Question Hello! Me, my husband and our 11-month-old son (and another baby coming very soon) are living in Australia. My husband is Australian and talks English to our son and I am Norwegian and talk Norwegian to our son. I have some questions that I would like to get...
Bilingual children: one language at a time, or both at once?
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...
Q&A: How to adjust the family language strategy when a trilingual child’s majority language changes?
Question Hello, I am Mari, I am Italian and I live in Finland with my Finnish husband and our 10 months old daughter. My husband and I met in the UK where we lived for about 10 years until we moved to Finland 2 years ago. We have been always communicating in English...
Raising a bilingual child: alternatives to pretending not to understand
What to do when your bilingual child avoids using the minority language and speaks to you in the majority language instead? I am all for keeping the communication going with your little one, no matter what, so you will not be surprised to hear that I do not recommend...
Bilingual families: the role of the majority language parent
The majority language parent plays an extremely vital part when raising bilingual children. Most post on the topic of bringing up kids to speak more than one language are written with the minority language mum or dad in mind – including the ones on my site. This is of...
Q&A: Should we choose the majority language or a third one as our family language?
Question Hello, We are Czech-Finnish couple living for 3 years in Finland and we just got our first child. We tried to agree on our family-language-strategy before our son was born, but we couldn´t agree on one. What was sure was, that each one of us wants to speak to...
Bilingual siblings
Your first-born is on the way to become bilingual – you are so happy to see that both languages are progressing well. You have managed to arrange enough exposure for both languages and look forward to repeating the “procedure” with your next child. It should not be...
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: 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...
7 worries parents of bilingual children have
You have decided to bring up your children to become bilingual so they can reap all the benefits of knowing more than one language. Exciting! You speak to your family and friends about your decision and ask other parents about their experiences. Others may not be as...