Question Hello, My question doesn't really pertain to language specifically, but the idea of culture. My kids are fine in terms of their mother tongue since my husband cannot speak English and only Hindi, and that my English is not too fluent. So they are...
culture
Q&A: How to support a child’s minority language which you are not fluent in?
Question Hi! My question might be a bit complicated. I have a 17-month-old daughter. I speak Hungarian to her, my husband speaks Spanish and we speak in English with each other. We currently live in Hungary and the main language of the community is Hungarian....
Q&A: How will having different school languages affect the sibling relationship?
Question Hello, We are a trilingual family and our situation is quite complicated. My husband is Japanese, I am Taiwanese/Australian. We have two children a 4-year-old boy and a 7-year-old girl. I speak native Mandarin and English and conversational Japanese,...
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....
Q&A: How to choose the additional language to teach a toddler?
Question Hi, My husband and I have an 18-month-old son who we would like to raise bilingually in Austin Texas, USA, but we are having a hard time deciding which language to teach him. Predominant languages in our city environment: English and Spanish...
Q&A: How to convince a reluctant parent to speak a minority language with a child?
Question Hello! As every parent would like to provide best future for their children I have started to wonder about language routine for our baby girl that is due in a month. I would like to get any advice how to introduce the language that is very important to...
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: Bilingual siblings and their language preferences
Question Hello, I am Franco-Mexican and my husband is Dutch. We have two daughters and live in the Netherlands. I only speak Spanish to them, my husband only Dutch, and together we speak English. This works perfectly for us, they don't mix up, but... lately my oldest...
Bilingual children – language exposure is not enough, attitude counts!
A minority language parent’s attitude to his or her own language can be the deciding factor for how fluently the child will learn to speak the language. This is an interesting find from an on-going small-scale study of bilingual children. According to the study, a...
Bilingual children travel well, and do well to travel
Today, having helped my younger daughter pack for her trip to the other side of the world, I was again reminded of how travelling has been important, in so many ways, for her and her sister. Apart from the obvious of visiting new and revisiting familiar places,...