When more than one language is spoken in a family, parents in face the choice of whether their child should learn both (or all) languages in parallel or if they should let the child’s skills in one language become established before starting to learn the second (and...
Growing up bilingual is another aspect of my early childhood which was a given for me (last week I wrote about how I took for granted my right to speak my mother tongue at school). I really had no choice, as my mother spoke Finnish with me and my father Swedish. They...
Question Hello, I'm looking for some advice on how to raise a bilingual child when one of the parents is against it. We are a mixed family. I'm Polish and my partner is English. We have a two-year-old son and live in the UK. It is very important for me to teach my son...
This is an extended version of a post from January 2013. If you are a bilingual like me, you know we all do it – mix our languages when we speak to other bilinguals. When we cannot think of a word in one language or if there is a better expression for what we want to...
When I write reviews they are normally about non-academic books that I recommend for ALL my readers. Today’s book, Assessing Multilingual Children (subtitle: Disentangling Bilingualism from Language Impairment, edited by Sharon Armon-Lotem, Jan de Jong and Natalia...
This Saturday, 21st of February, is UNESCO’s International Mother Language Day. Those of you who follow me in social media know that I have been actively campaigning to raise awareness for this day, to make it celebrated more widely across the world. It warms my heart...
Should you be able to speak a language without an accent to call yourself bilingual? Can you acquire a native-like accent in a language you learn later in life? Do others guess where your accent is from? Does it really matter? Do you care? I have recently discussed...
Question My sister has a friend whose daughter speaks German (from her father), Afrikaans (her mother) and English (kindergarten). So I know it is possible. However, I am going to be a bit of a devil’s advocate and pose some alternative viewpoints: 1) My wife was a...
In a recent radio program on multilingualism the bilingual poet and Professor Gustavo Perez Firmat stated that he feels very differently about his two languages, with English being a happier language than Spanish. He also answered ‘Yes’ to the question whether he felt...
Kids tend to come with surprises – raising a child in more than one language can only add to the bewilderment. Bilingual children can certainly surprise their parents (and others), because they … … sometimes refuse to speak one of their languages There are several...