Question Hello! My name is Caroline and I am a native English speaker who has since become nearly fluent in Spanish. My husband is a native Korean speaker who speaks English as his second language. I have been studying Korean and am at an intermediate level....
Grandparents
Q&A: How to convince the next generation to maintain the family language?
Question Hello, I have a question: I have successfully raised my children to be bilingual (English and Spanish) in the United States and couldn't be more proud of their fluency in speaking, reading and writing. We spoke it at home and they only use English at school....
Granny power for multilingual families [guest post]
Today’s guest post is by Michaela Hansen, the founder of Granny Aupair, an initiative to send young-at-heart grandmas all over the world. Founded in 2010, initially the grannies were only from German-speaking countries, but today more than 1,000 Grannies of...
Q&A: What to do when parents-to-be do not agree about raising bilingual children?
Question Hello I'm recently engaged. My fiancé and I are discussing those premarital topics. Child rearing has come up. He only speaks English. My native language is English, but I'm majoring in Spanish. I brought up the fact that I absolutely want to bring up...
Grandparents as language support for bilingual children
As parents raising bilingual children we know how important it is to give our kids as varied an exposure to their languages as possible. This becomes even more crucial if we are passing on a minority language. Building a network of people who can support us in this...
Q&A: Should a parent stick to the minority language when others are around?
Question Hi Rita, I recently was recommended your site to get advice how to raise my son bilingual. Our family background. We have a 1-year-old boy, who's just starting to form some sounds. My husband is British and I'm Hungarian, we live in the UK. So far I was...
Q&A: How to get the minority languages of the family back on track?
Question Hi Rita and team, Could you help me with advice on an upcoming dilemma? We're a family with three languages in the house but every family member's ability and willingness to speak them vary greatly. Dad is Spanish, is fluent in English and understands...
Q&A: How to combine OPOL and the needs of an extended multilingual family?
Question Hello, I'm very glad I found the article about the 2 parents, 2 languages (2P2L) family language strategy as it touches on some questions that have been bugging me ever since my daughter (18mths) was born. My husband (Spanish) and I (bilingual English/German)...
12 discouraging comments about raising a bilingual child – and how to reply
As parents of bilingual children, many of us have been there: finding ourselves in a situation where others give us advise on what is best for our children when it comes to their languages, and how we should behave as a family. Sometimes we get brilliant ideas on how...
Q&A: Does OPOL cause a “language division” in the family?
Question Hello, My name is Roberta and I have only recently found out about your website and signed up to the newsletter and I'm hoping you can help with a query I have. I'm Italian and my husband is English and we live in England together we our 6-month-old son. He...