Bilingual kids

[Falcon]

Aidan's now nearly 21 months old. I speak in German to him and my husband in English. We both read books to him in whichever language he brings them to us.
He has quite a few words in both languages now, some of them rather random.
He seems to pick one language per word (although there are a few he says in both German and English), but he does understand the same word in the other language as well. He has discovered a new game - contradicting me, e.g. everytime I said "Vogel" today, he grinned, shook his head and said, "bird!"

How do you speak to your kids, and how are they developing with two different languages?

[coccolone]

Same here - I speak German and OH speaks English. But J seems to prefer English (already ). I ought to find him a German play group here.

When Daddy's home I won't read English books to J but he has a lot of books in both languages so if he wants me to read he'll just get the German edition. A few days ago he made us read Eric Carle's Very Busy Spider together. We had to take it in turns to read one page - I read German and OH English. It was really funny, albeit somewhat bizarre...

[a.1973]

Aidan's now nearly 21 months old. I speak in German to him and my husband in English. We both read books to him in whichever language he brings them to us.
He has quite a few words in both languages now, some of them rather random.
He seems to pick one language per word (although there are a few he says in both German and English), but he does understand the same word in the other language as well. He has discovered a new game - contradicting me, e.g. everytime I said "Vogel" today, he grinned, shook his head and said, "bird!"

How do you speak to your kids, and how are they developing with two different languages?

Isn't it too difficult for the baby? i was uncertain to speak in any other language to my child, because didn't want to confuse him...

vogel-bird....
nice story

[JaNiNis-Mom]

I speak German and dh speaks English, we both read only in our native language. If dh is gone, I rarely speak English with the kids and therefore, they prefer to speak German. But, and this is funny, if it's only the two Nicks together, they speak English to each other...even when they are at my family (and they speak only German). Our first language at home will always be German, dh is gone a lot , but they'll speak enough English soon, after our move to the US. My concern will be how to teach them reading and writing in German.

The Nicks both play in an English speaking soccer team and sometimes it's hard for them to follow the coach. They also go sometimes to an English speaking daycare without language problems.

My 14 yo daughter is fluent in both languages and has no accent. You wouldn't guess she speaks German (Schwaebisch ), and people in the economy often get confused when they speak English to her and she answers in Schwaebisch.

[a.1973]

I speak German and dh speaks English, we both read only in our native language. If dh is gone, I rarely speak English with the kids and therefore, they prefer to speak German. But, and this is funny, if it's only the two Nicks together, they speak English to each other...even when they are at my family (and they speak only German). Our first language at home will always be German, dh is gone a lot , but they'll speak enough English soon, after our move to the US. My concern will be how to teach them reading and writing in German.

The Nicks both play in an English speaking soccer team and sometimes it's hard for them to follow the coach. They also go sometimes to an English speaking daycare without language problems.

My 14 yo daughter is fluent in both languages and has no accent. You wouldn't guess she speaks German (Schwaebisch ), and people in the economy often get confused when they speak English to her and she answers in Schwaebisch.

oh, noo, this happened to one of my friend. she has italian husband, they live in Italy. his baby boy always reply in italian no matter in which language you speek to him. really cutie!
ok, i DS and go to prepare something to eat!

[coccolone]

@a.1973: Where are you from? Is your DS bilingual too? Which languages do you speak at home?

[milkshake]

i am a single mum of a little cutie of now 3 years.

i used to speak english to her in the beginning but then stopped after a while it was just too difficult for me to keep up in english when the whole environment speaks german only. i am still looking for english speaking friends in the area.

when she turned 2 years old i started speaking german only since i had the feeling that 2 languages spoken by one person (me) confused her. she started speaking proper geman after that right away.

now i tend to start speaking english again. i havent found out a proper way though, since i am a single parent. her daddy lives in the US and we phone once a week, but conversation between both of them is kind of tough. he is just taking a german class to be able to understand our daughter better. but my main intention is to raiser her bilingual, so i am introducing english slowly again into our daily life, in a playful way.

it certainly makes it easier to be 2 parents so that each person can speak her mother tongue.

[milkshake]

and an editing option to clear out mistakes in this forum would be nice too....

[Thistle]

Soph is now almost one year old. My husband and I speak only English among each other and to her. Our Peanut will start attending (bilingual) daycare in August. Obviously she's not saying anything distinguishable yet, although my husband likes to think that her 'Da Di' is in fact her saying 'Daddy' - I choose to indulge him there. In any case, it should be very interesting to see how our little one will deal with the two languages she's exposed to.

[a.1973]

@a.1973: Where are you from? Is your DS bilingual too? Which languages do you speak at home?

Sandra, i'm hungarian, from Hungary. I lived 10 years in Italy, i saw a lot of "bilingual" children there, as i had some hungarian friends. And i've done a bilingual high school (french-hungarian) where most of the material was learnt in french (e.g. maths, biology, physics, geography, french literature). if anybody is interested, i'm happy to speak about this experience.
Now i'm at home with my first baby, and trying to learn German. Suppose after all, this would be nice when i'll be back to work. But i'm just at the beggining (stillen, tragetuch ) sorry if it's off thread.

On: when i lived in Italy, with my boyfriend (italien) projected a baby after wedding, but he wanted, that baby speaks only italien (maybe it's better that we didn't married at the end )