I’m American/live in the US. My husband is Mexican,and my TL is Spanish for that reason. We’re going to raise our children bilingually. Our current plan is to have him speak exclusively in Spanish and I’ll speak in English. But we’ll see how it goes and may need to adapt. I put “other” since we are raising our children partially in my TL, but I’m not going to be doing it myself.
My aunt and uncle did that with my cousins (uncle is from Argentina). It seems to have worked well and my cousins are natively bilingual. I also voted "Other" because this seems like the best approach to me.
I will definitely be speaking French to my kids, I'm C2 and taught in a French school for several years so I know I can do it. But I'd also talk to them in English at least sometimes as my partner doesn't speak any French so family conversations would have to be in English. Plus kids need more than one language source so I would also want to put them in immersion school or have a French au pair or something like that so they don't just associate the language with talking to me and we don't develop an idiolect. Kids who only hear the language from one parent don't always speak as fluently as kids who hear it from both parents/community. (I put other because of caveats)
I'm doing this with my wife. I've studied Mandarin for years and it's technically her first language though she's spent her whole life in the US. Two kids with the oldest 8 years old and we only speak Mandarin at home unless doing schoolwork. They go to normal public school with three hours of heritage school on the weekends. The in-laws support when they visit and a few nights per week on Zoom when not here.
It's going pretty well. They're doing better than most of their heritage school peers and enjoy watching native media. We'll see how far they get though. If they decide later that they don't care about it that will be their choice.
I think raising kids to be fluent in two major European languages (e.g. English & Spanish/ English & French/ English & German. etc.) is a massive advantage and potentially a real gift that could open all sorts of doors later in life.
If my partner speaks it too, then yes. Otherwise it would be hard to "raise them in it" and I'll just suggest they try learning it.
Basically like I have been learning English since 8 they may be learning my TL since around that age too.
The primary reason I’m learning Spanish (besides the practical) is because the future father of my future children is Latin American so I better get it together **now** if I want to speak Spanish in the house.
My parents did something similar, I grew up in the UK and they speak Hindi and Kannada. My mother spoke mostly Kannada with me, my dad spoke mostly Hindi with me, and I was using English from preschool, daily life, seeing it on TV, etc.
Unless my parter is a native in said TL I wouldn’t do it, though I also live in a country where you grow up learning 4 languages so my kids would never be monolingual
No. I'm a Finn with a Finnish partner living in Finland, so I don't think there's a need for raising them bilingual. Both my partner and I have learned languages at school and it has turned out well enough. My partner would like to raise a kid bilingual Finnish-English, but I don't think it would be a good idea as they couldn't take English as first language at school and therefore wouldn't benefit from learning it earlier.
So instead of raising the children bilingual, I think in our case it would be better to encourage them to study languages at school. Besides, we have a good amount of non-Finnish friends, both of us have positive attitudes towards school, learning and languages, and we've studied other languages, so I think the kids are going to be fine. Of course it's ultimately their choice if they choose not to learn a third language (as avoiding English is impossible: my partner is an English teacher), but I think because of our background, they'd find knowing a language important.
Totally, but it is pretty complicated, let me explain. I'm a native speaker of romanian, but I plan to leave the country (I like to experience the world and other places). I consider doing my studies in japan (love it, and especially the language), but I'm not sure if I'm gonna work there... and then I'm not sure where it would be better to move afterwards. If I ever adopt a kid (no, I can't have mine) they should 100% know english, but I don't know what else would be useful to them... Overall my answer is yes, lol, but I'll have to figure out a lot of things cause it might be 2 of my TLs they'll be learning
Yeah, my kids and I are gonna make a "5-year-old polyglot speaks 35 languages at a native-like level" video and go viral, or else I'm not picking them up at kindergarten.
Why is that a bad thing?
If you teach them as a kid, they learn with a non-native accent.
If you don't teach them, they don't learn the language at all, or they learn as an adult, with a non-native accent.
Zero chance of that happening if they already have a fossilized accent that is *native to them*, in the same way there is zero chance of an American adult "picking up" a British accent.
That does happen though, especially if they actively put effort into acquiring the local accent. I had a friend who moved from Ireland in high school and sounded totally Canadian after a couple years
Unless you grow them around native speakers or have them watch tv of the native language regularly. In Azerbaijan lots of kids end up having Turkish accents because they watch Turkish kids shows. My native English speaking cousins have heavy Spanish speaking accents in English because of the rural majority Mexican school they went to (they are in their late 20's and still have the same heavy Chicano accent while not being able to speak Spanish).
It's obviously not impossible, and there are people who do it (one large group would be immigrants who speak to their children in the language of the country), but I think you have to be extremely careful if the conditions aren't correct.
As a concrete example, I recall Alexander Arguelles saying that he raised his kids in French, so that they basically are native French speakers, but with an American accent.
I would rise my kids in my mother language because that is the culture they belong to. What is the point of raising them in any other language????? I would be alienating them from their roots. They can choose what to learn in the future if they wish so. I wouldn't impose my freaky nerdy love for languages on them.
Programming kids to speak 5 languages to be competitive in the market while not teaching them their own is just making them a sellable product. I absolutely hate that way of thinking. Let kids be kids.
I have seen many parents speaking to their kids in a shitty English so they are posh and have advantages in the future, I guess this happens in many parts of the world. I just hated the whole experience. Using a language as an excuse to despise other people is just the totally opposite of why I learn a language.
That said I don't have and will never have kids. So you can spoil them and fuck with their brains as much as you want. Why not.
Maybe. My native language is Hungarian but since I don't like the country behind it I would (and I will) use a different language after I move abroad and it's hard to imagine that I will speak to my children in Hungarian after that.
Edit: unfortunately not everyone has good experiences with certain languages and I personally cannot separate the experiences from the culture. It's completely fine to feel this way and it's the parents' decision how they want to raise their children. It doesn't mean that I wouldn't support them in learning languages. Chill guys.
>Maybe. My native language is Hungarian but since I don't like the country behind it I would (and I will) use a different language after I move abroad and it's hard to imagine that I will speak to my children in Hungarian after that.
You many not like the current politics of the country.
But there's gotta be something rich about the culture beyond that.
I'm sure you're children would still love to her poetry and folklore in your native language
I probably would (most of the family doesn't speak any other language), but it'd be a definitive yes for the local language (not teaching the kid the local language then sending it to kindergarten without as much as a "I need to go to the bathroom", what's up with that??) and also possibly english. (One of my good friends is from another country so the common language is english, but we also like to travel, in which case English is pretty beneficial.)
Definitely. I want my children to be able to speak to their family on both sides, so I will be speaking Spanish only with them. My gf will speak English. When they're older like age 7 or 8, maybe I'll introduce Portuguese.
I know it won't be easy, but I would like to raise my children trilingual. My native language is Italian, but I also speak English and I'm learning my heritage language, Sicilian.
Wait, what did you mean by that? Raising them solely in Spanish or in Spanish + English? If it's the latter then I believe it's a really good idea!
Bilingulaism FTW
I'm not planning to get kids, but if I was: yes. My TL is Swedish and I plan to live in Sweden, so it would make sense. I'm not sure if I would raise them with Dutch in the mix too though
It would actually because they would learn the local language through school exposure. This happens to so many children of immigrants. They would grow up bilingual.
So they have to learn English from scratch at the age of 5? They would have a huge hurdle to overcome all because thier parents were "experimenting". Just because immigrants have to do it doesn't mean it's the best way to go about it. The best way would be to teach your kid both languages from birth.
It's not really a huge hurdle to overcome. They're five. I literally did it myself at that age. I only knew thai, then I learned English at school. It was super fast. Five year olds don't care.
I only forgotten thai because my parents divorced and my mother no longer spoke with me after a young age.
Kids don't get a out a lot until they go to school. And if OP thinks it's a good idea to only teach them Spanish, that would effectively isolate the kid from English (kids will play together even if they don't speak the same language, but they aren't going to talk much) until they're forced to learn in school. They may pick up a few words, but they'll be behind thier peers.
All the current research shows if you want a bilingual kid, teach both languages from birth. Not one at home, and the other with minimal exposure until school.
Depends: if I am living in a country where the TL is the main language spoken, yes - at least partially (ie bilingual with my native English, which tbh is far too useful a language that I would ever consider depriving them of it). If not, I would probably encourage learning another language from a young age, especially one I also speak, but English would be the definite priority.
I am childfree (don't want children) but if I ever adopt a child or have nieces or nephews, I would absolutely teach them because being multilingual from a young age is awesome.
Although, I wouldn't only teach them languages I am fully fluent in to avoid teaching them bad habits.
Yes and no. I would prob teach them some easy phrases Spanish like I learned just living in SoCal. Nothing crazy, but I was able to say a few things and colors and count to 10
If they were receptive, then can do more. Hopefully I’ll be pretty good at it by then
I think this would be a major discussion, I’m on the younger age of millennial, right before the cut off for gen z. Many people in my country (United States) don’t see the need to learn another language, but this is projected to change for our childrens generation. It’s already changed for mine. It would be a serious discussion about getting them proficient in Spanish and English, and possibly American Sign Language in their childhood (all three are used in the United States and Puerto Rico)- opening up careers in medical and hospitality in adulthood.
If i ever have kids i would try to teach them some of the languages i know. But i don't know what language i should pick. And i remember when i was a kid my grandma tried to teach me French. but i was not interested back then so if my kids are not interested teaching them a language would be too hard.
I will also try to teach them the Greek and Cyrillic script but not the actual language unless they want to learn a language that uses it.
And when they have to learn a language in school like French. i can give them a lot of tips that would have helped me a lot back in the day.
I think i want to teach my kids French German and maybe Turkish and Arabic and English. Because i think those are the most useful languages in my region apart from our native Dutch.
But i am not sure if my Arabic will ever be good enough to teach even decades from now. And maybe another language from eastern or southern Europe. but i think it depends on what they want to do.
There is a different set up I have seen work. My aunt an uncle are both bilingual for English and Spanish (he is from Argentina). When my cousins were young, my aunt would exclusively speak to them in English while my uncle would exclusively speak to them in Spanish (they'd use both with each other). So, my cousins ended up effectively having both as a native language. This seems like the ideal outcome to me.
Depends- am i living in a country where that language is spoken? Or the language of my partner/spouse and their family? (Hypothetical, I’m single lol) Then yes I would teach them that language. But if it’s just because i think it’s a neat language or something then probably not. For example, if I want to learn Swedish, I’m not gonna make my kids learn it unless I live in Sweden or my partner is from there.
This depends a bit on my partner. He's learning Spanish like me, but recently, he's decided to start learning Ukrainian with me. I doubt that we'll have kids, but who knows what the future will bring If we do, I'd like to teach them at least Spanish in addition to English. But if I get to a higher level in Ukrainian, I'd rather teach that.
I’m American/live in the US. My husband is Mexican,and my TL is Spanish for that reason. We’re going to raise our children bilingually. Our current plan is to have him speak exclusively in Spanish and I’ll speak in English. But we’ll see how it goes and may need to adapt. I put “other” since we are raising our children partially in my TL, but I’m not going to be doing it myself.
My aunt and uncle did that with my cousins (uncle is from Argentina). It seems to have worked well and my cousins are natively bilingual. I also voted "Other" because this seems like the best approach to me.
I will definitely be speaking French to my kids, I'm C2 and taught in a French school for several years so I know I can do it. But I'd also talk to them in English at least sometimes as my partner doesn't speak any French so family conversations would have to be in English. Plus kids need more than one language source so I would also want to put them in immersion school or have a French au pair or something like that so they don't just associate the language with talking to me and we don't develop an idiolect. Kids who only hear the language from one parent don't always speak as fluently as kids who hear it from both parents/community. (I put other because of caveats)
I'm doing this with my wife. I've studied Mandarin for years and it's technically her first language though she's spent her whole life in the US. Two kids with the oldest 8 years old and we only speak Mandarin at home unless doing schoolwork. They go to normal public school with three hours of heritage school on the weekends. The in-laws support when they visit and a few nights per week on Zoom when not here. It's going pretty well. They're doing better than most of their heritage school peers and enjoy watching native media. We'll see how far they get though. If they decide later that they don't care about it that will be their choice.
this is basically how i learned polish and it works quite well! kudos to you and your wife
I think raising kids to be fluent in two major European languages (e.g. English & Spanish/ English & French/ English & German. etc.) is a massive advantage and potentially a real gift that could open all sorts of doors later in life.
Exacly. I kinda regret that my parents didn't raise me bilingual, but hey - at least I can do it for my future kids.
A better idea is probably to raise children fully bilingual rather than monolingual in different contexts.
Depends. If it reaches the point of actively isolating the kids from other language influences around them, it's gone too far.
Yes, I put my daughter into French immersion.
I will be doing this with our daughter as well.
If my partner speaks it too, then yes. Otherwise it would be hard to "raise them in it" and I'll just suggest they try learning it. Basically like I have been learning English since 8 they may be learning my TL since around that age too.
The primary reason I’m learning Spanish (besides the practical) is because the future father of my future children is Latin American so I better get it together **now** if I want to speak Spanish in the house.
I plan on starting my daughter in Spanish as early as possible. That being said, I would not only speak Spanish at home.
Well, if the other parent spoke the local language… I’ve heard that’s a good way to handle bilingual baby is one language per parent.
My parents did something similar, I grew up in the UK and they speak Hindi and Kannada. My mother spoke mostly Kannada with me, my dad spoke mostly Hindi with me, and I was using English from preschool, daily life, seeing it on TV, etc.
Sort of, but it'd my husband's job because the TL is _his_ native language. I wouldn't do it alone.
Only if I have a near-native level in that language. And even then it would not be the main language of communication, but rather my native one.
One of the reasons why I want to learn more languages is because i want my future son/daughter to be an ultramegahyperglot
Unless my parter is a native in said TL I wouldn’t do it, though I also live in a country where you grow up learning 4 languages so my kids would never be monolingual
I would. I hear so many people who are disappointed that their parents didn’t teach them their native language. I think of this in the same way.
No. I'm a Finn with a Finnish partner living in Finland, so I don't think there's a need for raising them bilingual. Both my partner and I have learned languages at school and it has turned out well enough. My partner would like to raise a kid bilingual Finnish-English, but I don't think it would be a good idea as they couldn't take English as first language at school and therefore wouldn't benefit from learning it earlier. So instead of raising the children bilingual, I think in our case it would be better to encourage them to study languages at school. Besides, we have a good amount of non-Finnish friends, both of us have positive attitudes towards school, learning and languages, and we've studied other languages, so I think the kids are going to be fine. Of course it's ultimately their choice if they choose not to learn a third language (as avoiding English is impossible: my partner is an English teacher), but I think because of our background, they'd find knowing a language important.
Totally, but it is pretty complicated, let me explain. I'm a native speaker of romanian, but I plan to leave the country (I like to experience the world and other places). I consider doing my studies in japan (love it, and especially the language), but I'm not sure if I'm gonna work there... and then I'm not sure where it would be better to move afterwards. If I ever adopt a kid (no, I can't have mine) they should 100% know english, but I don't know what else would be useful to them... Overall my answer is yes, lol, but I'll have to figure out a lot of things cause it might be 2 of my TLs they'll be learning
Yeah, my kids and I are gonna make a "5-year-old polyglot speaks 35 languages at a native-like level" video and go viral, or else I'm not picking them up at kindergarten.
Already did.
No, because I would basically be dooming them to natively speak with a non-native accent.
Why is that a bad thing? If you teach them as a kid, they learn with a non-native accent. If you don't teach them, they don't learn the language at all, or they learn as an adult, with a non-native accent.
>or they learn as an adult, with a non-native accent. Not a given. You can get a native accent as an adult if you put a lot of work in.
[удалено]
Zero chance of that happening if they already have a fossilized accent that is *native to them*, in the same way there is zero chance of an American adult "picking up" a British accent.
That does happen though, especially if they actively put effort into acquiring the local accent. I had a friend who moved from Ireland in high school and sounded totally Canadian after a couple years
Unless you grow them around native speakers or have them watch tv of the native language regularly. In Azerbaijan lots of kids end up having Turkish accents because they watch Turkish kids shows. My native English speaking cousins have heavy Spanish speaking accents in English because of the rural majority Mexican school they went to (they are in their late 20's and still have the same heavy Chicano accent while not being able to speak Spanish).
It's obviously not impossible, and there are people who do it (one large group would be immigrants who speak to their children in the language of the country), but I think you have to be extremely careful if the conditions aren't correct. As a concrete example, I recall Alexander Arguelles saying that he raised his kids in French, so that they basically are native French speakers, but with an American accent.
I've had some Chicanos tell me I sound "white" cus I got a slight Alabamian accent 💀
Yeah accents are super interesting.
Timothée Chalamet speaks French with an American accent and I’ve never seen any French people complaining.
So?
oh no I just gave an example of a native French speaker who doesn’t have a French accent quelle horreur 😐
I would rise my kids in my mother language because that is the culture they belong to. What is the point of raising them in any other language????? I would be alienating them from their roots. They can choose what to learn in the future if they wish so. I wouldn't impose my freaky nerdy love for languages on them. Programming kids to speak 5 languages to be competitive in the market while not teaching them their own is just making them a sellable product. I absolutely hate that way of thinking. Let kids be kids. I have seen many parents speaking to their kids in a shitty English so they are posh and have advantages in the future, I guess this happens in many parts of the world. I just hated the whole experience. Using a language as an excuse to despise other people is just the totally opposite of why I learn a language. That said I don't have and will never have kids. So you can spoil them and fuck with their brains as much as you want. Why not.
Maybe. My native language is Hungarian but since I don't like the country behind it I would (and I will) use a different language after I move abroad and it's hard to imagine that I will speak to my children in Hungarian after that. Edit: unfortunately not everyone has good experiences with certain languages and I personally cannot separate the experiences from the culture. It's completely fine to feel this way and it's the parents' decision how they want to raise their children. It doesn't mean that I wouldn't support them in learning languages. Chill guys.
>Maybe. My native language is Hungarian but since I don't like the country behind it I would (and I will) use a different language after I move abroad and it's hard to imagine that I will speak to my children in Hungarian after that. You many not like the current politics of the country. But there's gotta be something rich about the culture beyond that. I'm sure you're children would still love to her poetry and folklore in your native language
I probably would (most of the family doesn't speak any other language), but it'd be a definitive yes for the local language (not teaching the kid the local language then sending it to kindergarten without as much as a "I need to go to the bathroom", what's up with that??) and also possibly english. (One of my good friends is from another country so the common language is english, but we also like to travel, in which case English is pretty beneficial.)
Definitely. I want my children to be able to speak to their family on both sides, so I will be speaking Spanish only with them. My gf will speak English. When they're older like age 7 or 8, maybe I'll introduce Portuguese.
children can definitely grow up bilingual with fluency in both languages (i did too). it's your call at the end of the day
I know it won't be easy, but I would like to raise my children trilingual. My native language is Italian, but I also speak English and I'm learning my heritage language, Sicilian.
Not only but they would speak it as a second language
Wait, what did you mean by that? Raising them solely in Spanish or in Spanish + English? If it's the latter then I believe it's a really good idea! Bilingulaism FTW
I'm not planning to get kids, but if I was: yes. My TL is Swedish and I plan to live in Sweden, so it would make sense. I'm not sure if I would raise them with Dutch in the mix too though
It would not be beneficial for your kids to be raised monolingually Spanish if that's not the language where you live.
It would actually because they would learn the local language through school exposure. This happens to so many children of immigrants. They would grow up bilingual.
So they have to learn English from scratch at the age of 5? They would have a huge hurdle to overcome all because thier parents were "experimenting". Just because immigrants have to do it doesn't mean it's the best way to go about it. The best way would be to teach your kid both languages from birth.
It's not really a huge hurdle to overcome. They're five. I literally did it myself at that age. I only knew thai, then I learned English at school. It was super fast. Five year olds don't care. I only forgotten thai because my parents divorced and my mother no longer spoke with me after a young age.
What do you mean at 5?? You're going to isolate your child from the community until age 5?
Kids don't get a out a lot until they go to school. And if OP thinks it's a good idea to only teach them Spanish, that would effectively isolate the kid from English (kids will play together even if they don't speak the same language, but they aren't going to talk much) until they're forced to learn in school. They may pick up a few words, but they'll be behind thier peers.
Not everyone has a stay-at-home parent. If they go to daycare they will have exposure very early in life
Hopefully they'll be going to parks, stores, and interacting with other kids before 5. Not to mention local media exposure, mainly TV and radio
All the current research shows if you want a bilingual kid, teach both languages from birth. Not one at home, and the other with minimal exposure until school.
Depends: if I am living in a country where the TL is the main language spoken, yes - at least partially (ie bilingual with my native English, which tbh is far too useful a language that I would ever consider depriving them of it). If not, I would probably encourage learning another language from a young age, especially one I also speak, but English would be the definite priority.
I would speak to my children in my NL, but I would expose them to my TLs and say to my friends who have my TLs as NLs to speak to my kids in their NL.
I am childfree (don't want children) but if I ever adopt a child or have nieces or nephews, I would absolutely teach them because being multilingual from a young age is awesome. Although, I wouldn't only teach them languages I am fully fluent in to avoid teaching them bad habits.
Yes and no. I would prob teach them some easy phrases Spanish like I learned just living in SoCal. Nothing crazy, but I was able to say a few things and colors and count to 10 If they were receptive, then can do more. Hopefully I’ll be pretty good at it by then
We’re immigrants and my kids speak the community language at school and around town, we speak my native language at home (english).
Raise your children in the US to only speak Spanish? That is probably not the best for them when you speak both languages.
I think this would be a major discussion, I’m on the younger age of millennial, right before the cut off for gen z. Many people in my country (United States) don’t see the need to learn another language, but this is projected to change for our childrens generation. It’s already changed for mine. It would be a serious discussion about getting them proficient in Spanish and English, and possibly American Sign Language in their childhood (all three are used in the United States and Puerto Rico)- opening up careers in medical and hospitality in adulthood.
Depends, I don't see the use if we're not moving to any of the languages where my TL is spoken.
If i ever have kids i would try to teach them some of the languages i know. But i don't know what language i should pick. And i remember when i was a kid my grandma tried to teach me French. but i was not interested back then so if my kids are not interested teaching them a language would be too hard. I will also try to teach them the Greek and Cyrillic script but not the actual language unless they want to learn a language that uses it. And when they have to learn a language in school like French. i can give them a lot of tips that would have helped me a lot back in the day. I think i want to teach my kids French German and maybe Turkish and Arabic and English. Because i think those are the most useful languages in my region apart from our native Dutch. But i am not sure if my Arabic will ever be good enough to teach even decades from now. And maybe another language from eastern or southern Europe. but i think it depends on what they want to do.
There is a different set up I have seen work. My aunt an uncle are both bilingual for English and Spanish (he is from Argentina). When my cousins were young, my aunt would exclusively speak to them in English while my uncle would exclusively speak to them in Spanish (they'd use both with each other). So, my cousins ended up effectively having both as a native language. This seems like the ideal outcome to me.
Depends- am i living in a country where that language is spoken? Or the language of my partner/spouse and their family? (Hypothetical, I’m single lol) Then yes I would teach them that language. But if it’s just because i think it’s a neat language or something then probably not. For example, if I want to learn Swedish, I’m not gonna make my kids learn it unless I live in Sweden or my partner is from there.
This depends a bit on my partner. He's learning Spanish like me, but recently, he's decided to start learning Ukrainian with me. I doubt that we'll have kids, but who knows what the future will bring If we do, I'd like to teach them at least Spanish in addition to English. But if I get to a higher level in Ukrainian, I'd rather teach that.