So my husband is Taiwanese American and I'm Vietnamese. We are living in Taiwan right now. He's fluent in Chinese and English and I Vietnamese and English. We used to communicate in English only but because I'm learning Chinese right now, we have been trying to talk exclusively in Chinese for some time (I'm probably at B1 level for Chinese).

We just had a baby 2 months ago. Since the community language is Chinese and the grandparents (who prefer to speak Chinese) also visit every once in while and call for 15 minutes every day, I wouldn't too worried about his Chinese so my plan is for my husband to speak to the baby in English and I will speak to the baby in Vietnamese exclusively. But my husband refused to do so for sentimental reason (he said it feels distanced to communicate with his son in English) and I don't think I can convince him to do so.

Is there any way for my baby to learn 3 languages at the same time with only me taking care of both Vietnamese and English?

I’m trying to break the cycle and raise my daughter bilingual.

My entire family speaks Spanish fluently, except for the younger generation, my nieces and nephews. My daughter just turned one and has started talking, and to my absolute delight, her first few words have all been in Spanish!
But I’m starting to worry because this is exactly how it started with my sister’s kids. She has three, and with each one, they seemed to learn less and less Spanish as a baby. They were exposed to it when they were little, but eventually English took over.

My sister and I grew up completely differently. Our parents only spoke Spanish to us at home, and we didn’t really learn English until we started kindergarten. We obviously learned English just fine, and we both grew up fluent in Spanish. That’s what I want for my daughter too.
The problem is that EVERYONE, for some god awful reason, speaks to her in English. Even when I remind them, “She only speaks Spanish,” they still do it. I don’t care if someone speaks English to her here and there. I know she’s going to learn English regardless. What worries me is how quickly English seems to take over.

We currently live with my parents while we save for a house, and my parents are very hands on with all of their grandkids. They pick up my nieces and nephews from school every day, so my daughter is around her cousins anywhere from five to seven days a week. Whenever the older kids are around, everyone naturally switches to English because they don’t speak Spanish, and then they end up speaking English to my daughter too.

I think that’s what makes me nervous. I’ve already watched this exact thing happen with my sister’s kids, and I really don’t want to repeat the same cycle with my daughter. I know English will come. We live in the United States, she’s surrounded by it, and eventually she’ll go to school and learn it there. I’m not worried about her learning English.
I’m worried about making sure she doesn’t lose Spanish.

I was lucky enough to be raised bilingual, with my German parent speaking German and my British parent speaking English. These rules were never broken, and to this day I still find it crazy to speak the “wrong” language with each parent - it weirds my brain out.

While I’ve spent some short stints living/studying/working in Germany, the UK and speaking English feel the most natural to me. I now have a baby who is 4.5 months old and I would love for her to grow up speaking German like I did, but I’ve no idea how.

My partner is British but having him speak English and me German feels really unnatural. I’m worried that if I did this, my whole relationship with my baby would feel somehow performative/disingenuous.

What are my alternatives?

I’ve heard about speaking the bilingual language in certain scenarios (e.g. bath time, bed time, in the car, etc.) but I don’t know much about this. Will it work as well? Will it be confusing?

Any help much appreciated!

I have a hard time getting my 2 year old to understand. I’m not sure if this is common amongst Spanish speakers but she is always speaking in the wrong tense because this is what she hears. For example I’ll ask her “quieres comer?” asking her if she wants to eat. But then she’ll later tell me “quieres comer” when she really means “quiero comer”. Every single day I have to tell her “es ’quiero’“ and she’ll fix it in that moment but then will make the same mistake later that day. I’m not sure how to remedy this! Any help is appreciated. TIA!

I wanted to give an update on my previous post (https://www.reddit.com/r/multilingualparenting/s/z0RJS7EpcQ)

After discussing EVERYTHING with my partner, here is what we’ve decided / our plan (potentially?)

We have decided to drop the Hindi babysitter completely. We’ve also decided that India will NOT be a place that we will be living. We will visit there but we’re have absolutely no plans or desires for baby to learn Hindi.

As for the Korean daycare, we are still unsure. As of right now, this very moment, we want to continue with this plan. We want to put baby in this daycare buttt.. not so much for them to necessarily learn the language. Aside from the Korean language, It’s a good daycare. We’re thinking of enrolling baby but setting zero expectations for her to learn, or even to understand. The daycare goes up to preschool age, so when baby starts talking we would probably pull her out completely.

The number one thing we’ve learned is “DO NOT MOVE EVERY TWO YEARS” we were completely unaware of how horrible that plan could be and how much stress and trauma this could give baby. We had absolutely no idea. With that being said, we are officially letting that idea go (as much as this breaks my heart. Although this is for baby’s sake, not my own)

We will still move to China when baby is three. But even after two years, we will not plan to move. Someone made a good point saying they moved to different countries when the time felt right or when everyone was ready. Me and my partner agree with this approach rather than setting a firm timeline. Another person mentioned they didn’t have a true identify because all their life was spent trying to fit in and learn different cultures.

We were so uneducated and unaware about what we could possibly be doing to our baby and I am SO glad that I made this post because I very well would have done all of those crazy plans.

Now, the issue is the languages. We still want baby speaking all three. Mandarin, English, and Japanese. Me and my partner both agree that she does not have to speak Japanese fluently or really even at all. We just want her to understand it and be exposed to it. Instead of moving to Japan when baby is 5, we’ll just do frequent vacations and still possibly move there in the future. Just not when baby is so young especially after a huge move from America to China

We’re unsure what to do.
I keep speaking to baby in Mandarin and my partner keeps speaking to baby in Japanese. Baby (hopefully?) picks up English while living in America. When we move to China, I only speak to baby in English while she grows up speaking Chinese and her parent speaks to her in Japanese

OR

I put baby in an English daycare in America, and I speak to baby in only English while my partner speaks to her in Japanese. Once we move to China she will obviously learn the language easily if that’s where we live.

People were mentioning that my baby could possibly feel a disconnect if we switch languages in every country so I’m thinking I need to pick a language and stay consistent with it.
The only issue is my partner wants to be able to understand Mandarin and we’ve been practicing for years. Do I speak to baby in English, speak to my partner in Mandarin, and they speak to baby in Japanese?

Hi all

Very new to this! I'm trying OPOL with my 15 month old daughter. I tried to start this properly a few months ago, my husband only speaks English, the community language. On the whole she is responding quite well to this.

My question: what do you do when your child asks you to read a book in the other language? Do you just get them accustomed to one parent reads some books and the other parent only reads books in the other language?

Additional context: (sorry it gets quite long!)

My daughter has about 70% English books and about 30% minority language / bilingual books - I haven't really taken a consistent approach when my daughter asks me to read English books - often I find myself giving in and reading them in English as opposed to trying to translate them / offering a different book.

She doesn't go to daycare yet (I'm the main caregiver and work 2 days a week, while I work my mum who speaks a mix of English and the minority language cares for her). We usually don't do screens, so reading to her is a major part of the time we spend together. A lot of her favourite books are English ones, and she gets annoyed / picks different books when I try to translate them into the minority language. I also don't want her to lose an interest in listening to and reading books because I'm making the experience more frustrating for her.

I think my daughter is now leaning towards asking me to read mostly the minority language books to her, she can probably tell I'm putting in more effort with those, and some of them are now favourites of hers too. But I do feel a little sad that some of the books that I bought in English which I was excited to share with her she doesn't ask me to read anymore (but will ask her dad).

I have worked on getting more books in the minority language, but it's getting expensive - our community library has some, but most of them are too advanced for her (and me! - needing to study up in my own time before I read some to her...).

Also - I grew up at home mostly with English because my own dad only spoke English. So a lot of the nostalgia / beloved characters are all in English for me. I also am quite fluent with speaking the minority language, but have to prep with ChatGPT before introducing new books now if they get too complex! But I had to put in so much effort to learn the minority language and I feel like introducing it now can help my daughter in the long run.

I’m wondering if this will be too much for baby?
I would speak to baby in only mandarin
Partner would speak to baby in only japanese
(me and partner are both very well about not slipping up at all. baby will only ever hear these languages come from us) (as for me and partner, we usually alternate japanese and chinese between each other)
Grandparents speak only english + currently living in the usa so environment is english speaking (playgrounds, libraries, gym daycare)
Baby goes to a korean speaking daycare / preschool (korean families, play dates)
And finally, a nanny / babysitter comes twice a week and speaks only Hindi. Since this language has the least exposure, me and partner are thinking of having babysitter read tons of hindi books, and having baby strictly only watch hindi shows.
Why are we doing this?
As we are currently in the USA, our plan is to move to china within the next three years. The reason Japanese and Korean are important is because we also plan to live there! Me and partner are pretty set on not having a “designated area to live” We basically want to do 1-2 years in each country. Starting with china, then japan, korea, india.
We don’t really want to live in the usa once we move.
Once we move out of the usa, im thinking of switching my language and speak to baby in only english so baby doesn’t lose that language
Is this asking for too much? I know baby is not going to be fluent in all languages nor understand everything. Is it too much pressure? Does this seem like a terrible idea? Would we be confusing baby?

EDIT:
After reading everyone’s comments, I think it’s unnecessary to try and have baby speak Hindi. In reality, with a Hindi babysitter twice a week, baby just will not learn anything.
I will speak to my partner later about this. Now we have to figure out the Korean language situation. We both want baby to speak this language but I’m not sure what the circumstances are going to look like, especially after reading everyone’s commentary.

Hello, not sure if my flair is correct.

I speak Russian and my husband is learning (slowly) and we live where English is the primary language.

I am speaking only Russian to our toddler and my husband is speaking only English. So far it’s been going very well - toddler understands both, but speaks 80% Russian and 20% English. I assume this will change once he goes to school (where only English is spoken) but I plan on sticking to strict Russian.

My husband has always been okay with this setup but recently brought up being a “unified front” when we are talking to our toddler about something. IE being gentle with our newborn. How we handled it - I spoke to him and then my husband spoke to him. Seemed to have went well, but my husband is concerned how these things will go once toddler gets older. Will it send the message that the parents are not on the same page? My husband also not understanding what I’m saying might be causing him issue.

What are your thoughts on this? How do parents navigate this as kids get older?

TIA

My husband (Danish) and I (Russian) have recently moved to Greece with our 3.5 year old son from the UK. We don’t know how long we’ll stay in Greece. Minimum is another 2 years, could be longer and we’d like to maintain some kind of connection to here for years to come.

Our son’s strongest language is Danish, but he speaks to me and my family only in Russian. And in the last few months his English has started coming along (though it’s still his weakest). He goes to a mostly English speaking nursery (though there are lots of Greek kids so lots of exposure there still).

He also hears lots of Greek on the playground but I can tell he doesn’t understand and feels quite left out. Normally he’s pretty boisterous but I can see he keeps to himself when he doesn’t know how to engage with these kids. I have two questions - how can we help with his Greek? Hire a local babysitter for an hour to so a week just to “play” / chat with him in Greek?

Second question is re schools. We don’t love his nursery school. As I said, the school is primarily in English. However, the kids are hardly outside though they’re in a gorgeous woodland area…

Unfortunately city we’re in doesn’t have any international but also “alternative” / options.

There is however a wonderful school in our city that we’re more aligned with but it’s fully in Greek. I’m thinking of sending him there for the next school year (so 2027) once he’s had another year of passive Greek exposure. Is that silly? Will it lead to brain overload to force this fourth language on him when we don’t know that we’ll be here long term anyway? Should add he can be pretty intense and not always a big lover of change…

Live in the states and my partner understands 50% of my native tongue/Russian but doesn’t speak it. I’ve been speaking Russian to my son since he was born but as he grew older, around 5, he became incredibly resistant to hearing me speak it. I chose more straight forward English communication so that we could get through the growing pains. He has never spoken Russian back to me. My parents visit once a month or so and he may use a Russian word here and there when answering prompted options. With me, never.

From 5-almost 7 I would say I bumped down to speaking it 30% as his English vocabulary and reading skills have surpassed 9th grade levels. I just can’t have philosophical and often extremely technical conversations in a language where my own skillset taps out at grade school levels. He has very eloquently told me in many words why he doesn’t want to speak it. My husband also grew up in a household that spoke only Polish since he was born, and he and all of his brothers just chose not to speak it. Not a single brother. However when my husband found himself in Poland for two weeks in his twenties he came back nearly fluent. And now he can’t force himself to speak it if he tried.

All of this is to say, my son came up to me today and exclaimed that he would like to learn to speak it. He reiterated that he understands most of it when I speak slowly enough but he just doesn’t feel comfortable or know how to find the words to respond and that he would like to change that. He has done Russian language classes from 3-6 where he has learned to read in Russian at beginner levels but still never spoke it outside of reading it. He is a very precocious child who does things at his own pace. When he’s ready he is ready and nothing will tear him away. So now that I have his attention, and he is keen, how can I make this happen? We don’t have a Russian speaking community around us nor can we travel back to Ukraine where I am from. I already bumped up the time I speak it to him to nearly 100% but he just can’t find the words back to speak. I have no idea how to support him in this and would love all of your advice.

Me (Bosnian) and my husbond (Spanish) do OPOL with our 23 month old daughter, but we live in Germany and since 6 months ago she goes to tagesmutter (a day carer) that speaks only German to her. She understands all 3 very well, with at a moment more words in Bosnian, as my family comes every couple of weeks and we spent a lot of time in Bosnia. However, me and my husband speak to each other in English, as neither speaks speaks good German, and while I speak Spanish and communicate with his family in Spanish (in my family everyone speaks English so he never had to learn), we never spoke it to each other. Our daughter only gets upset when hearing English too much, I guess that she connects it as not being part of the conversation. Now we would like to start introducing a bit of TV, but problem is both of us hate dubbing and would prefer for her to watch cartoons in original language, which is of course English. But is this just going to add confusion, I don't want to break her brain just because I don't want to hear her singing some weird version of Frozen. Or do we leave English for when she is a bit older.

My son, who is almost 3 years old, never responds to his father in Spanish. He understands perfectly. My partner has spoken exclusively to him in Spanish since birth. However, my partner and I speak French together, and my son attends a French-language daycare. He kinda rejets spanish when I try to speak it.

I understand Spanish and speak it a little. I incorporate Spanish into our routine by reading bedtime stories in both French and Spanish, and my son watches a short show in Spanish every day. We also have video calls with family members who live abroad. There aren’t many Spanish speakers in our social circle, and my partner’s entire family lives in his home country. We are going to visit them for one month in december.

Is there anything else we should be doing? Is this normal? Should we only speak spanish at home even if I dont speak it fluently?

We are worried he won't speak spanish.

Thanks

My son is 22 months. We live in Portugal, my wife is Portuguese and I'm Swedish. We both lived in the UK 15 or so years and speak English with each other at home.

So Portuguese is majority language, I speak Swedish with him as minority language and my wife also does sometimes (her Swedish isn't so bad). English we are not so worried about as there is enough exposure and he'll have it in school etc.

My son is going through a language explosion, which is really fun. Unsurprisingly though most of his words are Portuguese. He still seems to understand almost an equal part Swedish, which feels good. I'm only speaking to him in Swedish and we have plenty of books in Swedish.

I've read multiple things that if you want the child to speak the minority language, not just understand, you need to insist they reply to you in the minority language. I get that but at the moment it feels a bit like I'd be discouraging his general learning.

So my question is, at what age is it right to start insisting he replies to me in Swedish?

I’m Korean and I’ve been wondering how differently people can retain their first language after moving to an English-speaking country.

I have an older Korean friend who moved from Korea to Sydney at 9. He’s 27 now, has barely been back to Korea since, did almost all of his schooling here, went to university here and now works here. His parents stayed in Korea and his grandmother looked after him to some extent, so he didn’t grow up with Korean-speaking parents constantly using Korean at home. Almost all of his close friends growing up were white too, so he wasn’t really in an Asian social bubble.

English is more comfortable for him and he’s completely native in it, yet his Korean is extremely natural. I’ve known him for over 5 years and we basically only speak Korean. Korean probably became our default because my English wasn’t as good when we first met, but my English is completely fine now and we still almost never switch. His Korean was already very natural when I met him around 2020, and he says dating Korean girlfriends since then has improved it even more.

What’s interesting is how different other cases I’ve seen are.

I knew another Korean guy who moved to Australia at around 11-12, and by high school English was already his dominant language and his Korean was noticeably awkward.

Another friend’s older brother moved to the US at around 17. He was already extremely good at English in Korea, had even competed in international English-speaking competitions and had visited the US several times before moving. After he’d been there for a while, even his dad noticed over video calls that his Korean had become less natural and joked with him about it. English is now much more comfortable for him and he’s settled in the US.

So he left Korea much later than my friend who moved at 9, yet their outcomes seem almost reversed.

I also knew a Chinese guy who moved to Australia at 9 whose Mandarin still sounded completely mainland native, but he told me that culturally he felt like his understanding of China was basically stuck at age 9. That also made me wonder how separately language and cultural familiarity can develop.

I came to Australia myself at around 15-16. My English is completely fine now, but Korean is still overwhelmingly more comfortable for me for speaking, reading and writing, and culturally I still feel much more Korean.

So what causes outcomes this different? How much is age of immigration compared with family language, peer groups, relationships, media exposure, personality or individual differences in language retention? I’d especially like to hear from people who moved during late childhood or adolescence, or parents who have seen very different outcomes between siblings.

My husband and I do OPOL with our child. I speak to our child in my heritage language, which I learned at age 7. I hadn’t used it regularly in a while before having our kid so was fairly clunky when they were born, including in vocab. I found myself on my phone looking stuff up often, which sucked, because a) I try to not be on my phone around them and b) I don’t want to paint the phone/Internet as the only source of all knowledge.

Then I found this random pocket dictionary translating between my heritage language and English (community + husband’s language) and started to use that. My kid looooved it. They would thumb through it all the time and “look things up” (2 yo, lol) and dad could use it with them as well. We upgraded and got a huge one, because the pocket one lacked many more niche words. It’s been a super fun tool for all of use and I love that it’s taught them about books as a reference!

I recently just heard about the OPOL method. My native tongue is Tagalog and husband is American English. We mainly speak English at home. I try to speak Tagalog to my baby when I’m aware of it but I’ve gotten used to just speaking English as it was just me & my husband abroad (Riyadh) and I unconsciously speak to my baby in English too. Right now, at almost 12 months she’s saying “mama”, “oh no”, “nyum nyum”, “no”. And I’m dreading she’d only speak English. I usually sing tagalog & English nursery rhymes and she can follow gestures like clapping hands in tagalog. And “Eat Bulaga” (Filipino version of peekaboo)

I’d like to try the OPOL method, do you guys have any tips on making it easier or consistent?

Hi folks,

long story short, I am in the middle of a separation with my partner. We have a kid together (2+ years old), and we attempted to raise him OPOL because I am bilingual (raised with OPOL model, funnily enough.). She speaks to him in Language A which is also the community language (and the language we speak together), and I speak Language B to him.

I am C2 in this language, but it’s been a while I haven’t used the language that much. Sometimes I need to go the long way to explain or describe something I am not immediately having the words for. I used to take the time to read a bit, on my own, in Language B, to help me with getting the expression back on track. I was getting there. But with this was before.

With the separation (not yet divorce, but likely outcome.), I am thinking of giving up, because it’s just too hard. I can’t focus on surviving what we are going through, investing in myself to not drown, having to manage the little one on my own every 2 weeks, and working on language B at the same time. Also, we are at an age where verbal communication is getting huge with my kid, can understand, replies, speaks a ton (75% in A). I end up, because it’s quicker sometimes, to speak in A.

I feel I am failing this mission of raising my kid with Language B, which was important to me also because some family members I am close with speak B but not A.

Should I give up? I am scared my kid may blame me for this, being raised bilingual is such a blessing afterall …

if I give up for now, can I come back to it if my circumstances change/improve?

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I have got almost 3 year old twins and we are doing OPOL, with me speaking to them in Afrikaans and my husband speaking to them in English. We live in an English speaking country. The only other Afrikaans they get is from my parents. I speak English to my husband.

They have done really well and easily repeat what we say, make up sentences in both languages and code switch.

However, I myself have been out of South Africa for 16 years and only speak Afrikaans with my parents. It never used to matter but now we are getting into emotion and consequences territory, I find myself searching for words and not always remembering them.

It is disheartening!

Has anyone been in this situation? What did you do? Maybe I need to do more reading in my native language!

If your child was diagnosed with a speech delay while growing up in a bilingual or multilingual environment, would you drop one or more languages to help them start talking sooner and focus on just one for now?