soon! Andrea
My husband and I, both, speak Spanish, English and ASL. I haven’t found one video that has approach ASL as another language for my child. (No one is dead in our family).
That was fantastic! I’m pregnant with my first baby and we’re Brazilian. My husband and I were talking about raise her as a bilingual child. So he’ll be talking only in Portuguese and I’ll be talking in English. This is called OPOL, I guess. However, I’m an English teacher and a sign language interpreter in Brazil. I’ve heard that newborns can communicate with us using sign language. So what’s is your opinion about that? My husband just speak Portuguese. And about English I need to study a lot about it, to be consistent and also creative to do some activities with her. And to learn baby vocabulary because I’ve been studying English since 2005 and I’ve never saw those kind of things in my entire life. I hope that I can do my best for her 🤰🏻💖
Thank you Andrea! It's a good video. Could you please give me some advices to raise my child multilingual. I am Mexican. Spanish is my native language, I speak English and German too. I work as German teacher. My husband speaks only Spanish.
Hey Andrea! Thanks for your videos. They are being really helpful for us trying to raise a bilingual child in Brazil. I’m trying to raise my baby speaking only English to her and my wife, Portuguese. In doing so, I have a few questions: is there any problem if I speak Portuguese to her when we are close to people that don’t understand English, especially when we are not at home? I’m not fluent yet French and German, but I’m getting there. I study a lot, watch videos, listen to music, etc. Is it ok if I once in a while say words or phrases to her in these languages, encourage and study with her in the future, or It would be not recommended, considering the OPOL method?
Hi Felipe, normally it isn't advisable to use with the children as a main language a language that you are not proficient in. If you feel confident enough in English and are proficient in it, it can be a big advantage for your child. You can introduce other languages, but again, ideally only if you master them, using the OSOL next to the OPOL. Watch my other videos to see how that can be done. Best wishes!
Hey! Thank you so much for this video. My husband and I are expecting a child and we really want our child to have the benefit of multilingualism. My husband speaks Turkish, Chinese (Mandarin) and English fluently. Turkish is his mother tongue, after that he is more confident in Chinese and then English. I speak English and Punjabi. My fluent and most natural language is English. My husband and I live in England and we speak together mainly in English. I want my child to learn Punjabi, but I also don’t have the fluency level in Punjabi that I have in English, plus my child will naturally learn English at school and from family. I can ask my Grandmother and mom to speak to my child in Punjabi. But I am not sure what language to use myself. Can I mix between Punjabi and English? How should we introduce Chinese if my husband solely speaks Turkish to our child? Thanks for your help in advance :)
I am expecting a baby, my mother language is Arabic, i speak French and English, i live in Taiwan with my wife where Chinese is the official language, my wife can aslo speak English and Japanese, the good thing about my case is that I teach English and I know quite enough about learning strategies and methods but only in English, So i am really confused how to teach all those languages to the kid?
Hi Nanil Yes, with so many languages your really need to craft a plan to introduce them systematically to your children. Consider a consultation with me to discuss your unique situation... www.multilingual.family/services
Hola! Soy de México y quiero enseñar inglés a mi hijo, empecé a hablarle Cua do tenía 4 años. Actualmente tiene 7 y entiende algunas frases pero aún no ha la inglés. Es posible hacer más rápido el aprendizaje del inglés a sus 7 años? Gracias
Hola! Claro, la mandera de hacer que aprenda mas rapido es exponiendole mas horas por dia a un input de lenguage de calidad alta. En Junio voy a sacar unos cuantos videos de entrenamiento para padres cruando hijos/as multilingües. Unete a mi lista de gente cosmopolita para enterarte cuando salgan. www.multilingual.family/sign-up
Please help! I speak Croatian, German, and English all fluently and my boyfriend speaks German and Chinese. Together we speak in German at home but live in China. What language should our baby learn? Ideally, I would like to teach him Croatian and English and my boyfriend Chinese but we speak with each other german so how will our baby understand us? Thanks
Hi! No need to panic. There are many parents that are in similar situations than you. To be able to give you proper advice, I need to know more about your family situation. You could book a consultation or take one of my mini-courses, where I explain step by step how to get started to be successful in raising multilingual children. More infos here: www.multilingual.family/services
Hi. I have a different case which you didn't cover in your video. Mother's language: Spanish Father's language: Italian Relationship language: English Majority language: Polish We both speak all three languages (English, Spanish, Italian) to different degrees of proficiency. We don't speak Polish. We are unaware how long we will be in Poland for. Minimum 2 more years. Child to be born soon. Our idea is to speak to the child in our strongest language (native in our case) in a 1 to 1 situation, and English in a Family situation. However, we are unsure what to do with Polish, especially considering the time when the baby will go to child care. Should we look for an exclusively English one? They are quite uncommon. The majority of childcare that have English teachers are bilingual (English and Polish) and the free ones are Polish only. What should we do, considering that we would prefer the kid to learn English than Polish, but we cannot necessarily go against the majority language, and we don't want too much language developmental delays in already what will be a trilingual kid. Thank you in advance for your advice.
Hi Andrea, Spanish and Italian are quite similar, which is an advantage for your child in many ways. Use the OPOL method (one parent one language) with Spanish and Italian. Use it consistently - do not mix. You can speak English with each other but don´t do it with your kids. The baby will learn that language passively, but it won´t develop as well as Spanish/Italian if not exposed in other situations as well. The big question is: Are you going to stay in Poland? If most likely not, it might be better to consider an English/Polish or only English daycare. If you think your child is going to go to school in Poland, you need to make sure that your child starts learning Polish the latest at the age of 3! We can set up an appointment to further discuss your case and help you build a solid strategy for your family (www.multilingual.family/services).
I have a question. If my husband is French, I’m Ecuadorian/American so I speak Spanglish and my husband speaks mostly French so We talked together in French at home. We currently live in the U.S but we are soon moving to France. What language should I pick to start talking to my future baby? I want him to know Spanish/French and English… any recommendations?
Hi Erika, since you are moving to France, you should consider changing your relationship language to Spanish or at least English if possible because French is going to be the majority language. Which language is your strongest EN or ES? Choose one to be the MAIN language (OPOL method) and introduce the other one using the OSOL method. If all of what I just wrote doesn't ring a bell, be sure to jump into my coming course because there I will explain everything step by step. Make sure to join us to stay posted: www.multilingual.family/sign-up
Hi. My wife and I live in Belgium (Dutch-speaking part), we communicate in English. She's Albanian/Italian so the child will communicate in those 2 languages to her family. I am Bosnian, so with my family it'll be Bosnian.This makes it 5 languages that the child will "have to" acquire just to communicate with the immediate family and the surroundings we're living in. We are not so concerned if the baby will learn all thes languages but more with the fact if he'll be overwhelmed by all them at once and what's the maximum we can expose him to. We've heard some theories that it can be too much for them and that it'll pospone them starting to speak at all (hope these aren't the case). I'm sure that eventually he'll learn all 5 (not all of them have to be to the same level of course) but in essence, my question is is it OK to expose him to so much from the beginning? Thanks!
Yes, it´s really important that you develop a strategy for your multilingual children. Kids are able to learn 5 and more languages, BUT the approach you chose has to be intentional and well planned for your child to be able to learn the languages smoothly and without greater problems. Contact me if you wish me to help you crafting a successful plan for your family through a Consultation. www.multilingual.family/contact
Hello, great video, but I’m bit confused what to do in my case 😅 My husband is american, he speaks with child in English no questions here. I’m Ukrainian, but now we live in Poland and I’m learning Polish. Here I can find mostly books that are English/Polish. Should I teach my child Polish words or even if writing is in Polish I should teach her Ukrainian words because it’s my strongest language? She is 7 months old now, so I’m trying to figure out which system to have
Hi, yea definitely stick to Ukrainian. Don't worry about Polish, just make sure that your child is exposed to groups where Polish is spoken the latest at the age of 3. Focus all your effort on Ukrainian.
Hello! I am new here. And I would like some help with which language should we use to communicate with our baby. We are from Madagascar but we live in China. My strongest language is English so I speak English with him, and my husband speak French or sometimes Malagasy to him and our family members speak Malagasy too when they video call us. About Chinese; only our Chinese friends speak Chinese to him and we think he will learn that as soon as he will go to Chinese daycare. What do you think?
I'm delightful to find your channel, from now on you will be my guide. My name is Cinthia, I'm Brazilian and my first language is Portuguese and I speak English fluently and a little Spanish. My husband is Matheus he only speaks Portuguese. We have 2 kids, Júlia 3 years old and Theo 1 year and 8 months old. I speak English with my kids since I was pregnant. Julia is bilingual and Theo is getting there. But npw I really want to introduce a third language to them, which is Spanish. My question is, is that possible, since I will be the only person to speak with them 2 different languages, and we all live in Brazil. We do not have Spanish speakers friends.
Yes, use the OSOL method and use lots of support with music, books, audiobooks etc. Join my mailing list to get more free tools and games that help you raise your children multilingual 🙂. www.multilingual.family/sign-up
I was born in Nicaragua, my wife is Chinese and we live in China. I speak English and Spanish at about the same level of proficiency. I can't decide which is my strongest language. I have a little bit of a Hispanic accent when I speak English but it is the language I use most often (dreaming, socializing, cursing, etc.). I struggle a little bit expressing myself in Spanish. Sometimes I can't find the words. I arrived in the US when I was 13 and, for some reason, I just don't sound native in both the languages I speak. What should I do? I would really appreciate your advice.
Hello! Thank you for this video. I really need your advice. My husband and I are from India but have different mother tongues. We live in Germany. My son is almost 3 months old. I really want him to learn both our mother languages, English and German. Hence I've been speaking with him in all these languages since more than a month. So, I speak in Hindi on Sunday and Monday, English on Tuesday and Wednesday, German on Thursday and Gujarati on Friday and Saturday. May I continue with this or should I stick to only 1 language? Unfortunately, none of our relatives live in Germany so can't take their support.
Hi Mukta! I see that you have big plans for your child. I think that you need to prioritize and set yourself goals first. You can go here to download some tools that will help you with that: www.multilingual.family/sing-up I would do something like this: 1) Speak and build a relationship to your baby in your mother tongue (spend most of the waking hours speaking to your child in your L1). Your husband should do the same. 2) Send your child to a "Kita" or "Spielgruppe" in German some days and only read books in German, if you have a nearly proficient level. 3) Keep on using the OSOL method for English, if you have a proficient level, otherwise only read books in English and look for other external support. Hope that I could help you a bit, keep on following me to get more support!
Thanks a lot! Yes, your answer gave me a lot of clarity. I'll surely follow your advice. I've already subscribed to your mail list. Thank you for the precious guidance and support. 😍
Hi Andrea! My husband and I are currently teaching our daughter 5 languages. I speak 4 (native language Papiamentu, Spanish, Dutch and English) and he speaks English. Her grandparents speak Yoruba with her. My question is how do I incorporate Spanish and Papiamentu when my native language is my strongest and Spanish comes second? Our relationship language: English
Great question, there is a way, but you need to introduce the language clearly and carefully. Also, there is a risk that your child develops a little bit of every language and non fully. That can be dangerous, but with the right support, it can be done. Contact me to set up an appointment and help you with your case in depth (www.multilingual.family/services)
Hi Andrea, my husband is Samoan but speaks English probably a bit better than Samoan as he is from New Zealand. I’m Russian and German and my mother tongue is Russian but I speak better german as I grew up in Germany since I was 6. At home we speak English as we live in Australia. So my son who is 18 months old is mostly exposed to English because as a family we speak English to each other. I try and use German and read in German to my son when we’re by ourselves and when I’m being lovey dovey I automatically speak Russian for some reason. The problem is my boy is used to English so gets upset sometimes when I talk to him in German too much. My husband uses Samoan on a daily basis with our son but mostly simple requests and questions. How can we make sure he actually gets to learn all 4 languages at least to a certain degree? Thank you so much for your help in advance and your great videos. :)
Hi Natascha You need to speak consistently in German with your child and only use EN to speak to your husband. Your husband should do the same with Samoan. Because you live in Austria, your child will learn German fast and that will become the strongest language at some point. As for Russian, do you have other family members that could speak that to your child? You might have to consider a course later on in Russian and using the OSOL method to practice with your child if you feel comfortable enough in Russian. The topic is complex and I can't really give you in a few lines the best advice, but stay posted, as my next course for parents like you is soon coming out, and there you will learn tons of useful and important information to make the best choices for your multilingual family Join us her: www.multilingual.family/sign-up
Hi I'm so happy to find someone like you to help us to raise my son multilingual. In my case I'm in trouble haha. My wife and I are Spanish speaker and I'm fluent in English so I'm trying to raise him to English but it's hard because my wife doesn't speak it and we live in a Spanish country. So what can I do in my situation? Thanks in advance
Haha you're funny! So how good is your English level? C2? I understand your situation and why you are making this great effort. Normally I don't advice to speak another language to the kids than the first one, but in your case your kids are not at "risk" - you are haha. It will require an enormous amount of engagement from your side to keep on going. Why don't you try and convince your wife to start learning English as well. That would make everything much easier and even fun. Please join me in my private Facebook group to be able to help you more. I can tell that you will need a place to let the steam out when things get hard. I will make sure you don't quit your dream ;). Si te animas... facebook.com/groups/multilingual.family/ Stay healthy and talk to you soon! Andrea
Yes that's what it thought. And I will talk to her to start talking to my son only in English. My level is C1... and of course I'll join your Facebook group. It's a pleasure. Thank you so much for the answer
Thank you for the wonderful video Andrea! I would to love raise my 1-year old daughter to speak English, French, Italian (my native tongue), and Polish (my wife's native tongue). What strategy do you recommend? The majority language here is English and we will be sending her to a French daycare and school. Our relationship language is English - my wife's and my strongest language. We have been speaking to our daughter in French since birth in order to give her a solid start for school. How and when should we introduce the other languages? My wife and I have spoken to our respective parents in our native tongues since birth so we're both fluent but our written grammar is lacking because we received limited formal training. I would like my daughter to learn these languages as part of his cultural identity. I hesitate to send her to the Italian and Polish Saturday morning school offered here for fear that being forced to go to more school on weekends will make her hate the languages. The grandparents aren't nearby and my Italian brother won't even speak Italian with me or his kids -- only English.
Hi Roberto, how high is your level in French? I think you shouldn´t speak to your child in French, let the school take care of that. English will be easy to learn for your baby, because it is the community language and the uncle and you and your wife speak it. If I were you, I´d use the OPOL method starting NOW: Dad: Italian Mom: Polish School: French Surrounding : English This could work if your and your wife feel comfortable enough speaking in your native languages: Italian and Polish. The fact that you can´t write very well doesn´t matter. To pass on your culture and build your child´s identity you only need to be able to speak the languages well. The best time to introduce the minority languages was yesterday. The next best time is NOW. Once your child goes to school, English and French will become very dominant and if you haven´t introduced Polish and English by then, it will be practically impossible to make them speak those languages with you. Join my mailing list to get more free support and so I can help you on every step of your multilingual family´s journey here: www.multilingual.family/sign-up
@@MultilingualFamily Thank you so much! I work as a paralegal in a French legal office. I spend most of my day writing in French and occasionally translate documents into French for the lawyers. My French grammar is fairly advanced but it is not as good as my English which is the majority language here. I am scared of making basic Italian grammar mistakes in front of my daughter. I have an extensive Italian vocabulary and I am definitely fluent with no accent but my father points out that I sometimes make mistakes with articles and verb tenses. I'm also concerned about confusing my daughter early on when a lot of the children in our community need help learning French because of the dominance of English here. We were hoping to give here a good foundation for school. I will discuss with my partner as I would like our daughter to learn Italian.
Really nice video! My situation is as follows: My native language is Arabic, my wife’s slovene, we live in NL so majority language is Dutch (we both speak it but I am not as good as my wife), my wife and I speak to each other mainly in English. Currently we speak to our newborn (1 month) Arabic and Slovene to him one on one and when we are both together we use English so that we both feel included. Dutch is also used sometimes but we decided to let the daycare handle it. Do you have extra recommendations to us?
Yes, focus a lot on Arabic and Slovak for the next 3-4 years. That means, expose your child to as many words as possible because this will make all the difference in the future! The first few years are your best chance to build up the minority languages. Also, make sure that your child has contact to Dutch speaking people the latest at the age of 3 so he/she doesn´t have any trouble when going to school. Be aware that you are dealing with lots of languages and that you might have to prioritize one over another at times. Please contact me if you wish more detailed help with your case. I would love to help you. In cases like yours a consultation could work wonders (www.multilingual.family/services).
@@yel408 sure - my native is Russian, my husband’s - Chinese, we speak English between ourselves and we live in French part of Switzerland… what is worse - we don’t speak neither French (learning), nor each other’s languages 😭😄
Hi there how are you? I have watched all your videos and I am trying to find a moment where it matches my situation as a multilingual family. I am from Nepalese origin and speak Nepalese, English and hindi fluently and now french aswell. I live in Lyon, France and my husband is french and speaks in english aswell. We have a nearly 11 months old baby girl. I speak to her in Nepalese during meal times and while on video calls with my family back in Nepal. Otherwise, it’s in english rest of the time. As she loves books, all the readings happen in english from my side and my husband does it in french. I often doubt and wonder if there’s any better ways. She is in language developmental phase as the moment and repeats many words in all three languages. I would be glad to have your opinion. Much love. Thanks in advance.
Hi Andrea, I have a 6 months old baby. Our family has a quite diverse background: my husband is from Nepal and currently lives in Australia (main language is Nepalese & English) and myself (Vietnamese, Mandarin, German, English and French). So we are so confused how to start teaching her all those languages so she will be able to connect with all our family members from dad’s side and mom’s side. Additionally, we are far away from our families so if we would use OPAL method, she just can talk max. 3 languages.
Hi Yenny, I think you should prioritize and concentrate on maximum three languages for now. Once the baby starts understanding and talking in those, slowly add a new language. It is really important that you choose a method (OPOL, MLAH or OSOL) and build up a strategy for your family so that your child can develop well and without risking negative effects on your child's psyche in the future. I can help you guiding you step by step, but I need more time and dedication for that. Here you can find what I can offer you for now: www.multilingual.family/services Have a nice day!
Hey, hi. I'm from Vietnam. I'm currently living in Vietnam. My spouse is also a Vietnamese. And I raise my kid bilingual: Vietnamese and English. Although we're living in Vietnam, she doesn't speak Vietnamese. She can understand Vietnamese to some extend but she prefers to use English. She's two years old and she know a lottt in English. My question is: How can I teach her Vietnamese while I also want she to be fluent in English? I know It sounds insane Because we're in Vietnam. But that's our trouble as well. If I communicate more in Vietnamese, she may get familiar with it and switch to Vietnamese completely. and my husband always busy working so I'm with her most of the time.
Hi I love your video I think is really interesting I’m bilingual english and French and I speak fluently spanish as well. My husband speaks only Italian and at school my baby will learn Italian. I would like that my baby speaks all of them how can I do? Thank you for your help
Hi Alessia! I'm currently working on some training videos that will answer lots of your questions. Make sure you subscribe (www.multilingual.family/sign-up) to be notified when they come out.
We speak three languages (Arabic, English, and Swedish), so my daughter has started learning them all. I would like her to learn one more language or at least be exposed to one more language, I am thinking of Japanese or Chinese. Is it enough for my daughter to be with a babysitter that speaks one of these languages once a week for 1 hour? My daughter will become three years old in December
Hello! Exposure is always good, even if its only once a week. You just have to lower your expectations, since that language is going to develop slower because your child has less exposure in it. Just make sure that you pay close attention to giving your child enough exposure in the other ones (in the main one/ones) because you want to avoid at all costs that the child develops a little bit of every language but non fully.
Hi there! Thanks a lot for your videos! Really interesting and useful. I'd like to ask you how many hours a day a child must be exposed to in order for him to become bilingual at a conversational level. Would 3 hours be enough? What do you think about TV exposure? Thanks in advance!!
Hi Maria, thank you so much. It depends. The more your child is exposed to a language per day, the faster he/she is going to reach a conversational level. The same thing goes for the other direction. The less he/she is exposed, the longer it will take to reach that goal. The rule of thumb is around 30% of the waking hours. Please watch this video, it will probably answer your question in detail: th-cam.com/video/ERbDNp-gMaw/w-d-xo.html
Hello Andrea, I'm a Spanish native speaker and my wife is Russian, our son is attending a Russian daycare and we live in Quebec witch means French is the language here and of course, between my wife and I English is the common language, however, he seems to develop his mother tongue is Russian and Spanish due to our commitment to speak to him in our mother tongue. My concern is he will start up the primary school in French but neither of us speaks it at home what we should do in this case?
Hello Juan, it's great that you are committing to speak in your native tongues with your child. Wonderful! Don't worry, stick to your native tongues RIGOROUSLY and make sure that your child is exposed to French the latest at the age of 3 to have a good start in school. Please subscribe here (www.multilingual.family/sign-up) as I'm currently working on my next course that will answer a ton of questions and will help you enormously to be a successful multilingual family.
Dear Andrea!! Thanks a million for all the help and guidance that your are sharing with all of us. My husband and I really see your channel interesting and as a reference. I would like to share our case, seeking for your help. I'm half Jordanian half Spanish, speak Arabic and Spanish bilingual, I was raised in Jordan but living now in Spain. Also speak a profesional English and understand French. My husband is Italian also speaks fluent Spanish and English. Currently we are living in Spain and our relation language is Spanish. I'm pregnant now and we would like to raise our Child in our main 3 languages: Spanish Italian and Arabic. We thought about the OPOL method (I will be talking to her in Arabic and my husband in Italian) and Spanish will be the community language and she will learn it passivly as well while my husband and I communicate. Would that be a correct option? Could you please share with us your point of view and advice? We appreciate it a lot. Thanks again ❤️❤️❤️❤️. Sara & Alessandro
Hi! Yes, your strategy sounds good! I think that can work. Just keep in mind that you need to focus on Arabic and Italian in the first years of your child's life to reach the best results. I recommend taking some of the courses I've put together for cosmopolitan parents like you, since you are going to learn tons of things that are going to make your life so much easier. You are pregnant now. It's the PERFECT time to invest in your know-how and give your child a wonderful kick-start in terms of language development. Here you can find the courses: www.multilingual.family/services :0)
Can i speak to my daughter in two languages? I am from PHilippines. my daughter has learned our native dialect and English. I haven't exposed her yet to our national language which is Filipino... I am a single mom, so I am her only source. can i speak in those 3 languages mixed?
You can do that in an orderly way. Check out my other videos where I explain proven ways of speaking more than one language to your children with success.
Hi I have a question About toys Should my kid play with different language toys than we as parents speak me German, my husband spanish to him? We speak at home with each other engl. So can my kid play with engl toys ? Or would it confuse the baby
Sure it can. It won´t confuse your child. Just make sure that you speak to your child consistently in your strongest languages (hence: no mixture with English). Contact me if you have more questions to book a consultation (info@multilingual.family).
Hi! Thank you so much for your vidoes.. I am watching them with alot of passion as myself and my wife have a new baby coming (our first) and we really would love to get your advise as we are unsure what to do when raising our baby : We are currently living in Israel and I speak Hebrew (native) and English (as native) while my wife speaks Mandarin Chinese and we both usually use English to communicate between us. Our child will grow up in Israel for next few years (assuming 5) with the following few years in China (at least that's the plan) .. we were thinking that I should speak to him in English , his mother will talk in Chinese and the environmental language would be Hebrew, with the hope that he can take up the Hebrew from the surroundings and taking into account that English would be used between all of us when we go back to China.. after watching your videos I am not so sure that a good strategy anymore as I'm worried his Hebrew would be weak and he would have a hard time growing up here In Israel as such .. what would you recommend us to do or where can I find more resources that would help me get to the best strategy for our situation.. thank you so much and keep making this videos 🙏
Hello Hanan Thank you so much for your message! I would really love to help you but supplying this channel with valuable content consumes all of my spare time. The growth of this channel has led to lots of people seeking for personal advice and I´m struggling keeping up with all of it. In addition, it requires often more than just a few lines to answer your questions thoroughly. However, I don´t want to leave you hanging there, so this is what I can offer at the moment: - A personal consultation. We would arrange a date where I analyze your family situation and together, we find the best strategy for your multilingual family. This option gives you the possibility to ask follow-up questions. More information here: www.multilingual.family/services - A paid Q&A video. I would take your personal situation and shoot a video answering your questions. The difference to the consultation is that it is not interactive, and it gets published. More information here: www.multilingual.family/services - Continue to profit from the free content I offer to my subscribers. Sign-up here www.multilingual.family/sign-up to be notified when new courses and free material come out and/or watch my other videos, as they contain plenty of free helpful tips. - I will be offering a step by step online workshop for multilingual families in approximately one year. I hope that one of these options suits you. If so, send me an email to info@multilingual.family with your choice of preference. Thank you for your understanding and all the best to you and your family! Andrea
Hi Andrea. My sister recently had a baby and she is married to an Arab man. We live in Canada so the majority language is English. Her husband speaks to the child only in Arabic but my sister and her husband speak English to each other. My native language is a rare and easy language known as Sri Lanka Malay but my sister is unable to speak it so she speaks to the baby in English. Only my parents and I can speak it and they are staying with her until the end of the year. I already know that the child will be better at English and Arabic than at SLM but what can my parents and I do to make sure that she can learn that language too as its endangered. As of now there are not too many resources or media in the language and anything I find will be shown to the baby. I just have me and my parents speak to the baby exclusively in SLM. How can we keep the language in the child especially once my parents leave my sisters house at the end of the year? Thank you for your help 😃
Hi Emmad Fist of all congratulations on wanting to teach the baby SLM, to conserve and protect your heritage language. There are a some things that you can do to expose the baby to that language, even if you and your parents are far away. Regular visits and recordings are probably the beste options next to anything else you can find in SLM (books, games, videos, apps etc). To help you in detail, I'll need more time to explain things and answer your questions. Here are two options that you might be interested in. Go to www.multilingual.family/services Have a great day! Andrea
Hi Andrea please help me! me and my husband are from India and we talk in Hindi at home. But my husband’s native language is marathi. We now live in Oslo and my baby goes to kindergarten where he is exposed to norwegian. We both don’t know norwegian. Also we want to teach english to our baby. my baby is 2 yrs 4 months old and doesn’t speak any of the language. He just say few words but doesn’t frame a sentence. How should we teach him to communicate.
Just stick to your native languages when speaking to your child. Make sure your child goes the latest at the age of 3 to a norwegian daycare some days a week and don't worry abour English. The school will take care of that.
Kids can be confronted with languages since before birth. If you are the one speaking more than one language, you need to think about a suitable method for your family. Contact me if you need more help (info@multilingual.family)
Hello, do you have anything on the case of only one parent being the multilingual and the other parent being monolingual? i.e. I speak fluent Spanish and English (grew up bilingual, and that’s also the language my husband and I have in common, plus we live in the US), fluent Portuguese (a language I often think of and find talking to myself in often), and intermediate conversational French.
Hi Sendy, I saw you signed up for an intake call. I just approved the date, so we will be able to talk about your situation on the 25th. Meanwhile check out my "Multilingual Parenting Know-How" playlist. :)
Holaa necesito un consejo porfavor! Mi primer idioma es español pero creciendo en Italia hablo muy fluido el Italiano, hablo muy bien en inglés y tengo buen nivel de Alemán. Mi pareja es de Moldova y el habla rumano y ruso, nuestro idioma común es el Italiano y vivimos en Alemania. Vamos a tener una nena en pocos meses y me gustaría mucho que aprendiera mas idiomas, por cuales sería justo empezar y como deberiamos organizarnos ? No quiciera confundirla, he escuchado tantos casos de niños que han tenido problemas en comunicarse por causa de los muchos idiomas. Gracias de antemano 😊
Hola, veo que tienen muchos idiomas en casa. En su caso es sumamente importante que se organicen bien para que funcione el desarrollo de los idiomas como usteden desean. Como su caso es un tanto complejo, te sugeriria considerar una consulta conmigo para averiguar cuales son sus metas, deseos, recursos etc. y juntos crear un plan de idiomas que les convenga. Mas informacion aqui: www.multilingual.family
Hi Andrea, I would love your advice. I speak Spanish and English (Eng is my dominant language, Spanish is my first language and I tend to speak Spanglish with my family) and my husband speaks Korean and English. We live in South Korea, and will do for the next 5 years. Our baby is due in the fall. I am determined to speak in Spanish using the OPOL method (and it will eventually strengthen my anemic Spanish) because I really fear the child not learning it any other way since relatives are far and it's hard to always communicate through phone or video. My husband will speak solely Korean and as we will speak English with each other. My concern is my child learning English too slowly and having a hard time in 5 years when we move back States side. But I did learn English when I was 5 myself, like a sponge so perhaps this fear is unfounded? Our friends here in Korea would be speaking English. Do you think this is the best way to tackle this? Thank you!
Hi Alex, yea that sounds very good to me. Focus on Spanish, your husband on Korean. If you want to help your child out with English, either hire a nanny that speaks only English to him/her or use the also the OSOL/OAOL method to expose your child to English as well, but only after you have established a strong bond to your child in Spanish (in 2 years or so). Just try to stick to Spanish as much as possible, avoid "spanglishing" your baby. SUERTE y sígueme para estar en contacto :) www.multilingual.family/sign-up
Such a great video. Thank you. I have a question where you say to use your strongest language with your child. Both me and my husband have different native Indian languages. However for both of us our strongest language is English and that is what we use to speak to each other and is the language of the country. Can we still use OPOL and speak in our native languages respectively with our child and leave English to when he starts school and hears us speaking to each other and that way have him learn those 3 languages?
why would my child have psychological difficulties later if my strongest language is turkish but do not speak in turkish to him because I do not enjoy the language and prefer other languages? My own parents did speak to me in turkish but I still had a low self-esteem around my turkish identity. (the whole country does sort of because we are next to europe and europe does not like us)
If you feel so strongly against your heritage language, it might be a point to consider. Just know that kids need to have proud and strong parents to want to speak their languages. For building their identity it is crucial that they know their roots and know where they come from. It is therefore usually not ideal to drop the heritage language.
@@MultilingualFamily thanks for the input. I do believe what you are saying. I guess I just thought that speaking the ancestral language may give him low confidence because it would make him feel different from his friends, classmates whereas if he just speaks the same language as others, he would fit in better as he would not have this other identity he needs to grapple with. I do believe what you are saying as you are an expert in this topic and I literally just had a child 7 months ago but I guess I do not understand fully why things work that way, and having a ancestral language gives fewer issues around identity rather than more. There are so many Americans who do not speak their ancestral language (polish and ukrainian etc) and they fit in whereas the ones who stayed within their immigrant communities and kept their languages seem to have more problems. Same with the turkish community in Germany. So that was how I formed my viewpoint. Again, I do believe your words, I just wish I understood the reason behind your assertions a bit better. Also my child smiles at me more when I started speaking with him in german and said a bunch of cute things so he seemed to enjoy it. Anyway, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and knowledge with other parents. Really appreciate it.
@@MultilingualFamily I guess what I was thinking was that it is stressful and anxiety-generating to have a secondary identity that is potentially seen as different or viewed negatively by society whereas if you just did not instill that identity in your child, they could avoid that anxiety and pain involved with being something different and not fitting in. But I value your opinion and will be reading more on the topic, for example a book called "strong roots have no fear" by an indian american is on my list.
Hola Andrea, thanks for your video. I have yet another case for you. I dont have a real native language. I have a native level in Spanish and in English since I grew up in an English speaking country speaking spanish at home with my parents. My husband is Italian, and we live in Italy. What suggestions would you have for us? Is it too much if I speak to the baby in english and spanish and my husband in Italian? I was thinking of doing the OPOL and perhaps choosing particular times of the day, like dinner time or bath time for example to speak one of my native languages. what do you recommend?
Hi, yes that is possible. Choose a main language to use with your child (OPOL) and the other language you can introduce and build up using the OSOL method. Check out my other videos for more information about that.
Hola, Andrea. Estoy embarazada, mi esposo es turco y yo soy mexicana. Hemos decidido que yo voy a hablar en español y él en turco, pero ambos nos comunicamos en inglés. Después de ver tu video me preocupa un poco que nuestro nivel de inglés no sea lo suficientemente bueno para que nuestro bebé lo adquiera de manera pasiva. ¿Qué sugieres en este caso?, ¿no debemos hablarle en inglés al niño incluso cuando estemos juntos?
Hola Ana Gabriela, su plan suena muy bien. Mientras tu le hables a tus hijos en Español y tu marido en Turco, todo está bien, no hay por qué preocuparse. Dónde viven? Si viven en USA o un país donde hablan Inglés, su bebé aprenderá de los alrededores más que de ustedes. Si viven en México u otro país, entonces solo deben encontrar alguna persona o institución donde hablen con su hij@ en Inglés y lo aprenderá sin problema, sin importar que ustedes usen Inglés para comunicarse. Los niños no aprenden idiomas pasivamente de la misma manera en que lo hacen al hablar con ellos directamente. Mientras ustedes no le hablen a su hij@ directamente en Inglés, no veo el problema. Únete a mí grupo de padres cosmopolitas para recibir más ayuda aquí: www.multilingual.family/sign-up Suerte!
For reference, my native language is Hebrew, but i am as fluent or sometimes more fluent in English (For example, I mostly write, even for myself, in English. I also usually dream in English). I also learned a bit of German for my husband's family. My husband's native language is German, between us two we speak English, but we live in the netherlands, so in kindergarten the child will learn Dutch.
Hi, it depends on what your goals are. What other language could you speak with your husband? English can be an option but if you are looking to strengthening one of your minority languages, then choosing another relationship language might be a good idea. Consider booking a consultation if you need more help in crafting a plan for your multilingual family here: www.multilingual.family/consultation Kind regards
@@MultilingualFamily thanks so much for your reply! A goal? I guess to have as many languages as possible... But we speak English amongst ourselves, because his hebrew is very poor, and we don't love German... So English is the most spontaneous for us.
Hi Andrea! Thank you very much for your videos! You are doing a great job! I’m currently pregnant with my first baby, but already planing in advance how to raise him/her. Specially the language part is marking my head spin! I’m native polish speaker, my partner is Armenian/Lebanese, we live in Sweden and at home we speak mostly English. Rarely switch to Swedish because we speak it at work, but I don’t feel that comfortable with it yet. I’m planning to speak polish to our kid, my partner will choose Armenian, but than I’m worried how will the child learn Swedish before going to daycare? Should we speak to him/her both our native tongues + Swedish? Or native tongues + English as that’s our relationship language? Thank you again for you interesting videos. All best, Zuzanna
Stick to the OPOL with your native tongues. If your child starts learning Swedish the latest staring at the age of 3, you don't have anything to worry about. Focus on the minority languages and outsource the task of introducing Swedish.
Can a new born baby learn 2 languages fluently or atleast being able to have extended conversations if he/she has exposure of those 2 languages (such as Hindi and English)?
Hallo andrea ich wuerde auch gerne einen Rat von dir haben ❤️ ich bin Bosnierin aber in Deutschland aufgewachsen , der papa ist araber und wir leben in Kuwait jedoch ist papa viel arbeiten so dass mein kleiner dort bald in die Krippe müsste damit er das arabisch mehr mitbekommt . Nun ich speche mit ihm bis jetzt nur bosnisch weil mir das seeeehr wichtig war das sehe ich als meine Identität auch wenn ich als baby schon in De war und mehr in De mein leben verbracht hab. Er ist 19 monate alt , wie mach ich das jetzt mit dem Deutsch beibringen ? Sollte ich es mal versuchen mit den aufgeteilten Tagen in Der woche 3 Tage bosniscj 2 Tage deutsch ? Dss würde mir eig leicht fallen. Ich liebe die deutsche Sprache und will ihm am liebsten alles auF Deutsch beibringen. Bosnisch möchte ich einfach dass er es reden kann . Was ratest du mir ? Wir haben dort leider keinen von meiner Familie und es gibt einen Deutschen Kindergarten aber da er im arabischen mitkommen muss würde das auch wegfallen. ? Lg ❤️
Ah und sollte ich jetzt schon Anfangen mit dem Deutsch oder noch warten bis er mich wirklich versteht auf bosnisch. Er ist 19 mon alt redet nicht wirklich paar wörter aber auf bosniscj ich merke er versteht mich . Ist es der ricjtige zeitpunkt für deutsch ?
Liebe Nej, ich würde dir sehr gerne weiterhelfen, aber mir fehlt momentan die Zeit um deinen Fall genau zu analysieren und dir eine profesionelle Antwort zu geben. Zur Zeit kann ich dir eine Beratung anbieten oder ein sogenanntes "Paid Q&A Video", um deine Fragen zu beantworten. Wenn du Interesse hast, besuche bitte folgende Seite: www.multilingual.family/services Ich würde mich freuen nochmals von dir zu hören. Liebe Grüsse Andrea
Hi Andrea, my baby is 3 months old. I live in Turkey, my husband& me communicat at home in our native language (Kurdish) but we can't read or write in Kurdish, we both fluent in Arabic(our strongest language). My husband does not speak English. I speak English but not fluent. I don't care about turkish bc i know she will learn it anyway. I want to teach my baby English, Arabic and kurdish at the same time . Since my baby were born I speak with her in English, her daddy in Arabic while we communicate with each other in Kurdish. I really like to speak with my baby in English all the time but I'm afraid that will affect her negatively bc of my pronunciation. So what do you recommend in my situation?
Hi Eman, thank you for your comment. I strongly recommend you to speak Kurdish with your child. Let your husband keep on speaking consistently with the baby in Arabic and find other sources to teach your child English (lots of books, music, videos and in the best case a human being like a nanny to build up a relationship to the baby in English. I advice you to put ALL of your energy in building a strong relationship to your child in Kurdish. The first 6 years are crucial! The same goes for your husband in Arabic. Best wished to you and your multilingual family! Join my mailing list to get more help and support: www.multilingual.family/sign-up
@@MultilingualFamily thanks for your fast reply. what about only 1 or 2 hours a day for English by reading books, singing songs, naming the things in home..etc? Bc i want to teach her to read in English& Arabic by using glenn doman method plus that Kurdish is a simple language& we have many friends can speak with her in Kurdish.
Hola, Andrea, lamento decirte algo tan estúpido pero imaginaba que tal vez te gustaría saber que la palabra arabic en inglés también se destaca en la primera sílaba como en español
![พบรัก - INK WARUNTORN x FELLOW FELLOW [LIVE SESSION]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/1VonHhP6_Y8/mqdefault.jpg)
Newsletter sign-up:
⭐ www.multilingual.family/sign-up
Get a one-on-one consultation with me:
⭐ www.multilingual.family/coaching-call-60-min
I am a native frisian and dutch speaker. I speak English and german as well. Girlfriend speaks Hungarian natively and English and she is learning Dutch. We have some planning to do for our future kids..
I'll help you build up a strategy when you're ready.
Omg it's exactly the same for us......
I drink Frisian Flag
Ik bin ek Frysk! 😊
Thank God I found your video! I've been trying to come up with how to speak to my 18 month old. I am mixed in culture. At home we speak English (UK and US versions), Turkish, Polish, and with family Spanish, French and with my culture exposures Hindi and also Japanese. I feel very connected to Hindi but also my other languages. My child speaks a mish-mash of words of each rather than fully in one. Now, at home we understand but outside of home I fear no one else will as he really mixes them up. Your video is what I've actually been thinking how to come up with a solid plan: Pick 3, reduce to the three for six months minimum and then expand. Knowing he will passively catch on anyway, but focusing on how to teach with intention. Yay! You video helped me make sense and confirm exactly what I was thinking to do! Xx
So your family is pretty much mixed up with different languages and cultures. I still can not imagine what your family tree looks like with languages from all different countries and continents. Every generation brings 3 languages on average, but the next generation can not grasp all if the speaking environment is too different. There will always be family members being left out. I wonder how much languages should be taught for children and how many more they should learn in their future.
Hi Goldenrose - any updates on your 3-language plan? How is it going with your language journey so far?
I'm French and Mexican and my husband is Puerto Rican and Italian. Both of our first language is English and would love for our future kids to know their ancestors languages.
Andrea, muchísimas gracias!!! This was so helpful! So I think you helped me nail this down: I speak to him in Spanish, my husband, in French, English he will learn passively via play dates, listening to me and my husband speak, day care, and community and finally, for Arabic, my husband should use the OAOL method (I will watch those videos to learn more). Thank you again for answering my question via video! I really enjoy all of your videos - You are brilliant!
I'm so glad!
Wow, this comment section is amazing. That's so generous of you to devote your time to help people for free! Amazing content as well!
Hey great video! I speak 4 languages - Russian (mother tongue), English, Spanish and Turkish, living in Spain and married to a Spanish (haha what a mix 😂). I have always dreamt of having multilingual babies (I was raised with just one language, and learned all these afterwards). And now I am pregnant and recollecting the information about how will we do it! Thanks for your amazing videos!
Great! Please join my mailing list to stay in contact. I'm working on wonderful things that will come out in the next months for multilingual parents like you! www.multilingual.family/sign-up
Are you a Tatar or something? Why do you speak Turkish? Or your husband is half Spanish Turk?
I was raised in bilingual family and studied quadrolingual school
Sameeee
@@l.g1207 what would you say you liked and didnt like about growing up multilingual
My native language is Spanish but we speak English at home. I curse in both languages, I dream in both languages but it depends where I am. If I am visiting my Spanish relatives, I tend to dream and wake up thinking in Spanish. It's the opposite when I am "home" (in the US). For some reason speaking to my baby in my native language feels strange. I feel clumsy and I feel the words are too long. I never spoke to any babies in Spanish. I have been speaking to her in English but I really want her to learn Spanish. Perfect Spanish, (not the type of Spanish that just sounds like a translation of English). I read and interact with my baby in Chinese only when we read books in Chinese. I don't expect her to learn this language as a native language or maybe not even as a second language, I just want her to be familiar with it and love it too. I grew up in Spanish but always liked English and it was part of my everyday life growing up in Latin America.
I'm bilingual English and Egyptian Arabic speaker, and fluent in German
My husband is a native Spanish, basque and dutch speaker. We communicate in English.
The majority language is German. I would love it if my future kid can grow up speaking all of them.
Sure, it's possible but it requires some planing.
I have recently started thinking about this topic a lot and surprisingly, the content on this topic is pretty scarce. I was raised in a trilingual environment and somehow I Never realized how it happened. My parents spoke our native tongue - Telugu, my country speaks Hindi and English. So I was exposed to this from various sources. But I am now in Germany, where many German kids only learn German. So if and when I were to have a kid, the environment wouldn't teach them as much which brings it to me to teach them and hence I am here watching this video 😂
Stay posted so you are ready for whatever the future might bring 😉
Hi! I thought I had it figured, but now with your video I'm confused and a little bit dissapointed.
I'm Venezuelan, my husband is Mexican, and we live in Mexico. So obviously, the main language our son will learn is Spanish.
My husband speaks English and French, of those two his strongest language is English, but he does not like speaking in English unless he HAS to, and he likes French and understands it perfectly, but he is very rusty with it.
Even though I'm a native Spanish speaker, I think my strongest language is English, I was an English teacher for about 15 years, (I started teaching at 15) and apart from teaching all other jobs I had required me to speak mainly in English.
I also speak, in order of strength, Italian, Korean, French, Japanese and German. I love languages in general, but if I had to choose my favourite is Korean, I constantly listen to Korean music, watch Korean shows. And sometimes read a little in Korean.
My brother lives with us, and he speaks Spanish, English and Japanese.
Our extended family speaks English, one of my sisters lives in the US, and my sister-in-law lives in Canada.
My plan was for our children to learn Spanish naturally by the environment, as we live in Mexico and my Mom who also lives with us. English also by environment cause most of our closest relatives speak it. French, through my husband, Korean through me, and Japanese with my brother.
But according to your video we should be sticking just with Spanish and English, with maybe French as a minority language.
I'm due with our first around December, January. And my husband was brushing up on his French, I've doubled down on Korean even learning a few nursery rhymes and getting a few story books. And my brother has also been practicing more Japanese. But by what you say we shouldn't do it. And just stick to our strengths.
You can introduce other languages using the OSOL for example but you need to have one main language to communicate to your child and that should be your strongest language. What you also need to bare in mind is TIME. Our days only have 24h of which half of the time the kids are sleeping (in the beginning) and to develop well a language a child need to be exposed to it many hours a day. The more languages you introduce at the same time, the less exposure the child gets in each language. The risk is that your child might develop a little bit of a lot of languages but non well. That can be dangerous. So, crafting a plan carefully is really important.
Consider a consultation with me to help you out with a safe and strong plan to reach your multilingual goals for your child. You can contact me via mail if you wish: info@multilingual.family
Wow! I finally found someone who can speak Korean as one of their languages. I’m Korean myself, although fluent in English because I’ve spent 10 years living abroad in the US. I also have a baby who just turned 17 months old as of yesterday. I don’t come from a multi culture / language background like you, and it’s been also very difficult to find someone who’s interested in raising their children bilingual or multilingual in Korea as it’s a strongly monolingual society.
Honestly, having learned bits of European languages such as Italian, German, French and Spanish before, I’d have to say those languages are super similar to English. It’s nothing like comparing English and Korean as they’re drastically different from one another as far as grammar structure and pronunciation goes. That’s why whenever I speak English, I only think in English and when I speak Korean, I only think in Korean. It’s nothing like going from Spanish to English. So I really admire you for speaking lots of different languages, including Korean cuz I know how hard it can be! Just wanted to give you a huge compliment for that!
How’s it going with raising your baby multilingual thesedays?
Thank you for sharing your valuable information. please, keep updating the video as many as you can.
Ok, case five! My case. My husband is German and speaks German and English. I grew up speaking Spanish and English. We live in Sweden. My son is 1.5 and attends a Swedish preschool, he has a nanny who is Swiss and speaks German and French natively. She has decided recently to speak to our son in Swedish as well. My husband doesn't speak any Swedish because he works in Denmark. We will be moving to Denmark in the next few years. Currently, I speak English to my son, my husband speaks German, we communicate in English, his nanny speaks to me in English, my husband in German, and to our son in Swedish. He attends a Swedish preschool, and in a few years will start school in Danish. He has a stuffed animal who plays in Spanish, and another stuffed animal who plays in French. At 1.5 he seems to understand EVERYTHING and has really amazed his teachers. He doesn't say a lot, but has words for each language. Although, sometimes he says things like, "Titta da oben mama, thanks!" When he wants a snack. :) How can we introduce Danish?
Hi Betsy, the good news is that his Swedish know-how will come in handy when learning Danish, as those languages are pretty similar. You could start introducing Danish by exposing him to Danish songs for kids. When you move to DK you should put him ideally around 2-3 days in a Danish daycare so he learns the language there but you still have enough time to expose him to German and English. Your baby is still very young, if you stay in DK he will know enough Danish before starting school.
Need more help, here you can find me: www.multilingual.family/services
I am an 11 year old and I come from the USA, and I also have a goal of being fluent in a lot of different languages, so when I grow up, I want to pass these on to my child , so my child can be really knowledgeable about culture. Idk why I’m watching this rn because I will not have a child anytime soon
Case scenario: Both parents are of Greek heritage but born and live in english part of Canada. Husband knows enough Greek to understand very basic conversation but not great at speaking but can read and write it. Wife knows greek better than husband but English is still stronger. Husband also knows french pretty fluently (enough to get by in a french country) from learning it grades 4-12 but also english is stronger. Grandparents all great at Greek.
The solution I thought of is: Both parents speak english because that's their best language and both speak to each other in it. Enrol the child in french preschool until the end of high-school to learn french from good teachers instead of husband who knows it well but not amazing. Then have baby spend time with grandparents telling them to only speak greek to baby. also enroll in Greek school once a week at the earliest time possible.
Let me know if this makes sense, thanks!
You nailed it!
@@MultilingualFamily thanks!
Hello Andrea,
Thank you for your work. I’m not a parent already but i’m starting to think about it because I speak French, Arabic, Spanish and English but my wife speaks only French. Plus i plan to learn another language so it’s kinda worrying me about our future children. Your strategy is very interesting and seems very helpful. I will certainly be trying it someday with my child Inchallah.
Thanks again and Happy new Year.
Dear Andrea, thank you very much for your very valuable and important content. I am so happy that I found you. I would like to ask you for help. I am Turkish-German, although my strongest language in writing and speaking is German, but my favorite language is Turkish. My husband is Italian and half Taiwanese. At the moment we still live in Italy. I have started learning Italian, but I am still at the very beginning and am not particularly talented. My husband does not speak German. He also tried to learn, but lost motivation relatively quickly. So we decided to just speak English in the family and raise our children in English. But then I came across your videos and you say that everyone should speak their own strong language. Now my very important question to you, very very important. We have a son. He is already a year old now, and I made so many mistakes completely unconsciously, because I was simply not aware of the consequences. I spoke to him in Turkish, German and English and assumed that he understood me anyway... now you are absolutely right. Why should a child lose the language of its parents? My question to you: can I still correct this? We would like our son to speak Italian, German and English perfectly. My husband's mother speaks fluent Chinese, she always speaks Chinese with him. My parents always speak Turkish with the baby. I don't know if it would be too much if the child learned Turkish and Chinese too. Here is the big challenge. We are moving to Thailand in a few weeks and the plan is for our child to go to a private school there and we can get support with the language there. However, as I have heard from you, the biggest responsibility naturally lies with the parents. Now I need your professional support: how many languages can the child learn at most by the age of three? The even more important question: how should I behave? Should I speak Turkish and German? No more English? And would Thai and English, as the language at school, then in Thailand, be too much to ask? Thank you so much for your great videos. They are worth their weight in gold. Ah yeah, another important detail is that my husband is speaking with him in Italian thank you very for your professional help ❤🙏 please keep doing this videos and I will follow you the best I can. I do appreciate so much your informations.
For swearing I wouldn't be so sure I swear in my second langauge. However counting especially subtractions and other arithmetic exercices are the most telling about which langauge is the strongest one.
This video is great! But unfortunately, I'm kind of convinced that our almost 3-year-old son is doomed. We live in Japan and I'm Japanese, and my wife is Chinese and can also speak the local language of her hometown, but she keeps speaking Japanese. What is worse, we used to live with my wife's father, who can only speak the local language, but since he came back to China when our son just turned one, he's never been exposed to that local language. But I still want my son to learn Chinese, the local language, and hopefully English other than Japanese.
This is a good video as I'm planning to adopt kids from China, Korea, and maybe Japan and I would like them not only to remember their native language but as well as learning English, Spanish, and Hebrew
very helpful. i really like this woman, the way she talk
Happy to hear that!
I just found your channel and am liking what i hear and see. Am just starting out in my own journey . I learnt french as a student and thus am fluent in it. My husband speaks english and yoruba , actually, we both speak those. When my son was born, i wanted to start right away with French, but my hubby discouraged me that it might confuse the baby, and i listened .(i wish i didn't 😂). My child is 10 months old now, and i want to commence speaking french. I am so excited coming across your videos. So i am starting off with a plan to only speak in french with my child, my husband will speak yoruba to him, and myself and my husband can continue to communicate in english then he can learn english passively from us and from others in our community. My mum who stays with us is very fluent in igbo and hausa, so we might have to choose which one she can use as the language of communication with him.
I plan to learn Spanish later, though. I have to look at more of your videos to see how to incorporate that later later.
I hope my plan makes sense? Thank you so much ❤
Im in my early 20s, no kids lol but I’m here cause I was watching a channel with a Korean Mother, Indian Father but they live in Japan!
i'm native in French and Arabic and i speak English, Italian and Spanish as well, so my children just with me they'll speak these languages because in my life I speak all of them. And maybe they'll know also Portuguese bc i'm learning it. ( I'm only 15 ahahaha )
Super helpful, thank you, gracias, danke, 多謝，謝謝, obrigada! I love your comment about building a child's identity and self-esteem using their roots and native language. I grew up speaking Cantonese, Mandarin, and English, and my husband speaks Spanish and English. We'll live in Costa RIca and would love our child to learn a native indigenous language at some point. Thanks so much for your tips!
Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us! Any chance you could do your videos in high German as well as English, or even instead, please ? Regards
Hi Violet, I might start shooting in the future in German as well. At the moment I just don have enough time to do both. Since my followers are from around the world, many of them would be excluded if I just did videos in German. Liebe Grüsse
I speak Arabic natively n English , Spanish 2nd n 3rd n my wife speaks the same languages just like me so I asked her to speak Arabis to our 3 kids 'cause she has a better n more spread accent n I speak Spanish n since we live in Broklynn they'll learn English too my family speak an indigenous language of my home country 🇩🇿 so I expect'em to learn it to some degree since I'm not fluenty 😅 in that language n it doesn't have a standert form
Hi! I am Polish, my Husband is Slovenian. We communicate in English. We live in Luxembourg, where are three official languages ( Luxembourgish, French - and baby is already exposed to both, and German, that will come later, at school). We are bit scared how to proceed..:)
Hello Malgorzata, yes, I can totally understand your fears. It´s a lot of languages that your baby will be confronted with at once. In your case you really need a plan to make it work smoothly. To what school are you planning to send your child? Are you going to stay there or are you planning to move to another country? How old is your baby now?
Please consider booking a consultation with me to analyze your case in depth and help you craft a plan.
www.multilingual.family/services
This my case
Im from colombia my husband is Lebanese we leave in usa
We speak English each other
But now we have a child that born in the 🇺🇸 he is 1year old
Since he is a baby i talk to him in Spanish and my husband Lebanese
My all family talk to him in spanish and my husband family in Lebanese
But now we started he leasing tv in English
First of all, you do a really good job. My wife and I were wondering during the dinner how we should continue with all languages. And I couldn't get the question out of my head so I TH-cam... Randomly I found you. Instead of watching only a short video, I have watched several 😅
-So my wife is Chinese and speaks pretty well English, she just moved to Germany and is going to learn German this year.
-I'm a germanese, so my mother tongue is German and a Chinese dialect. My English is fluent but not perfect. My Chinese is even worse but getting better the longer I live with my wife together.
-Outside i speak mostly in our daily life German when my wife is not with me. Also our friends, babysitter and teachers from the crip speak German with him.
... If my wife is with me we speak English with our friends, kindergarten... Cuz she doesn't understand any German yet.
-At home we speak mostly Chinese and 5-10% English. But my Chinese has a lot mistakes and poor grammar in comparison to a native speaker.
Our son is 7 month old. It would be amazing if you could give us some advice :😊
Thank you! Glad to hear that you found my channel. Hope that you stick around to help you on your journey!
A power tip for you: Continue speaking Chinese at home as much as possible. Speak German with your children (wife Chinese). German is not going to be a challenge, they are going to get enough exposure. Chinese, on the other hand, will need a lot of attention.
Thanks a lot for your answer. Just to make sure, so we should both speak with our son Chinese at home? Or only my wife Chinese and me German?
Another thing is that we need to switch to English sometimes cuz of my boundaries in Chinese in certain topics. Should we wear a hut or do a handsign if he is with us?
We just had a long discussion what we should do if we sometimes need to switch to English for some deep
You're very welcome. No, you should speak to your child in German because that is your strongest language. When you talk to your wife, you can try to do it in Chinese (then you would have Chinese as a home language and your child would profit from more exposure). If you need to switch to English to be able to speak more fluently at times, by all means do it. You can also speak to your wife in EN and let her reply in Chinese.
Please stay posted, as I'm soon going to release training videos with lots of more helpful information to raise successful multilingual children.
Alles Gute und bis bald!
awww so happy to see this video finally come up. Thanks Andrea for this advice for our family, we will apply this plan soon
in the beginning we thought we dont really like our own language to be taught to our child because english is better since we communicate in english everyday at home and we want for both of us can speak same language to him without leave one of us behind (the reason behind I meant before) and your answer based on your experience said the other hand :).
success for your channel, stay safe with your family and once again thanks for your advice :)
Very interesting tips and advices, Andrea! I've found your channel looking for videos on bilingual kids and bilingual education, because our children (they're twins and are 12 months old now) are rising in a bilingual environment, wich is very common here in the basque Country. It's not exactly the same case as people living abroad, but has some common elements.
In our case, my strongest languages are spanish (primarly) and basque (it's not my first language but almost, I have full competency). So I've talked exclusively in basque to my children since they were born, including songs and games. My wife also can speak basque but her spanish is stronger and tends to speak in that language to the children, even thought she uses also basque, mainly when we are all together. Me and my wife speak mainly in spanish to each other when we are alone, but i speak only in basque when the kids are present, and as i said, she tends to speak basque in that situation. On the other hand, the community language ir our village is spanish, even basque is also there as a minority but official language (education is ONLY in basque). Finally, grandfathers&grandmathers are spanish speakers, even tought my parents can understand basque. A pretty complex situation considering there are only two languages at home xD In addition, i can speak pretty good english, french and catalan, but so far these languages are excluded.
My main doubt is wich language do you think, based on your experience, will the kids speak with us? and to each other? Should I use one (of more) of my other 3 languages in some way with muy children? When should I start doing that?
Gracias de antemano y un saludo.
Hi Xabi,
Your kids are exposed to both languages quite often, but since Spanish is the majority language, it might develop in the first years faster. That is, until they go to school. Once they are immersed in a basque surrounding, that language will probably catch up.
It´s not clear what language they will choose to speak to your wife, since she mixes. I´m almost sure that if you are consistent in speaking basque with them, they will reply in basque as well. That will depend on how many hours of quality exposure they are getting per day.
Between siblings it is also not 100% clear which language they will choose. Kids use often their strongest language or the one that they go "used" to speaking with each other.
As you see, there are some surprises awaiting you! :)
I recommend that you start with the other languages once you have a strong relationship to them in basque and they speak well spanish. There are a few things you need to be careful with when adding new languages. But that is another topic...
Have a lovely one and don´t hesitate in contacting me, if you need more help or support (www.multilingual.family/services).
@@MultilingualFamily Thanks for your answer and the link, Andrea. I'm sure your advices will be so helpful in adding some foreign languages in the future :)
I speak Hindi, and English, my husband speaks Tamil and English, we speak English with each other. But we live in Germany and the social language is German .
We are worried that 4 languages will be too much for a kid, and are not able to decide which one to give up. Because we want our parents to be able to speak with our kid,
If we give up English, it seems like a big compromise, because the world opened up to us because we were fluent in English
Yes, you will need to analyze very well your situation and weigh up things to make the best decisions for your kids. Contact me if you want me to put you on the waiting list for the next free consultation slot to help you further with your case.
www.multilingual.family/contact
My husband and I live in Taiwan (majority language Mandarin) and have very successfully used the OPOL method to teach our son (2yo) English and German, so he is now trilingual. We are expecting a second child and are trying to figure out, what language will our children speak to each other when not speaking to their parents, and are we supposed to try to influence that? My husband and I speak to each other in all three languages by the way (for practice reasons) so there isn't a consistent relationship language between us parents, though English is dominant. This doesn't seem to bother or affect our son.
I would also like to say that we agree 100% with your opinion about only teaching native languages, because we see a lot of people here in Asia who raise their children with weird English. They think they can do it, but they really can't, and the result is children who speak no language well, as well as other weird problems. The best case scenario I've seen with this is a mom who has indeed almost perfected her American English and is raising a son who sounds American, however on closer inspection uses English that is very inflexible and missing lingual creativity, soulless English you could say.
Hi Andrea! We will have our first baby this month and I would like to have your advice. My goal is not to maximise the number of languages my baby will speak but actually not to confuse her too much. I am native Portuguese and for the time being we live in Portugal so that language she will be exposed to. Now the trickiest part, my husband grew up in Mauritius where both English and French are official languages and there is also Mauritius creole which is a spoken only language with a French base. His mom being South African mostly spoke with him in English and his dad creole. Between us we speak English and French using mostly French for small chit chat and English for more serious conversations but we include Portuguese and creole words here and there… My husband plans to speak English to the baby but creole will be there as well. Also, her nanny will be Indian and while she speaks a bit of English it isn’t her strongest language so I’m pretty sure she will be exposed to Hindi also. Should we limit her contact with so many languages and focus on Portuguese and English leaving creole for the grandparents when we visit them once a year and phone conversations?
I am Turkish, my partner is Dutch, we currently live in the Netherlands and speak English with each other. We are both very comfortable and fluent with English, to the point in which I wonder if it has become my stronger language. We are thinking of moving to another country (for work). That would make 4 languages, I believe this is similar to your personal experince. I definitely want to teach my future children Turkish, but I'm not ready to change our "home language" to whichever country we live in. What should we do? 😅
Hi Andrea, I am Croatian, raised bilingual Croatian-Italian. I speak English and Portuguese as well. My partner is Swedish, speaking also English. We speak English between us and we live in Switzerland, in the German part. Our baby will be exposed to three languages at home (Croatian, Swedish & English) and to German in kindergarten. Can you develop a strategy for us and give us any advice not to overwhelm our small human to come ?? 🙏🏼❤️ I appreciate your help!!
Hi Nika, nice to meet you! Your case is the clasic multilingual family. What I can offer you is access to a series of training videos about crafting a strategy by
subscribing here: www.multilingual.family/sign-up The training videos to craft a strong strategy are coming out at the end of this month! So stay around because you come at the right time :0).
@@MultilingualFamily super! Thanks! Looking forward to the videos 🙌🏼
Hi Andrea! We have moved to Germany from Pakistan. My husband and I speak Urdu fluently, thats our mother language. We also speak English. Living here in Germany, our baby (12 months old) must be fluent in Deutsch (German language) but we want him to have a command over English language as its very important. The rest of our families, the baby's grandparents and everybody are still in Pakistan and we want him to understand Urdu as well to make it easy for him to communicate with his grandparents and all. Can you please guide us?
Hi! You just came at the right moment. Right now my Multilingual Family Success Program is on sale just until Thursday. So go ahead and take advantage of it. You get lifetime access to on-demand videos, pdfs, Group Coaching Calls where I can answer to all your questions and guide you on your multilingual journey! Here you can find all the info: multilingualfamily.my.canva.site/one-time-sale2023
See you in there!
Just found your channel...
I don't have kids just yet but am interested on how I should handle it...
So first of all.
I grew up in Germany. My family spoke German... so basically everything was german. However the first 2 years of my life my mom spoke English towards me whenever she was alone with me. But she got too scared of raising me bilingual so she stopped.
She herself were raised multilingual - without any structure (Portuguese, English, French and German - though she rejected German and forgot everything and had to relearn it as an adult)
Then because I have English speaking relatives I was exposed to English again at the age of 8. After that I tried my best to learn it (as a kid I hated German). Now my English level is near native and sometimes I'm getting mistaken for a native speaker.
I can't decide which one is my strongest language... it basically depends on the topic (medical stuff... german is strongest but for emotional things... it's English..... )
I dream in all of my languages... but mostly English and German...
I don't really swear at all but if I definitely would in English...
Also speaking a language depends on what language is someone talking towards me... (I tend to switch to the language of the other person)
So if someone speaks English towards me I'll have no effort to chat in English. If someone speaks German it's the same...
But what feels strange is if I am suppose to speak English while someone else speaks German towards me...and vice versa
Technically I want my kids to learn English and Chinese as their first languages (thought about getting a Chinese nanny or something) and depending on their exposure also German and Spanish...
(I know German and English. Also know a bit Chinese and Vietnamese and also a bit American Sign Language)
I hope English would be okay to use with my child...
Also if my mother would remember her Portuguese could she speak Portuguese with my future kid? Or should she stick to English or German as well?
(Portuguese and English were her "first" languages that she spoke properly)
Hi Sam, thanks for explaining your case. I can't answer your questions in just a few lines. Please contact me to set up an appointment (www.multilingual.family/services).
Great video here - we have a 1 year old at home and we are both mother tongue Croatian speakers in a French speaking part of Belgium. So, for now we both speak Croatian to our son - however, we would like to pass our other languages to him as well (for myself Italian and for my wife German). Do you have any advice whether it's a good idea to mix languages when speaking to our son, or any other tips on how to approach this?
Sure, check out my other free videos, they are full of helpful tips. Also, join my mailing list to get more helpful content and get notified when the next course comes out (gonna happen soon and is only open for a few days a year). Join us here: www.multilingual.family/sign-up
Hi Andrea. I have a 2y 8m old daughter and a 7 m old son. I speak Polish to her, my hubby speaks English. We are currently living in the UK, yet are planning to move to Poland in 4 years time. Every so often I read books in German to my daughter, or we sing German songs. (I am a native Pole). Currently English is my strongest language, Polish is right behind it and I am brushing up on my German. My hubby is British. How do I comment on the German books we read, do I do it in Polish or German? Ps. I do read her books in all 3 languages as she is the one who chooses the book. When we read English, we comment in Polish. She recently started mixing English with German words f.e. by saying 'What noise does a hund make'. Ps. We also use alexa and google to which I speak in either English or German with my daughter. I would like to separate Polish from German when I speak to her. Have you got any ideas how to do it? Thanks in advance.
Hi again, it sounds really good what you are doing. Keep on reading in those languages. I would comment and explain everything in Polish - always.
Code-Switching is really common and normal in multilingual children. Just make sure that you use consistently Polish with them when speaking freely (OPOL method) and sing songs and read in the other languages. Since your husband is a native English speaker, he can take over that language. It is not necessary that you do it too, most of all because you are planing to move to Poland, it is particularly important that they learn that language from you.
Great job! Watch my other videos, they contain lots of ideas and tips that are going to help you. If you want, you can join my mailing list. I share with my subscribers every now and then games , activities and tools to print for free (www.multilingual.family/sign-up).
Talk to you soon!
Andrea
Hi! I am Russian. She is Thai. We live in Serbia. I can speak Russian, English and some Serbian. She speaks Thai and English. We talk with each other English only. We expect a baby. Our priorities will be Russian and Thai. English will be additional input for a kid. But what to do with Serbian? I am afraid about kid’s socialising :(
Hi, I can understand your fears. Don't worry, just make sure that your baby is in contact with children and caregivers that speak Serbian the latest at the age of three to help your child learn the majority language well before starting school.
Consider joining my newsletter to get continuous support on how to raise your baby in multiple languages with success here: https:www.multilingual.family/sign-up
Also, I'm about to release a unique offer in the next weeks. Join out community so you don't miss it! Kind regards
Hi Andrea, thank you for the informative video. I'd love to hear your two cents if you have a moment.
My husband and I have the somewhat lofty goal of raising our son to speak four languages: English, French, Italian and Welsh. My husband is bilingual in French and Italian but he has decided to speak exclusively in French with him as he finds it easier to handle. I've committed to speaking with him in Italian, despite being a native English speaker who learned Italian as a second language. Because we live in Wales, he will naturally pick up Welsh in school / English from his grandparents and the environment.
My biggest concern at the moment is his Italian. Because I do not speak it perfectly, I fear that my efforts could be more damaging than helpful. I also worry that our relationship might suffer in the future if I don't speak my native language with him. I should add that I am very keen on him learning Italian so that he can, at the very least, communicate on a basic level with his relatives in Italy. Unfortunately we live in a small town in the countryside, so relying on other people to provide Italian input isn't an option.
What would you suggest? Should I persevere in spite of my fears? Or should I start to mix English and Italian as he gets older?
Hi Heather, thank you for your message. I strongly recommend that you stick with English as your main relationship language but also teach him Italian using the OSOL (or what I like to call the OAOL) method.
It's a bit complicated to explain it all in one message so please consider booking a consultation to help you build up a strong language learning strategy for your family that I guarantee will work.
My kids are also growing up trilingual and I use the OAOL with my own kids and have done it with my students too.
In our meeting I can answer all of your questions anx explain to you:
- Why it is important that you stick to your strongest language
- Many proven ideas on how to support the minority language (Italian).
- What OAOL method is and what options you have.
- How to implement the method.
- ...
Having a good strategy since the beginning will make your lives much easier and you will probably be more satisfied with the outcomes.
Consultation: www.multilingual.family/services
Have a great day and hope to talk to you soon!
Andrea
And what about single Moms / Dads with 4 languages?!?!? How should they do it???
Go step by step starting with the strongest language
My husband and I, both, speak Spanish, English and ASL. I haven’t found one video that has approach ASL as another language for my child. (No one is dead in our family).
Deaf
That was fantastic! I’m pregnant with my first baby and we’re Brazilian. My husband and I were talking about raise her as a bilingual child. So he’ll be talking only in Portuguese and I’ll be talking in English. This is called OPOL, I guess. However, I’m an English teacher and a sign language interpreter in Brazil. I’ve heard that newborns can communicate with us using sign language. So what’s is your opinion about that? My husband just speak Portuguese.
And about English I need to study a lot about it, to be consistent and also creative to do some activities with her. And to learn baby vocabulary because I’ve been studying English since 2005 and I’ve never saw those kind of things in my entire life. I hope that I can do my best for her 🤰🏻💖
My child is learning Swedish with me abs Latvian with my friends 😅
Thank you Andrea! It's a good video. Could you please give me some advices to raise my child multilingual. I am Mexican. Spanish is my native language, I speak English and German too. I work as German teacher. My husband speaks only Spanish.
Hey Andrea! Thanks for your videos. They are being really helpful for us trying to raise a bilingual child in Brazil. I’m trying to raise my baby speaking only English to her and my wife, Portuguese. In doing so, I have a few questions: is there any problem if I speak Portuguese to her when we are close to people that don’t understand English, especially when we are not at home? I’m not fluent yet French and German, but I’m getting there. I study a lot, watch videos, listen to music, etc. Is it ok if I once in a while say words or phrases to her in these languages, encourage and study with her in the future, or It would be not recommended, considering the OPOL method?
Hi Felipe, normally it isn't advisable to use with the children as a main language a language that you are not proficient in. If you feel confident enough in English and are proficient in it, it can be a big advantage for your child. You can introduce other languages, but again, ideally only if you master them, using the OSOL next to the OPOL. Watch my other videos to see how that can be done.
Best wishes!
Hey! Thank you so much for this video. My husband and I are expecting a child and we really want our child to have the benefit of multilingualism. My husband speaks Turkish, Chinese (Mandarin) and English fluently. Turkish is his mother tongue, after that he is more confident in Chinese and then English. I speak English and Punjabi. My fluent and most natural language is English. My husband and I live in England and we speak together mainly in English. I want my child to learn Punjabi, but I also don’t have the fluency level in Punjabi that I have in English, plus my child will naturally learn English at school and from family. I can ask my Grandmother and mom to speak to my child in Punjabi. But I am not sure what language to use myself. Can I mix between Punjabi and English? How should we introduce Chinese if my husband solely speaks Turkish to our child? Thanks for your help in advance :)
I encourage you to watch my other videos to get ideas on how to deal with more languages.
I am expecting a baby, my mother language is Arabic, i speak French and English, i live in Taiwan with my wife where Chinese is the official language, my wife can aslo speak English and Japanese, the good thing about my case is that I teach English and I know quite enough about learning strategies and methods but only in English, So i am really confused how to teach all those languages to the kid?
Hi Nanil
Yes, with so many languages your really need to craft a plan to introduce them systematically to your children. Consider a consultation with me to discuss your unique situation... www.multilingual.family/services
Hola! Soy de México y quiero enseñar inglés a mi hijo, empecé a hablarle Cua do tenía 4 años. Actualmente tiene 7 y entiende algunas frases pero aún no ha la inglés. Es posible hacer más rápido el aprendizaje del inglés a sus 7 años? Gracias
Hola! Claro, la mandera de hacer que aprenda mas rapido es exponiendole mas horas por dia a un input de lenguage de calidad alta. En Junio voy a sacar unos cuantos videos de entrenamiento para padres cruando hijos/as multilingües. Unete a mi lista de gente cosmopolita para enterarte cuando salgan. www.multilingual.family/sign-up
Please help! I speak Croatian, German, and English all fluently and my boyfriend speaks German and Chinese. Together we speak in German at home but live in China. What language should our baby learn? Ideally, I would like to teach him Croatian and English and my boyfriend Chinese but we speak with each other german so how will our baby understand us? Thanks
Hi! No need to panic. There are many parents that are in similar situations than you. To be able to give you proper advice, I need to know more about your family situation.
You could book a consultation or take one of my mini-courses, where I explain step by step how to get started to be successful in raising multilingual children.
More infos here: www.multilingual.family/services
Hi. I have a different case which you didn't cover in your video.
Mother's language: Spanish
Father's language: Italian
Relationship language: English
Majority language: Polish
We both speak all three languages (English, Spanish, Italian) to different degrees of proficiency. We don't speak Polish.
We are unaware how long we will be in Poland for. Minimum 2 more years. Child to be born soon.
Our idea is to speak to the child in our strongest language (native in our case) in a 1 to 1 situation, and English in a Family situation. However, we are unsure what to do with Polish, especially considering the time when the baby will go to child care. Should we look for an exclusively English one? They are quite uncommon. The majority of childcare that have English teachers are bilingual (English and Polish) and the free ones are Polish only.
What should we do, considering that we would prefer the kid to learn English than Polish, but we cannot necessarily go against the majority language, and we don't want too much language developmental delays in already what will be a trilingual kid.
Thank you in advance for your advice.
Hi Andrea,
Spanish and Italian are quite similar, which is an advantage for your child in many ways. Use the OPOL method (one parent one language) with Spanish and Italian. Use it consistently - do not mix. You can speak English with each other but don´t do it with your kids. The baby will learn that language passively, but it won´t develop as well as Spanish/Italian if not exposed in other situations as well.
The big question is: Are you going to stay in Poland? If most likely not, it might be better to consider an English/Polish or only English daycare. If you think your child is going to go to school in Poland, you need to make sure that your child starts learning Polish the latest at the age of 3!
We can set up an appointment to further discuss your case and help you build a solid strategy for your family (www.multilingual.family/services).
I have a question. If my husband is French, I’m Ecuadorian/American so I speak Spanglish and my husband speaks mostly French so We talked together in French at home. We currently live in the U.S but we are soon moving to France. What language should I pick to start talking to my future baby?
I want him to know Spanish/French and English… any recommendations?
Hi Erika, since you are moving to France, you should consider changing your relationship language to Spanish or at least English if possible because French is going to be the majority language. Which language is your strongest EN or ES? Choose one to be the MAIN language (OPOL method) and introduce the other one using the OSOL method.
If all of what I just wrote doesn't ring a bell, be sure to jump into my coming course because there I will explain everything step by step.
Make sure to join us to stay posted: www.multilingual.family/sign-up
Hi. My wife and I live in Belgium (Dutch-speaking part), we communicate in English. She's Albanian/Italian so the child will communicate in those 2 languages to her family. I am Bosnian, so with my family it'll be Bosnian.This makes it 5 languages that the child will "have to" acquire just to communicate with the immediate family and the surroundings we're living in. We are not so concerned if the baby will learn all thes languages but more with the fact if he'll be overwhelmed by all them at once and what's the maximum we can expose him to. We've heard some theories that it can be too much for them and that it'll pospone them starting to speak at all (hope these aren't the case). I'm sure that eventually he'll learn all 5 (not all of them have to be to the same level of course) but in essence, my question is is it OK to expose him to so much from the beginning? Thanks!
Yes, it´s really important that you develop a strategy for your multilingual children. Kids are able to learn 5 and more languages, BUT the approach you chose has to be intentional and well planned for your child to be able to learn the languages smoothly and without greater problems.
Contact me if you wish me to help you crafting a successful plan for your family through a Consultation. www.multilingual.family/contact
Hello, great video, but I’m bit confused what to do in my case 😅 My husband is american, he speaks with child in English no questions here. I’m Ukrainian, but now we live in Poland and I’m learning Polish. Here I can find mostly books that are English/Polish. Should I teach my child Polish words or even if writing is in Polish I should teach her Ukrainian words because it’s my strongest language? She is 7 months old now, so I’m trying to figure out which system to have
Hi, yea definitely stick to Ukrainian. Don't worry about Polish, just make sure that your child is exposed to groups where Polish is spoken the latest at the age of 3. Focus all your effort on Ukrainian.
Hello! I am new here. And I would like some help with which language should we use to communicate with our baby. We are from Madagascar but we live in China. My strongest language is English so I speak English with him, and my husband speak French or sometimes Malagasy to him and our family members speak Malagasy too when they video call us. About Chinese; only our Chinese friends speak Chinese to him and we think he will learn that as soon as he will go to Chinese daycare. What do you think?
It sounds ok. Focus on providing as much exposure to your languages as possible.
I'm delightful to find your channel, from now on you will be my guide. My name is Cinthia, I'm Brazilian and my first language is Portuguese and I speak English fluently and a little Spanish. My husband is Matheus he only speaks Portuguese. We have 2 kids, Júlia 3 years old and Theo 1 year and 8 months old. I speak English with my kids since I was pregnant. Julia is bilingual and Theo is getting there. But npw I really want to introduce a third language to them, which is Spanish. My question is, is that possible, since I will be the only person to speak with them 2 different languages, and we all live in Brazil. We do not have Spanish speakers friends.
Yes, use the OSOL method and use lots of support with music, books, audiobooks etc.
Join my mailing list to get more free tools and games that help you raise your children multilingual 🙂.
www.multilingual.family/sign-up
So grateful for you!
You are so welcome
I was born in Nicaragua, my wife is Chinese and we live in China. I speak English and Spanish at about the same level of proficiency. I can't decide which is my strongest language. I have a little bit of a Hispanic accent when I speak English but it is the language I use most often (dreaming, socializing, cursing, etc.). I struggle a little bit expressing myself in Spanish. Sometimes I can't find the words. I arrived in the US when I was 13 and, for some reason, I just don't sound native in both the languages I speak. What should I do? I would really appreciate your advice.
Hi, well you just need to keep on developing your language skills. Immersion is always very helpful to get better in all areas of a language,
Hello! Thank you for this video. I really need your advice. My husband and I are from India but have different mother tongues. We live in Germany. My son is almost 3 months old. I really want him to learn both our mother languages, English and German. Hence I've been speaking with him in all these languages since more than a month. So, I speak in Hindi on Sunday and Monday, English on Tuesday and Wednesday, German on Thursday and Gujarati on Friday and Saturday. May I continue with this or should I stick to only 1 language?
Unfortunately, none of our relatives live in Germany so can't take their support.
Hi Mukta! I see that you have big plans for your child. I think that you need to prioritize and set yourself goals first.
You can go here to download some tools that will help you with that: www.multilingual.family/sing-up
I would do something like this:
1) Speak and build a relationship to your baby in your mother tongue (spend most of the waking hours speaking to your child in your L1). Your husband should do the same.
2) Send your child to a "Kita" or "Spielgruppe" in German some days and only read books in German, if you have a nearly proficient level.
3) Keep on using the OSOL method for English, if you have a proficient level, otherwise only read books in English and look for other external support.
Hope that I could help you a bit, keep on following me to get more support!
Thanks a lot! Yes, your answer gave me a lot of clarity. I'll surely follow your advice. I've already subscribed to your mail list. Thank you for the precious guidance and support. 😍
Hi Andrea!
My husband and I are currently teaching our daughter 5 languages.
I speak 4 (native language Papiamentu, Spanish, Dutch and English) and he speaks English. Her grandparents speak Yoruba with her.
My question is how do I incorporate Spanish and Papiamentu when my native language is my strongest and Spanish comes second?
Our relationship language: English
Great question, there is a way, but you need to introduce the language clearly and carefully. Also, there is a risk that your child develops a little bit of every language and non fully. That can be dangerous, but with the right support, it can be done. Contact me to set up an appointment and help you with your case in depth (www.multilingual.family/services)
Hi Andrea, my husband is Samoan but speaks English probably a bit better than Samoan as he is from New Zealand. I’m Russian and German and my mother tongue is Russian but I speak better german as I grew up in Germany since I was 6. At home we speak English as we live in Australia. So my son who is 18 months old is mostly exposed to English because as a family we speak English to each other. I try and use German and read in German to my son when we’re by ourselves and when I’m being lovey dovey I automatically speak Russian for some reason. The problem is my boy is used to English so gets upset sometimes when I talk to him in German too much. My husband uses Samoan on a daily basis with our son but mostly simple requests and questions.
How can we make sure he actually gets to learn all 4 languages at least to a certain degree? Thank you so much for your help in advance and your great videos. :)
Hi Natascha
You need to speak consistently in German with your child and only use EN to speak to your husband. Your husband should do the same with Samoan. Because you live in Austria, your child will learn German fast and that will become the strongest language at some point. As for Russian, do you have other family members that could speak that to your child? You might have to consider a course later on in Russian and using the OSOL method to practice with your child if you feel comfortable enough in Russian.
The topic is complex and I can't really give you in a few lines the best advice, but stay posted, as my next course for parents like you is soon coming out, and there you will learn tons of useful and important information to make the best choices for your multilingual family Join us her: www.multilingual.family/sign-up
German AND Russian is probably your mother tongue, when your parents are from Germany and Russia, ain't it?
Hi I'm so happy to find someone like you to help us to raise my son multilingual. In my case I'm in trouble haha. My wife and I are Spanish speaker and I'm fluent in English so I'm trying to raise him to English but it's hard because my wife doesn't speak it and we live in a Spanish country. So what can I do in my situation? Thanks in advance
Haha you're funny! So how good is your English level? C2? I understand your situation and why you are making this great effort. Normally I don't advice to speak another language to the kids than the first one, but in your case your kids are not at "risk" - you are haha. It will require an enormous amount of engagement from your side to keep on going.
Why don't you try and convince your wife to start learning English as well. That would make everything much easier and even fun.
Please join me in my private Facebook group to be able to help you more. I can tell that you will need a place to let the steam out when things get hard. I will make sure you don't quit your dream ;).
Si te animas...
facebook.com/groups/multilingual.family/
Stay healthy and talk to you soon!
Andrea
Yes that's what it thought. And I will talk to her to start talking to my son only in English. My level is C1... and of course I'll join your Facebook group. It's a pleasure. Thank you so much for the answer
Thank you for the wonderful video Andrea! I would to love raise my 1-year old daughter to speak English, French, Italian (my native tongue), and Polish (my wife's native tongue). What strategy do you recommend? The majority language here is English and we will be sending her to a French daycare and school. Our relationship language is English - my wife's and my strongest language. We have been speaking to our daughter in French since birth in order to give her a solid start for school. How and when should we introduce the other languages? My wife and I have spoken to our respective parents in our native tongues since birth so we're both fluent but our written grammar is lacking because we received limited formal training. I would like my daughter to learn these languages as part of his cultural identity. I hesitate to send her to the Italian and Polish Saturday morning school offered here for fear that being forced to go to more school on weekends will make her hate the languages. The grandparents aren't nearby and my Italian brother won't even speak Italian with me or his kids -- only English.
Hi Roberto, how high is your level in French? I think you shouldn´t speak to your child in French, let the school take care of that. English will be easy to learn for your baby, because it is the community language and the uncle and you and your wife speak it.
If I were you, I´d use the OPOL method starting NOW:
Dad: Italian
Mom: Polish
School: French
Surrounding : English
This could work if your and your wife feel comfortable enough speaking in your native languages: Italian and Polish. The fact that you can´t write very well doesn´t matter. To pass on your culture and build your child´s identity you only need to be able to speak the languages well.
The best time to introduce the minority languages was yesterday. The next best time is NOW. Once your child goes to school, English and French will become very dominant and if you haven´t introduced Polish and English by then, it will be practically impossible to make them speak those languages with you.
Join my mailing list to get more free support and so I can help you on every step of your multilingual family´s journey here: www.multilingual.family/sign-up
@@MultilingualFamily Thank you so much! I work as a paralegal in a French legal office. I spend most of my day writing in French and occasionally translate documents into French for the lawyers. My French grammar is fairly advanced but it is not as good as my English which is the majority language here. I am scared of making basic Italian grammar mistakes in front of my daughter. I have an extensive Italian vocabulary and I am definitely fluent with no accent but my father points out that I sometimes make mistakes with articles and verb tenses. I'm also concerned about confusing my daughter early on when a lot of the children in our community need help learning French because of the dominance of English here. We were hoping to give here a good foundation for school. I will discuss with my partner as I would like our daughter to learn Italian.
Really nice video! My situation is as follows: My native language is Arabic, my wife’s slovene, we live in NL so majority language is Dutch (we both speak it but I am not as good as my wife), my wife and I speak to each other mainly in English. Currently we speak to our newborn (1 month) Arabic and Slovene to him one on one and when we are both together we use English so that we both feel included. Dutch is also used sometimes but we decided to let the daycare handle it. Do you have extra recommendations to us?
We have very similar situation with the same number of languages, thus any recommendation is welcome!!!
@@natashashubina3683 I am curious, do you mind sharing your languages?
Yes, focus a lot on Arabic and Slovak for the next 3-4 years. That means, expose your child to as many words as possible because this will make all the difference in the future! The first few years are your best chance to build up the minority languages. Also, make sure that your child has contact to Dutch speaking people the latest at the age of 3 so he/she doesn´t have any trouble when going to school.
Be aware that you are dealing with lots of languages and that you might have to prioritize one over another at times.
Please contact me if you wish more detailed help with your case. I would love to help you. In cases like yours a consultation could work wonders (www.multilingual.family/services).
@@yel408 sure - my native is Russian, my husband’s - Chinese, we speak English between ourselves and we live in French part of Switzerland… what is worse - we don’t speak neither French (learning), nor each other’s languages 😭😄
Hi there how are you?
I have watched all your videos and I am trying to find a moment where it matches my situation as a multilingual family. I am from Nepalese origin and speak Nepalese, English and hindi fluently and now french aswell. I live in Lyon, France and my husband is french and speaks in english aswell. We have a nearly 11 months old baby girl. I speak to her in Nepalese during meal times and while on video calls with my family back in Nepal. Otherwise, it’s in english rest of the time. As she loves books, all the readings happen in english from my side and my husband does it in french.
I often doubt and wonder if there’s any better ways. She is in language developmental phase as the moment and repeats many words in all three languages.
I would be glad to have your opinion.
Much love.
Thanks in advance.
You can find my reply in my Facebook Group 🙂.
Hi Andrea, I have a 6 months old baby. Our family has a quite diverse background: my husband is from Nepal and currently lives in Australia (main language is Nepalese & English) and myself (Vietnamese, Mandarin, German, English and French). So we are so confused how to start teaching her all those languages so she will be able to connect with all our family members from dad’s side and mom’s side. Additionally, we are far away from our families so if we would use OPAL method, she just can talk max. 3 languages.
Hi Yenny, I think you should prioritize and concentrate on maximum three languages for now. Once the baby starts understanding and talking in those, slowly add a new language. It is really important that you choose a method (OPOL, MLAH or OSOL) and build up a strategy for your family so that your child can develop well and without risking negative effects on your child's psyche in the future.
I can help you guiding you step by step, but I need more time and dedication for that. Here you can find what I can offer you for now: www.multilingual.family/services
Have a nice day!
Hey, hi. I'm from Vietnam. I'm currently living in Vietnam. My spouse is also a Vietnamese. And I raise my kid bilingual: Vietnamese and English. Although we're living in Vietnam, she doesn't speak Vietnamese. She can understand Vietnamese to some extend but she prefers to use English. She's two years old and she know a lottt in English. My question is: How can I teach her Vietnamese while I also want she to be fluent in English? I know It sounds insane Because we're in Vietnam. But that's our trouble as well. If I communicate more in Vietnamese, she may get familiar with it and switch to Vietnamese completely. and my husband always busy working so I'm with her most of the time.
Hi, sign-up here to get my training videos that are all about these topics and are coming out really soon: www.multilingual.family/sign-up
Hi I love your video I think is really interesting I’m bilingual english and French and I speak fluently spanish as well. My husband speaks only Italian and at school my baby will learn Italian. I would like that my baby speaks all of them how can I do? Thank you for your help
Hi Alessia! I'm currently working on some training videos that will answer lots of your questions. Make sure you subscribe (www.multilingual.family/sign-up) to be notified when they come out.
We speak three languages (Arabic, English, and Swedish), so my daughter has started learning them all. I would like her to learn one more language or at least be exposed to one more language, I am thinking of Japanese or Chinese. Is it enough for my daughter to be with a babysitter that speaks one of these languages once a week for 1 hour? My daughter will become three years old in December
Hello! Exposure is always good, even if its only once a week. You just have to lower your expectations, since that language is going to develop slower because your child has less exposure in it. Just make sure that you pay close attention to giving your child enough exposure in the other ones (in the main one/ones) because you want to avoid at all costs that the child develops a little bit of every language but non fully.
Hi there! Thanks a lot for your videos! Really interesting and useful.
I'd like to ask you how many hours a day a child must be exposed to in order for him to become bilingual at a conversational level. Would 3 hours be enough? What do you think about TV exposure? Thanks in advance!!
Hi Maria, thank you so much. It depends. The more your child is exposed to a language per day, the faster he/she is going to reach a conversational level. The same thing goes for the other direction. The less he/she is exposed, the longer it will take to reach that goal. The rule of thumb is around 30% of the waking hours.
Please watch this video, it will probably answer your question in detail: th-cam.com/video/ERbDNp-gMaw/w-d-xo.html
Hello Andrea, I'm a Spanish native speaker and my wife is Russian, our son is attending a Russian daycare and we live in Quebec witch means French is the language here and of course, between my wife and I English is the common language, however, he seems to develop his mother tongue is Russian and Spanish due to our commitment to speak to him in our mother tongue.
My concern is he will start up the primary school in French but neither of us speaks it at home what we should do in this case?
Hello Juan, it's great that you are committing to speak in your native tongues with your child. Wonderful! Don't worry, stick to your native tongues RIGOROUSLY and make sure that your child is exposed to French the latest at the age of 3 to have a good start in school.
Please subscribe here (www.multilingual.family/sign-up) as I'm currently working on my next course that will answer a ton of questions and will help you enormously to be a successful multilingual family.
Dear Andrea!! Thanks a million for all the help and guidance that your are sharing with all of us. My husband and I really see your channel interesting and as a reference.
I would like to share our case, seeking for your help.
I'm half Jordanian half Spanish, speak Arabic and Spanish bilingual, I was raised in Jordan but living now in Spain. Also speak a profesional English and understand French.
My husband is Italian also speaks fluent Spanish and English.
Currently we are living in Spain and our relation language is Spanish.
I'm pregnant now and we would like to raise our Child in our main 3 languages: Spanish Italian and Arabic.
We thought about the OPOL method (I will be talking to her in Arabic and my husband in Italian) and Spanish will be the community language and she will learn it passivly as well while my husband and I communicate. Would that be a correct option? Could you please share with us your point of view and advice? We appreciate it a lot. Thanks again ❤️❤️❤️❤️. Sara & Alessandro
Hi!
Yes, your strategy sounds good! I think that can work. Just keep in mind that you need to focus on Arabic and Italian in the first years of your child's life to reach the best results.
I recommend taking some of the courses I've put together for cosmopolitan parents like you, since you are going to learn tons of things that are going to make your life so much easier. You are pregnant now. It's the PERFECT time to invest in your know-how and give your child a wonderful kick-start in terms of language development.
Here you can find the courses: www.multilingual.family/services :0)
My wife and I speak English. How do we get to help out kids become multilingual
You can read books to them and find native tongues and places where they can be exposed to other languages.
Can i speak to my daughter in two languages? I am from PHilippines. my daughter has learned our native dialect and English. I haven't exposed her yet to our national language which is Filipino... I am a single mom, so I am her only source. can i speak in those 3 languages mixed?
You can do that in an orderly way. Check out my other videos where I explain proven ways of speaking more than one language to your children with success.
Hi I have a question
About toys
Should my kid play with different language toys than we as parents speak me German, my husband spanish to him?
We speak at home with each other engl.
So can my kid play with engl toys ?
Or would it confuse the baby
Sure it can. It won´t confuse your child. Just make sure that you speak to your child consistently in your strongest languages (hence: no mixture with English).
Contact me if you have more questions to book a consultation (info@multilingual.family).
Hi! Thank you so much for your vidoes.. I am watching them with alot of passion as myself and my wife have a new baby coming (our first) and we really would love to get your advise as we are unsure what to do when raising our baby : We are currently living in Israel and I speak Hebrew (native) and English (as native) while my wife speaks Mandarin Chinese and we both usually use English to communicate between us. Our child will grow up in Israel for next few years (assuming 5) with the following few years in China (at least that's the plan) .. we were thinking that I should speak to him in English , his mother will talk in Chinese and the environmental language would be Hebrew, with the hope that he can take up the Hebrew from the surroundings and taking into account that English would be used between all of us when we go back to China.. after watching your videos I am not so sure that a good strategy anymore as I'm worried his Hebrew would be weak and he would have a hard time growing up here In Israel as such .. what would you recommend us to do or where can I find more resources that would help me get to the best strategy for our situation.. thank you so much and keep making this videos 🙏
Hello Hanan
Thank you so much for your message!
I would really love to help you but supplying this channel with valuable content consumes all of my spare time. The growth of this channel has led to lots of people seeking for personal advice and I´m struggling keeping up with all of it. In addition, it requires often more than just a few lines to answer your questions thoroughly.
However, I don´t want to leave you hanging there, so this is what I can offer at the moment:
- A personal consultation. We would arrange a date where I analyze your family situation and together, we find the best strategy for your multilingual family. This option gives you the possibility to ask follow-up questions. More information here: www.multilingual.family/services
- A paid Q&A video. I would take your personal situation and shoot a video answering your questions. The difference to the consultation is that it is not interactive, and it gets published. More information here: www.multilingual.family/services
- Continue to profit from the free content I offer to my subscribers. Sign-up here www.multilingual.family/sign-up to be notified when new courses and free material come out and/or watch my other videos, as they contain plenty of free helpful tips.
- I will be offering a step by step online workshop for multilingual families in approximately one year.
I hope that one of these options suits you. If so, send me an email to info@multilingual.family with your choice of preference.
Thank you for your understanding and all the best to you and your family!
Andrea
Hi Andrea. My sister recently had a baby and she is married to an Arab man. We live in Canada so the majority language is English. Her husband speaks to the child only in Arabic but my sister and her husband speak English to each other. My native language is a rare and easy language known as Sri Lanka Malay but my sister is unable to speak it so she speaks to the baby in English. Only my parents and I can speak it and they are staying with her until the end of the year. I already know that the child will be better at English and Arabic than at SLM but what can my parents and I do to make sure that she can learn that language too as its endangered. As of now there are not too many resources or media in the language and anything I find will be shown to the baby. I just have me and my parents speak to the baby exclusively in SLM. How can we keep the language in the child especially once my parents leave my sisters house at the end of the year? Thank you for your help 😃
Hi Emmad
Fist of all congratulations on wanting to teach the baby SLM, to conserve and protect your heritage language.
There are a some things that you can do to expose the baby to that language, even if you and your parents are far away.
Regular visits and recordings are probably the beste options next to anything else you can find in SLM (books, games, videos, apps etc).
To help you in detail, I'll need more time to explain things and answer your questions. Here are two options that you might be interested in. Go to www.multilingual.family/services
Have a great day!
Andrea
Hi Andrea
please help me! me and my husband are from India and we talk in Hindi at home. But my husband’s native language is marathi. We now live in Oslo and my baby goes to kindergarten where he is exposed to norwegian. We both don’t know norwegian. Also we want to teach english to our baby. my baby is 2 yrs 4 months old and doesn’t speak any of the language. He just say few words but doesn’t frame a sentence. How should we teach him to communicate.
Just stick to your native languages when speaking to your child. Make sure your child goes the latest at the age of 3 to a norwegian daycare some days a week and don't worry abour English. The school will take care of that.
hello andrea ...from which age number we should practice our baby to two languages ...my child is only 4 months old ...kindly guide me
Kids can be confronted with languages since before birth. If you are the one speaking more than one language, you need to think about a suitable method for your family. Contact me if you need more help (info@multilingual.family)
Hello, do you have anything on the case of only one parent being the multilingual and the other parent being monolingual? i.e. I speak fluent Spanish and English (grew up bilingual, and that’s also the language my husband and I have in common, plus we live in the US), fluent Portuguese (a language I often think of and find talking to myself in often), and intermediate conversational French.
Hi Sendy, I saw you signed up for an intake call. I just approved the date, so we will be able to talk about your situation on the 25th. Meanwhile check out my "Multilingual Parenting Know-How" playlist. :)
@@MultilingualFamily Thanks!!!
Holaa necesito un consejo porfavor! Mi primer idioma es español pero creciendo en Italia hablo muy fluido el Italiano, hablo muy bien en inglés y tengo buen nivel de Alemán. Mi pareja es de Moldova y el habla rumano y ruso, nuestro idioma común es el Italiano y vivimos en Alemania. Vamos a tener una nena en pocos meses y me gustaría mucho que aprendiera mas idiomas, por cuales sería justo empezar y como deberiamos organizarnos ? No quiciera confundirla, he escuchado tantos casos de niños que han tenido problemas en comunicarse por causa de los muchos idiomas. Gracias de antemano 😊
Hola, veo que tienen muchos idiomas en casa. En su caso es sumamente importante que se organicen bien para que funcione el desarrollo de los idiomas como usteden desean. Como su caso es un tanto complejo, te sugeriria considerar una consulta conmigo para averiguar cuales son sus metas, deseos, recursos etc. y juntos crear un plan de idiomas que les convenga. Mas informacion aqui: www.multilingual.family
Hi Andrea, I would love your advice. I speak Spanish and English (Eng is my dominant language, Spanish is my first language and I tend to speak Spanglish with my family) and my husband speaks Korean and English. We live in South Korea, and will do for the next 5 years. Our baby is due in the fall. I am determined to speak in Spanish using the OPOL method (and it will eventually strengthen my anemic Spanish) because I really fear the child not learning it any other way since relatives are far and it's hard to always communicate through phone or video. My husband will speak solely Korean and as we will speak English with each other. My concern is my child learning English too slowly and having a hard time in 5 years when we move back States side. But I did learn English when I was 5 myself, like a sponge so perhaps this fear is unfounded? Our friends here in Korea would be speaking English. Do you think this is the best way to tackle this? Thank you!
Hi Alex, yea that sounds very good to me. Focus on Spanish, your husband on Korean. If you want to help your child out with English, either hire a nanny that speaks only English to him/her or use the also the OSOL/OAOL method to expose your child to English as well, but only after you have established a strong bond to your child in Spanish (in 2 years or so). Just try to stick to Spanish as much as possible, avoid "spanglishing" your baby.
SUERTE y sígueme para estar en contacto :) www.multilingual.family/sign-up
Such a great video. Thank you. I have a question where you say to use your strongest language with your child. Both me and my husband have different native Indian languages. However for both of us our strongest language is English and that is what we use to speak to each other and is the language of the country. Can we still use OPOL and speak in our native languages respectively with our child and leave English to when he starts school and hears us speaking to each other and that way have him learn those 3 languages?
Sure, if you feel proficient in those languages.
@@MultilingualFamily yes I think we are even tho nowhere near as good as English but good enough. Thank you
why would my child have psychological difficulties later if my strongest language is turkish but do not speak in turkish to him because I do not enjoy the language and prefer other languages? My own parents did speak to me in turkish but I still had a low self-esteem around my turkish identity. (the whole country does sort of because we are next to europe and europe does not like us)
If you feel so strongly against your heritage language, it might be a point to consider. Just know that kids need to have proud and strong parents to want to speak their languages. For building their identity it is crucial that they know their roots and know where they come from. It is therefore usually not ideal to drop the heritage language.
@@MultilingualFamily thanks for the input. I do believe what you are saying. I guess I just thought that speaking the ancestral language may give him low confidence because it would make him feel different from his friends, classmates whereas if he just speaks the same language as others, he would fit in better as he would not have this other identity he needs to grapple with. I do believe what you are saying as you are an expert in this topic and I literally just had a child 7 months ago but I guess I do not understand fully why things work that way, and having a ancestral language gives fewer issues around identity rather than more. There are so many Americans who do not speak their ancestral language (polish and ukrainian etc) and they fit in whereas the ones who stayed within their immigrant communities and kept their languages seem to have more problems. Same with the turkish community in Germany. So that was how I formed my viewpoint. Again, I do believe your words, I just wish I understood the reason behind your assertions a bit better. Also my child smiles at me more when I started speaking with him in german and said a bunch of cute things so he seemed to enjoy it. Anyway, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and knowledge with other parents. Really appreciate it.
@@MultilingualFamily I guess what I was thinking was that it is stressful and anxiety-generating to have a secondary identity that is potentially seen as different or viewed negatively by society whereas if you just did not instill that identity in your child, they could avoid that anxiety and pain involved with being something different and not fitting in. But I value your opinion and will be reading more on the topic, for example a book called "strong roots have no fear" by an indian american is on my list.
Hola Andrea, thanks for your video. I have yet another case for you. I dont have a real native language. I have a native level in Spanish and in English since I grew up in an English speaking country speaking spanish at home with my parents. My husband is Italian, and we live in Italy. What suggestions would you have for us? Is it too much if I speak to the baby in english and spanish and my husband in Italian? I was thinking of doing the OPOL and perhaps choosing particular times of the day, like dinner time or bath time for example to speak one of my native languages. what do you recommend?
Hi, yes that is possible. Choose a main language to use with your child (OPOL) and the other language you can introduce and build up using the OSOL method. Check out my other videos for more information about that.
Hola, Andrea. Estoy embarazada, mi esposo es turco y yo soy mexicana. Hemos decidido que yo voy a hablar en español y él en turco, pero ambos nos comunicamos en inglés. Después de ver tu video me preocupa un poco que nuestro nivel de inglés no sea lo suficientemente bueno para que nuestro bebé lo adquiera de manera pasiva. ¿Qué sugieres en este caso?, ¿no debemos hablarle en inglés al niño incluso cuando estemos juntos?
Hola Ana Gabriela, su plan suena muy bien. Mientras tu le hables a tus hijos en Español y tu marido en Turco, todo está bien, no hay por qué preocuparse.
Dónde viven? Si viven en USA o un país donde hablan Inglés, su bebé aprenderá de los alrededores más que de ustedes. Si viven en México u otro país, entonces solo deben encontrar alguna persona o institución donde hablen con su hij@ en Inglés y lo aprenderá sin problema, sin importar que ustedes usen Inglés para comunicarse.
Los niños no aprenden idiomas pasivamente de la misma manera en que lo hacen al hablar con ellos directamente.
Mientras ustedes no le hablen a su hij@ directamente en Inglés, no veo el problema.
Únete a mí grupo de padres cosmopolitas para recibir más ayuda aquí: www.multilingual.family/sign-up
Suerte!
@@MultilingualFamily muchas gracias. Nosotros vivimos en Turquía, pero yo no hablo turco. Espero que pueda aprender las tres lenguas sin problema
What about the language between the parents? Can/should that be English, if that is the language they usually use...?
For reference, my native language is Hebrew, but i am as fluent or sometimes more fluent in English (For example, I mostly write, even for myself, in English. I also usually dream in English). I also learned a bit of German for my husband's family.
My husband's native language is German, between us two we speak English, but we live in the netherlands, so in kindergarten the child will learn Dutch.
Hi, it depends on what your goals are. What other language could you speak with your husband? English can be an option but if you are looking to strengthening one of your minority languages, then choosing another relationship language might be a good idea.
Consider booking a consultation if you need more help in crafting a plan for your multilingual family here: www.multilingual.family/consultation
Kind regards
@@MultilingualFamily thanks so much for your reply! A goal? I guess to have as many languages as possible... But we speak English amongst ourselves, because his hebrew is very poor, and we don't love German... So English is the most spontaneous for us.
Hi Andrea! Thank you very much for your videos! You are doing a great job!
I’m currently pregnant with my first baby, but already planing in advance how to raise him/her. Specially the language part is marking my head spin!
I’m native polish speaker, my partner is Armenian/Lebanese, we live in Sweden and at home we speak mostly English. Rarely switch to Swedish because we speak it at work, but I don’t feel that comfortable with it yet.
I’m planning to speak polish to our kid, my partner will choose Armenian, but than I’m worried how will the child learn Swedish before going to daycare? Should we speak to him/her both our native tongues + Swedish? Or native tongues + English as that’s our relationship language?
Thank you again for you interesting videos. All best,
Zuzanna
Stick to the OPOL with your native tongues. If your child starts learning Swedish the latest staring at the age of 3, you don't have anything to worry about. Focus on the minority languages and outsource the task of introducing Swedish.
i am trying to raise my boy bilingually, i am vietnames, hope to have a detail plan and strategies from you, thank you so much
Hi, I would love to help you. Here you can find more information: www.multilingual.family/services
You are great!
Can a new born baby learn 2 languages fluently or atleast being able to have extended conversations if he/she has exposure of those 2 languages (such as Hindi and English)?
sure
Hallo andrea ich wuerde auch gerne einen Rat von dir haben ❤️ ich bin Bosnierin aber in Deutschland aufgewachsen , der papa ist araber und wir leben in Kuwait jedoch ist papa viel arbeiten so dass mein kleiner dort bald in die Krippe müsste damit er das arabisch mehr mitbekommt . Nun ich speche mit ihm bis jetzt nur bosnisch weil mir das seeeehr wichtig war das sehe ich als meine Identität auch wenn ich als baby schon in De war und mehr in De mein leben verbracht hab. Er ist 19 monate alt , wie mach ich das jetzt mit dem Deutsch beibringen ? Sollte ich es mal versuchen mit den aufgeteilten Tagen in Der woche 3 Tage bosniscj 2 Tage deutsch ? Dss würde mir eig leicht fallen. Ich liebe die deutsche Sprache und will ihm am liebsten alles auF Deutsch beibringen. Bosnisch möchte ich einfach dass er es reden kann . Was ratest du mir ? Wir haben dort leider keinen von meiner Familie und es gibt einen Deutschen Kindergarten aber da er im arabischen mitkommen muss würde das auch wegfallen. ? Lg ❤️
Ah und sollte ich jetzt schon Anfangen mit dem Deutsch oder noch warten bis er mich wirklich versteht auf bosnisch. Er ist 19 mon alt redet nicht wirklich paar wörter aber auf bosniscj ich merke er versteht mich . Ist es der ricjtige zeitpunkt für deutsch ?
Liebe Nej, ich würde dir sehr gerne weiterhelfen, aber mir fehlt momentan die Zeit um deinen Fall genau zu analysieren und dir eine profesionelle Antwort zu geben. Zur Zeit kann ich dir eine Beratung anbieten oder ein sogenanntes "Paid Q&A Video", um deine Fragen zu beantworten. Wenn du Interesse hast, besuche bitte folgende Seite: www.multilingual.family/services
Ich würde mich freuen nochmals von dir zu hören. Liebe Grüsse
Andrea
Hi Andrea, my baby is 3 months old. I live in Turkey, my husband& me communicat at home in our native language (Kurdish) but we can't read or write in Kurdish, we both fluent in Arabic(our strongest language). My husband does not speak English. I speak English but not fluent. I don't care about turkish bc i know she will learn it anyway. I want to teach my baby English, Arabic and kurdish at the same time .
Since my baby were born I speak with her in English, her daddy in Arabic while we communicate with each other in Kurdish. I really like to speak with my baby in English all the time but I'm afraid that will affect her negatively bc of my pronunciation.
So what do you recommend in my situation?
Hi Eman, thank you for your comment. I strongly recommend you to speak Kurdish with your child. Let your husband keep on speaking consistently with the baby in Arabic and find other sources to teach your child English (lots of books, music, videos and in the best case a human being like a nanny to build up a relationship to the baby in English.
I advice you to put ALL of your energy in building a strong relationship to your child in Kurdish. The first 6 years are crucial! The same goes for your husband in Arabic.
Best wished to you and your multilingual family!
Join my mailing list to get more help and support: www.multilingual.family/sign-up
@@MultilingualFamily thanks for your fast reply. what about only 1 or 2 hours a day for English by reading books, singing songs, naming the things in home..etc?
Bc i want to teach her to read in English& Arabic by using glenn doman method plus that Kurdish is a simple language& we have many friends can speak with her in Kurdish.
Hola, Andrea, lamento decirte algo tan estúpido pero imaginaba que tal vez te gustaría saber que la palabra arabic en inglés también se destaca en la primera sílaba como en español
Hola Mac, te refieres a la pronunciación?
@@MultilingualFamily Sí, perdón!! ya que no hablo muy bien español... por eso no me has entendido!!
neuroplasticity of the brain before the age of 6
Hello love your videos* i would live to be on you're emails* i dont know how though 🙈
Great! Opt in here: www.multilingual.family/sign-up