Question Hi, My wife and I have so far adopted the OPOL strategy. Her native language is English, mine is Dutch, which is the majority language since we live in the Netherlands. Our two children have a clear preference for Dutch. They understand English perfectly...
Question My husband and I are Russians but currently leave in England. Both of us use Russian at home, and since we have been in UK for over 10 years, we are fluent in English. We have a small baby and wish our baby to speak both languages. We are not going to place...
Question Hi, I follow your blog and have found your advice extremely helpful in bringing up my daughter as a bilingual child. A little background, my husband and I are both perfectly fluent in English and Spanish both verbally and written and in professional and...
Question Dear Family Language Coaches, My first son will soon be born and my husband and I have to make the difficult decision which languages to speak with him. I am German and we are living in Germany. So one of his languages will definitely be German. My husband’s...
Question I was raised bilingual in Mexico City (and have always lived in Mexico City). My father is Mexican and my mother is from Boston MA. My two boys were raised bilingual. My concern is this: my daughter-in-law (Mexican) and son who now live in Rio Rancho N.M. are...
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...
Question My wife and I are having a baby, we are truly excited but we are scared about the language in how to educate our child. We are of different nationalities, Portuguese and Russian, we live in Germany (since one year) and our common language is English (our...
Getting an answer in the "wrong" language is something which especially minority language parents dread, and which gives rise to question such as: – Is it the start of a slippery slope which may end in the majority language taking over as the language of communication...
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...
How to prepare your little bilingual for school? What to do if you get a response in the wrong language? Should you follow the teacher's advice to drop your home language? These are some of the questions that Marianna Du Bosq from Bilingual Avenue and I answered...