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Parents with bilingual children, how did you do it? (lemdro.id)

submitted 5 months ago by governorkeagan@lemdro.id to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

37 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Although I mention parents specifically in the title, this isn’t just for parents to respond.

My wife and I are trying to raise our child to be bilingual (English and Portuguese). Currently we’re both speaking a bit of both to our child and when they eventually go to school we’ll speak more Portuguese as they’ll be exposed to English everywhere else.

Is this a good approach or is there something we can do better?

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[–] hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 5 months ago (3 children)

So we have 3 languages in the family, native languages for me and wife + English as common language. It's a huge mess and at almost 4yo she's mixing up languages and a little bit slow on learning to speak in general, but we've been told that's just how it goes

[–] frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml 5 points 5 months ago

Linguist here. Yes that's just how it goes. It'll come out alright in the end.

[–] governorkeagan@lemdro.id 2 points 5 months ago

I’ve heard the same. Thanks for sharing.

[–] BlemboTheThird@lemmy.ca 2 points 5 months ago

Yeah this seems common. I had a friend who grew up with parents who alternated between English, Portuguese, Italian, and French, and he told me he wound up not being able to speak at all until he was over 2 years old. It didn't affect him badly later on, and he always insisted it was worth it