Raising a bilingual child

[mono]

I was going to just post this in the Parent/Fathering thread, but thought it might warrant its own topic.

Any other parents here raising their kid bilingually? The wife is Japanese, although she speaks fluent English, whereas my Japanese is a step above telling her how kawaii she looks or that her food was oishii. Needless to say, we're following the One Parent One Language system.

Our son, Haruki is about 18 months, and has a few simple words in his stable, mimics sounds, and chatters endlessly, and expressively in some toddler-gibberish tongue of his own. We each read him one or two books before bed time every night, each in our own native language. Since he's our 1st child, my wife and I are both a bit uncertain about expected progress of his language development. At a recent checkup, our doctor expressed a bit of cautious concern about his vocabulary, and lack of constructing crude sentences of at least 2 or 3 words.

When my wife and I get concerned about his speech progress, she frets about stopping her Japanese interaction with our son, which neither of us want. We've spoken to some friends w/ older kids who have given us a fair bit of comfort that their kids were a bit slower to start talking, but quickly picked up the pace between 2-3 years of age, in both languages. Just thought I'd fish for experiences or practical tips among anyone with a similar situation. Even if you didn't raise a bilingual child, what were your habits vis a vis teaching your child language and reading?

[Lunch of Kong]

My mom spoke Turkish to me when i was a baby, so my first language was Turkish. She said that I came home one day from playing outside to tell her to teach me English because the kids outside were making fun of me. From that day on, she spoke only English to me, and I forgot all my Turkish. Then I moved to Turkey when I was 8, and learned the whole language again in two weeks by watching my relatives interact with each other.

That ends my experience with bilingual education.

[AlanT]

Bilingual children are slower to get started than monolingual. The literature agrees with your friends' observations, and they should catch up later.

And by the way, our son said very little until well past his second birthday. There certainly weren't any 2-3 word sentences at 18 months. He's six now, talks well and has a good vocabulary. Yours sounds like he's doing fine to me.

[Ezdaar]

I don't have any children, but as someone who didn't have the chance to be raised in a bilingual environment and is really terrible at learning languages, please please keep up the bilingual thing, your child will thank you down the road.

[Machfive]

I don't have any children, but as someone who didn't have the chance to be raised in a bilingual environment and is really terrible at learning languages, please please keep up the bilingual thing, your child will thank you down the road.

QFMFT.

If I ever have a kid, that fucker is going to be a polyglot. I can't speak a second language to save my life, despite years in high school trying my ass off.

I think the educational system in the US is SERIOUSLY shortchanging our children in the language department.

Multilingual teaching should start in fucking preschool.

[Dirt]

My first languange is Mandarin Chinese. I came to the USA when I was 5. I think it took me less than a month to learn to understand English. My degree is in English Literature. My spelling and grammer is probably better than most. Keep your kid bilingual.

[Houngan]

That's the beauty of immersion, especially at a young age. I know that two weeks of immersion classes in Spanish were much, much more effective than two semesters in college. I say teach the kid Japanese, he won't be able to help learning English.

H.

[Anaxagoras]

It was also my understanding that multi-lingual kids start slower, but end up doing better in the long run. It's not until you know multiple languages that you realize just how limiting any given language is. Or, at the very least, it inherently shapes how you view & interact with things. Teaching your kid another language doesn't just allow him/her to speak with a whole new set of people... it also gives him/her another set of tools with which to think about the world. (as well as opening up vast additional stores of literature.)

BTW, the more different the languages are, the better. Japanese & English are *awesome*... very different ways of looking at the world. When I learned German, it didn't do me any good at all... it just felt like clunky English. But learning a couple Romance languages was really awesome. Not because they're better languages... but because they promote a different kind of thinking.

One other thing. It's my unscientific opinion that the reason multi-lingual kids start out slower is because they're given multiple tools with which to view the world right from the get go. So I'm not surprised they start out slower.... they slip & slide between the two world views & they're not sure which is the "right" one. But in the end, I suspect it makes them more flexible people.

[prolix]

My spelling and grammer is probably better than most. Keep your kid bilingual.Ouch.

[MyNameIsWill]

In my experience, children brought up in a bilingual environment do take up language more slowly at first, so I wouldn't expect much out of him until age 2 or so.

[Kool Moe Dee]

Ouch.

That is what we refer to as a self-frag.

[Leah C]

I've worked with bi- and trilingual kids. The initial development is slower but they do catch up. There may also be a period where their overall vocabulary is pretty big, but their English vocabulary is behind their peers. I experienced this with two German-American kids I worked with. The little girl didn't care because she thought it was awesome that she spoke two languages, but her brother was very frustrated in the preschool years when people didn't understand German and he didn't know enough English to communicate as effectively as he wanted to. By four, he was caught up and thought it was really cool to have a "secret language" with his sister when they were out with their friends.

I have a charge now that's in a 90/10 Mandarin immersion program (90% of the day is Mandarin, 10% is English). He loves it, though it is slowing down his reading. He's only in kindergarten though, and word at the school is that the kids in the immersion program are caught up by first grade. That holds true with my other bi- and trilingual kids as well. They've all caught up by 1st or 2nd grade.

[Timemaster Tim]

My parents immigrated from Hong Kong and spoke very little English. As kid, I grew up speaking both Cantonese and English. My language skills are in no way impaired by two languages as a child. My only regret was my steadfast refusal to go to Chinese school which has rendered me a functional illiterate when it comes to Chinese. I need the white guy menu when dining in a Chinese restaurant.

[mono]

Thanks for all the awesome feedback thus far. For the record, there's no chance of abandoning the bilingual tract we're on. I'm not really concerned about this kid, he seems brilliant to me already, and there's no sense of 'keeping up with the Jones' here. Any misgivings we have are more due to inexperience as new parents, and wondering if there's a better approach.

[Thierry Nguyen]

My 23-month old speaks better Vietnamese than I do. Her speech right now is a mix of Vietnamese and baby babble, and I'm waiting for the day that English pops out also, but people I've talked to have said that kids pick up English from other kids or school, so don't worry about that, focus on getting the other language into their heads early on.

[grahamiam]

My wife is Taiwanese and we raise our kids to speak both Mandarin and English. They were both slow to start out. The oldest then rocketed ahead when he was 2-3yrs old. However, the youngest started going to a speach therapist after he turned 4 because he just wasn't making enough progress in English. After ~3 months, he's now a chatterbox in both.

Our biggest problem right now is with the older one. After spending the past summer with relatives in Taiwan (and speaking fluent Mandarin the whole time at the age of 6), it is now difficult to get to speak in Mandarin at home. This is the 2nd time this has happened (he did another summer stint when he was 4). He always says that it's because the kids at school speak English, so he wants to speak English. However, if we're persistant, we can get him to speak Mandarin for a few days.

[Rimbo]

I was going to just post this in the Parent/Fathering thread, but thought it might warrant its own topic.

Any other parents here raising their kid bilingually? The wife is Japanese, although she speaks fluent English, whereas my Japanese is a step above telling her how kawaii she looks or that her food was oishii. Needless to say, we're following the One Parent One Language system.

Our son, Haruki is about 18 months, and has a few simple words in his stable, mimics sounds, and chatters endlessly, and expressively in some toddler-gibberish tongue of his own. We each read him one or two books before bed time every night, each in our own native language. Since he's our 1st child, my wife and I are both a bit uncertain about expected progress of his language development. At a recent checkup, our doctor expressed a bit of cautious concern about his vocabulary, and lack of constructing crude sentences of at least 2 or 3 words.

When my wife gets nervous about his speech progress, she frets about stopping her Japanese interaction with our son, which neither of us want. We've spoken to some friends w/ older kids who have given us a fair bit of comfort that their kids were a bit slower to start talking, but quickly picked up the pace between 2-3 years of age, in both languages. Just thought I'd fish for experiences or practical tips among anyone with a similar situation. Even if you didn't raise a bilingual child, what were your habits vis a vis teaching your child language and reading?

Relax and enjoy the relative peace and quiet. And find a new pediatrician.

We did the same thing with our son (1/2 English, 1/2 Chinese) that you're doing with yours. Remember that these languages are very, very different from each other. It's going to take your son's mind a while to sort everything out.

My son wasn't speaking very much at all until he was 2 years old. But once he spoke, he spoke complete sentences, he spoke each language separately, and knew when to respond in Chinese and when to respond in English -- to the point where he has been teaching me Chinese ever since then.

What will happen is your child will stop wanting to speak anything but English once he goes to school; however, if raised properly, his interest will return as a teenager.

[Major Icehole]

2 languages = bilingual
3 languages = tri lingual
1 language = American

Keep up the good work. If I could go back in time I'd have learned to speak
Mandarin.
My buddy at work is Danish and his son uses both Danish and English at three but was slow to start as well. It's perfectly normal.

[SergioBAM]

What will happen is your child will stop wanting to speak anything but English once he goes to school; however, if raised properly, his interest will return as a teenager.

Thats what happened to me. I didn't learn English until I was 5 years old. Now my English is good, ha.

Keep up with the Japanese at home, let the child learn English at school.

[SlyFrog]

Yes, we had a very similar experience. Mother speaks Russian and English fluently, I speak English (no, she's not a mail order bride you bastards).

We noticed the slower development as well. I've got to tell you, it was really difficult for me to deal with it; yes the studies say they will develop faster and better in the end, but in the meantime you are sitting there watching your child seemingly fall behind, unable to really speak as well to you as the other toddlers in the neighborhood. Wife has a linguistics degree, has read all of the studies, said the same thing, but we slowly drifted into English only. It's not like my wife never speaks Russian, it's just that she primarily speaks English (in part because while she speaks Russian, she has lived here herself since she was a child, and is used to English herself).

So we're basically a failed, half-assed experiment really (btw child is now 8 and doing great).

[BrewersDroop]

While we're on the subject, my wife and I would like our daughter to speak at least one other language. Since neither of us are fluent in any language other than English we can't expose her to other languages ourselves. Are there any benefits to playing Pimsleur language CDs or something similar at home so that she has at least limited exposure to other languages? Our daughter is 3 months old now and I've been toying with the idea of having language CDs playing in the background at home thinking that she might pick up on the phonemes and rhythms of other languages indirectly.

[Shadarr]

That is what we refer to as a self-frag.
lol. Dirt is awesome. Awesome like a rock!

[caesarbear]

My goddaughter is in a very similar situation as your son mono. Same-ish age, learning both English and Russian. She's even spent some of her months fully immersed in a Russian speaking culture. She is less chatty than other kids her age.

As someone who's taken years of foreign language instruction from the american education system and has casi nada to show for it, I'd echo the encouragement to keep at it. Although I don't think it's going to be complete unless you address reading as well as speaking, especially for something like Japanese. I'm curious what others think about that.

[Siren]

While we're on the subject, my wife and I would like our daughter to speak at least one other language. Since neither of us are fluent in any language other than English we can't expose her to other languages ourselves. Are there any benefits to playing Pimsleur language CDs or something similar at home so that she has at least limited exposure to other languages? Our daughter is 3 months old now and I've been toying with the idea of having language CDs playing in the background at home thinking that she might pick up on the phonemes and rhythms of other languages indirectly.

That may not be a bad idea. I work for a worldwide language school, and I can tell you, the earlier you start your child, the better. Especially if you yourself pick up on the language and start speaking it to your daughter too.

[caesarbear]

Our daughter is 3 months old now and I've been toying with the idea of having language CDs playing in the background at home thinking that she might pick up on the phonemes and rhythms of other languages indirectly.
At least make it entertaining. Start off with a Feliz Navidad CD or something.

[JoshV]

This is just me being devil's advocate, and not something i actually believe, so don't bite the messenger too much on this one...

But one of my friends wasn't taught mandarin as a kid, even though both of his parents are chinese. I tell him its a shame, and he says no, its not, as he was better able to integrate with his schoolmates and be more plain 'american' instead of a chinese american. He cites that alot of bilingual kids only hang out with other kids who also speak the other language, while he has a wider group of friends to this day.

[caesarbear]

I don't think being cliquish is a fault of bilingualism, but a fault of cliquish parents.

[Moggraider]

While we're on the subject, my wife and I would like our daughter to speak at least one other language. Since neither of us are fluent in any language other than English we can't expose her to other languages ourselves. Are there any benefits to playing Pimsleur language CDs or something similar at home so that she has at least limited exposure to other languages? Our daughter is 3 months old now and I've been toying with the idea of having language CDs playing in the background at home thinking that she might pick up on the phonemes and rhythms of other languages indirectly.



Yes, do this immediately if you are serious about teaching a second language, as that will let your child speak the second language without an accent when it's formally learned. The critical period for learning all of the phonemes in the languages necessary to the child is now, and if there's no exposure to other languages, the brain drops the ability to enunciate unused phonemes. We're actually born being able to pronounce all of the phonemes used all over the world, but our brain learns it can specialize and dumps what it doesn't use (in English's case, most of the phonemes); then baby babble starts to sound progressively more like its parents' language.

However, for learning a little later on videos are probably more useful than CDs, to make sure the child recognizes the sound it's hearing as language and starts to associate meaning with the words.

[Aleck]

Our son, Haruki is about 18 months, and has a few simple words in his stable, mimics sounds, and chatters endlessly, and expressively in some toddler-gibberish tongue of his own. We each read him one or two books before bed time every night, each in our own native language. Since he's our 1st child, my wife and I are both a bit uncertain about expected progress of his language development. At a recent checkup, our doctor expressed a bit of cautious concern about his vocabulary, and lack of constructing crude sentences of at least 2 or 3 words.

Your pediatrician is being a bit overly cautious. My daughter hit 18 months last week. She's doing two and three word sentences ("MORE MILK! GET TIGER!") but that's about the extent of it -- and she seems to be on par with all the other kids in her day care class. I wouldn't sweat it at all.

Congrats on going the bilingual route, btw. If my wife or I spoke anything but 'Merican with fluency, we'd be doing the same. As the son of an immigrant, I wish I'd learned my mother's native tongue (Dutch) as a child.

[RichVR]

My grandparents on my father's side lived in the same house as my parents and I when I was growing up. They spoke both Italian (their native language) and Yiddish (they both worked in the garment industry, it was a necessity) fluently. I was always fascinated by my grandmother speaking Italian, English and Yiddish on the phone to her friends.

But, neither of my parents spoke Italian and so I never learned. I have always regretted this. I've learned a decent amount of Spanish through immersion, but really suck at learning any other language.

I would say, keep at it. Your child will thank you in the long run.

Good luck.

[Equis]

I was raised with two official languages. English and Mandarin Chinese. Not to mention the plethora of dialects that float around cities like Hong Kong, Singapore and London's Chinatown. (Like Cantonese, Hokkien, Teochew ...)
It's definitely slower at the start since he has to keep track of both, but once he does, it'll almost be a cinch for him to pick a couple more when he gets to the teenage years.

It's hard going at first, especially once your kid starts interacting with other kids that don't all speak any of the same language as he does. The tendency is to keep to one language from then on.

Also, if its Japanese, introduce him to some Japanese anime in its original Japanese form. There's plenty of good ones for kids. TV does wonders for learning languages.

[Ephraim]

As an Anglophone child in post Bill-101 Quebec, I started in French immersion at the Kindergarten level and continued all the way through until the end of High School. Then I went to a English college (CEGEP) and University and moved to Ottawa for work, so my French was completely neglected for about 15 years. Upon my return to Quebec, with not much coaxing, it's generally all come back. I understand everything, but I'm a bit self-conscious when speaking.

Early childhood second language training ROCKS.

[KaoFloppy]

mono: You know enough Japanese to realize that there are masculine and feminine speech patterns? I'm sure your wife knows, and will teach him enough to tell the difference. Also, stick him into Saturday language schools, until he whines and bitches about missing out on the morning cartoons.

[fire]

Nostalgia of Autumn
Anna Zelber

My soul it cries out for the soil of the city that birthed me.
It yearns to touch palms with the soul of the streets my feet touched;
To live in the years of my childhood and that of my mothers
And yet to keep all of my freedoms.
Is it asking too much?

My footsteps they echo the streets of my mothers before me:
Each step on the pavement is heard as a step on the stone.
The autumn each year brings nostalgia both shameful and noble:
I'm homesick for some other home that I'll never have known.

My children will only know this little town where I've settled;
For them the canals will not beckon them close to their breast;
They won't speak the language my ear can pick up in a heartbeat;
It's shameful to long on one hand; on the other, to rest.

The city that birthed me it bore both my mothers before me.
My soul it cries out for the soil that my past has outgrown.
One never can part from the dirt that gave birth to the spirit.
But how does one plant severed roots in a land still unknown?

[mono]

KAOFloppy: Yeah, I know about the patterns because I caught all kinds of shit, while visiting Japan, from the wife's friends when they heard me try to speak Japanese. ie: I was talking like a girl.

As for the Saturday classes, that's part of our plan, assuming the finances aren't untenable. The griping about cartoons won't work, because we have Tivo! The boy is gonna be cornered!

Equis: We've got a few Japanese kids shows that he watches. A live action show called With Mother which Haruki loves, and he's also had a steady diet of Miyazaki flicks, Totoro, Spirited Away, etc. When he's home with my wife, he watches them in Japanese, and when I put them on he gets the English audio. I also feed him a steady diet of the Old School 60's-70's Sesame Street episodes, for English. I think I dig them more than he does at this stage. :)

fire: A beautiful poem. It may have more poignancy for my wife as she left home after high school, and her parents 'visit' their grandson mostly via iChat, but any parent can identify. It's not just a different land, but a different time, of our youth, that we yearn to share with our kids.

[John Reynolds]

Wife and I have had our first, a 4.5yo girl, in speech therapy for the past year because she was diagnosed with a severe speech delay a year ago. At one point we were worried whether or not she could be mildly autistic but she's too social and has made enormous strides with the therapy. So much so that she's pretty much a 'normal' 4.5yo kid in her verbal skills now and is such a sponge that I've brought up the topic of additional languages with the wife. It's absolutely amazing what she picks up and can retain at this point.

[Ex-S Woo]

Speaking from my own experience (Born in Korea and immigrated to the US when I was 6...and living in Tokyo now. Huh) and what I've seen from my little sister (who was born in the US), I think things will get easier as your child gets older (my sister caught up to her schoolmates by the time she was in Kindergarten, for what its worth) and gets to an age where he can grab an interest in Japanese himself and starts learning more on his own...and WANTS to learn more.

In order for that scenario to happen I think it's important to have an outlet outside the home where a child's secondary language can be put to good use or otherwise what I see happening is that he'll learn just enough to get along with family and relatives and not do to much else with it.

Luckily for you, Japanese culture is pretty 'hot' overseas so I think it'll be as simple as buying him some anime and some imported video games for him to be hooked ;).

Have a strictly import-only policy and let him gloat over his friends how he's beat the hottest new game in the US over a year ago :)

[Lunch of Kong]

One of my nephews didn't start talking until he was 5. After he started talking, though, you could not shut the kid up!

[AaronSofaer]

Speaking just as myself, someone who has no children but was raised in this way...


... feed your kid as many languages as you can. Not to the point where your kid gets frustrated or angsty about it, and don't if your child doesn't enjoy it or isn't good at it. I supposedly (don't remember that far back) was speaking in four languages (English, French, Hebrew, and Tagalag) while I was growing up, so learning more languages certainly doesn't stunt your ability to speak. Mike would probably remember more than I do about me back then, but I recall myself being quite loquacious.

[Aeon221]

I actually listened to the first two discs of the Pimsleur Japanese tapes with my ex just this summer. I wouldn't recommend them for a kid, as they're assuming fluency in English as a starting point, but I would recommend them for any adult interested in learning the language. I picked up way more from them than I did in eight or so years of French in the classroom.

Of course, it may have helped that I was taking every opportunity to speak in Japanese, unlike with French, which I've only used for reading and the occasional irate argument with Air France personnel. Lazy bastards.

[EvilIdler]

I only started learning English at around the age of 10, but picked up books
by H.P. Lovecraft soon after. I think watching the evening news from two
neighbouring countries helped with my language skills.

[Jeff Green]

Jumping into the thread late cuz I just noticed it.

My daughter is 13 now and has been raised from birth as bilingual--French/English, cuz the wife is French. This was extremely important to my wife not only as a French native but also as a linguist. In the very early days, I was a tad concerned, since this was so entirely alien to me (as a stupid American), because she seemed to have a better grasp of French than English at first.

But this was a short-lived concern, and now, watching her as a teenager, it is incredible to watch and actually makes me jealous. She's completely bilingual--fluent in both. She can go in and out of either language on a dime. We can go to France and she blends in like a native, no trace even of an accent. (Whereas her dumb American dad gets busted within 2 sentences.) Not only that, it made her utterly receptive to other languages. Starting in 4th grade, she began an immersion program in Spanish, and now she's essentially trilingual--and not yet even in high school. The key is that she started so young, she has no perception or thought in her head that "learning a language is difficult."

So, as others have said: You could not be doing a better thing.
Bilingualism FTW.

[Elton]

My wife-to-be is Austrian and we are enthusiastic about raising any future children in both German and English. I've also had lots of interesting conversations with Americans here in the Netherlands who've raised their kids bilingually. They tell me that their kids tended to blab away in both languages regardless of their audience until they were five or six, and then it clicked that there were two different languages in play, and one was for Mom and one was for Dad.

[Rimbo]

One of my nephews didn't start talking until he was 5. After he started talking, though, you could not shut the kid up!

That's the Rimbino's story, right there. Although he started a wee tad earlier than 5.

Hell, he's just turned 3, and he's starting to be able to read both languages. Scary.

[Qenan]

Bilingual children are slower to get started than monolingual. The literature agrees with your friends' observations, and they should catch up later.

And by the way, our son said very little until well past his second birthday. There certainly weren't any 2-3 word sentences at 18 months. He's six now, talks well and has a good vocabulary. Yours sounds like he's doing fine to me.

We only speak English, but our daughter didn't really start exploding with words until she was 24 months. So I wouldn't worry.

[Machfive]

The key is that she started so young, she has no perception or thought in her head that "learning a language is difficult."


Kids are sponges when it comes to learning. Probably the greatest failure of our educational system is that we don't front-load a lot of concepts when they're picking up concepts and facts like it's going out of style. Which neurologically, it is; by the time they hit 6th or 7th grade, the amount of information their brains absorb easily begins to plummet and they have to work to learn a fraction of what they could pick up at a younger age.

[wisefool]

I was raised bilingually, with Spanish and Chinese as my primary languages. Most of my family and friends were the same. I don't think you have to worry about your kid picking up English because it's inevitable to learn it once he goes to school and plays with kids. I was told that I started talking at 2.5 years of age, but once I did I would not stop.

If anything, your wife should fret he won't be able to understand any Japanese. My suggestion - lots of subtitled anime :)

I've seen immigrants up to 12 years old pick up English flawlessly without any accent. Brewers, I've picked up the Mandarin and Japanese Pimpsler stuff before to go on trips - after I'd returned I had little motivation to continue. The conversations are funny but they revolve around an American trying to pick up an Asian chick. Maybe your daughter would like anime too. Orange Road is one of the girly ones with love stories, probably ponies too.

[mono]

Thanks for the continued feedback. My wife just read the thread, and was impressed with the thoughtful feedback and encouragement from the community.

I'll be keeping her out of the Birth Control thread, 'natch.

[Derek French]

Bilingual is the way to go. And it really doesn't matter what language the second one is, because once you have two, adding more is easier. Your brain gets wired into understanding multiple languages and it just flows from their. My wife speaks English, French, and German, and a bit of Norwegian. We are raising both of our kids with the local school's French Immersion program and I am totally on board with it. Both started when they reached 5 years old (Kindergarten) so don't worry about it not seeming like they are catching on. They are. =)

When I was 18, I got a chance to go visit Germany on an exchange. The overriding feeling that I had was a vague sense of embarrassment since I only spoke English. Everyone we stayed with spoke German and English, and most had a bit of French, too, and at a better command of it than English.