Question Dear Multilingual Parenting team, This is a trilingual situation: My husband (native American/good Greek speaker) and I (native German/very good Greek and English speaker) currently live in Greece with our 19 month old son and are planning on moving to...
Q&A: What if a bilingual child’s majority language is not as advanced as the minority one?
Question I’m American and speak English to my children (now aged 12 & 9). We live in the Netherlands. My husband is Dutch by birth (and speaks Dutch to them), but his mom is Spanish/Catalan and his dad is Czech/Slovakian (but also speak only Dutch to the kids)....
Q&A: How can grandparents help a grandchild become bilingual
Question Hello, I will soon become a proud grandmother to my son's first child and I wonder how I could help in teaching him Finnish. My son knows conversational Finnish but his strongest language is English and his wife speaks English. They would very much like their...
Q&A: Setting up language arrangements with an au pair
Question I live in New Zealand where I am attempting to pass on French to my two children as a non-native speaker. The children are 3.5 and 1.5 years. At this stage there is some passive understanding of the language only. I would like to hire a live-in language...
Q&A: The trilingual family
Question My children are learning three languages, because my husband is English, he, of course, speaks English to them; I am Mexican and speak Spanish, and we live in Italy. I only speak Spanish to them, but only speak English to my husband. They go to childcare, and...
Q&A: Practicing reading in two languages
Question I have 3 and 5 year old children, with whom I speak the minority language, while they speak the majority language with their father and at daycare. They understand and speak my language without problems, though they use the majority language predominantly. My...
Q&A: Should we change our OPOL strategy when moving to another country?
Question I'm American, my husband is Italian and we have been living in Italy. My husband and I speak each others' language and our conversations flow between Italian and English. We have used the one parent, one language approach to help our three-year-old son become...
Q&A: One parent, one language (OPOL)
Question I have a question about OPOL (one person, one language). We tried this method with my eldest, who is now 4, but the problem we had from day one, that isn’t factored into this method, is grandparents – my Japanese husband’s parents live next door and see my...