Thursday, September 30, 2010

A little background

I was raised bilingual myself. My mother spoke French to me, my father Spanish. Apparently, I did not say much until quite late, until I was sent to a day school close to being 3 years old. As I got home, I did not stop talking. A mix of Spanish and French all in the same sentence. So I grew up learning and talking French at school, and Spanish at home. I later learned English very fast by going to Summer camp in Miami. I also learned German in school. I can honestly say that I am now at ease in those four languages.

Before my baby girl was born in 2008, my husband and I pondered a language strategy. After much reading, talking to other parents, and most importantly following our guts, we chose the "One Person, One Language" approach: I speak French to her, my husband speaks German (small detail I need to mention: he is German), my father speaks Spanish to her, and she is learning English and Spanish at her day school given that we live in Miami.

She is now two years old and understands all four languages. I intend to blog about these past two years, as well as what's going to happen next. My purpose is to document this experience and convince all those people who are afraid to speak even two languages to their children, fearing to confuse them. Teaching your child several languages is the best gift you can give him. You're doing him a favor. But you have to follow certain rules and be consistent.

4 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. This is really amazing what you guys are doing.
    I speak five languages now, but Spanish is my Native language but I grew up bilingual since I have always lived in the border of Texas/Mexico.
    Whenever I have my children I would also love to teach them several languages.
    Would you say that right before the baby is one year old is a good time to start speaking the languages?

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  3. I am mother of 2 in a mono-parental family, raising my kids in 5 languages from day 1, my oldest is 2, he feels comfortable and is fluent in English, French and Spanish, understands and can follow instructions in Italian while currently acquiring vocabulary in Mandarin, He is certainly more attracted to Mandarin than Italian. Kids will live up to whatever their reality is. My method was repeating everything in 4 or 5 five languages, reading the same book in 4 or 5 languages, same thing with nursery songs. The only thing is that there is no slacking ... this is an everyday thing.

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  4. I am mother of 2 in a mono-parental family, raising my kids in 5 languages from day 1, my oldest is 2, he feels comfortable and is fluent in English, French and Spanish, understands and can follow instructions in Italian while currently acquiring vocabulary in Mandarin, He is certainly more attracted to Mandarin than Italian. Kids will live up to whatever their reality is. My method was repeating everything in 4 or 5 five languages, reading the same book in 4 or 5 languages, same thing with nursery songs. The only thing is that there is no slacking ... this is an everyday thing.

    ReplyDelete