Which language(s) do you speak with your children?
Your native tongue? The language that’s mainly spoken where you live? Your husband’s first language?
I really wanted to speak English with my daughter. It’s my second language but it used to be my primary language.
Yet, I decided against it and ended up speaking my mother tongue, German, with her.
Because i know way more words and especially more specific words in German.
Because my family expected me to speak German with her.
Because it felt weird to speak English with her.
As a linguist I knew that even if we didn’t speak English perfectly, it’d still be good for her to grow up bilingually.
As a linguist I knew the importance of speaking a language with her really, really well.
It may be a paradox. The truth is we still know little about how the human language is processed in our brains.
So we chose to speak German.
Fast forward a handful of years and our daughter WANTS to learn English and Vietnamese.
She actively reminds me to speak English with her at certain times and my husband to speak Vietnamese at other times.
She has already picked up a few words and understands some sentences.
Who knows… maybe she’ll end up being trilingual. It’s definitely something she wants and envisions for herself.
Since we’re still speaking German 95% of the time, I’m going to start exploring different ways of exposing her to English. After all, there is evidence that you need to actively use a language 20% of the child’s awake time if you want the child to get a good command of it.
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