She is amazing!!! :) I also have a conundrum in our own multilingual journey. Would appreciate your insight on it! We are rising our child in Italian (my L1) and English (husband's L1 + country we live in). I was wondering when would be a good time to introduce her to German (It's the "heritage" language, but no one speaks it anymore in the families, except me, even though not super fluently). Since I would be the one speaking to her both in Italian & German, I was thinking of the OAOL method. When would be a good time to start reading books & speak to her in German, in addition to Italian? I am afraid of confusing her!! Thanks a lot!
Hi! I would make sure that your children speaks to you already in Italian before starting with German using the OSOL or OAOL method. You won´t confuse your child if you stick to the methods. So you can use for example 80% of the time Italian and in specific times and making sure that your child knows it´s a special situation, you can read, play and speak to your child in German. If you want you can expose your child to music and audio books already now. "Sing mit" is a nice RU-vid channel with lots of nice songs for kids. :)
Hi My wife is French, speaks fluent English too. I am English, speak advanced French. Our daughter Esméralde is 2.5. We moved to France when she was 2 from England. Grandparents are French and English. I too am struggling to decide how to go about having a multilingual baby. It is a lot of pressure to get it right. Part of our thinking is that our daughter will learn French at crèche and English automatically. So we were thinking of trying to throw in another language which we both hold an advanced level in from living in Brazil 2 years, Portuguese. Because trilingualism is even cooler than bilingualism ;)! We also know other languages well such as Spanish, German, Chinese but not as comfortably as Portuguese. Q. Do you agree that English and French will come fairly automatically given we end up speaking English a fair amount and French is the majority language? Q. Do you think speaking Portuguese and learning as we go occasionally with her will get her to learn it? Alternatively our original approach was mixing all languages we know because it seems more fun and natural? Then our daughter might learn the basics of all languages we know! Also in three years we will move to Zurich, Algeria or China. Our daughter will be 5 but she will stay in a French school, where they learn the local language also. Q. For that do you think it is worth planning ahead and focussing on one of these languages before she arrives so she can have a foundation in the local language. even if we don't master any of those languages? Appreciate your thoughts! Congrats on the multilingual children!
Hi Sonny, whatever you do, please don't mix all languages. Use the OPOL- you in EN and your wife FR, then you can practice occasionally, using the OSOL method for example, the other languages, but only if you are almost proficient in those. Otherwise outsource it. I can't explain everything in one comment, but feel free to book a consultation or Q&A video to go into depth and answer all of your questions (www.mulrilingual.family/services). Good luck!
Hi :) I'm polish, living in Denmark with a danish husband and 2 small (6 months and 3 years) children. How did you stay consistent speaking spanish to your kids? my 3 year old won't answer to me in polish, he even corrects me to danish if I speak polish. I also feel like he does not understand me very well in polish, while in danish he understands perfectly. It's really discouraging.
Hi Natalia, I'm going to shoot a Q&A video about what you are asking, as I can't reply properly in a few lines. Join my mailing list to get notified when the video with the answers to your questions is out. www.multilingual.family/sign-up Until then, you can watch this video, which will give you some ideas: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-IejLuromkoU.html
When you are 1 on 1 with your child just speak Polish, it is most likely he is leaning on his strongest language like you would if you had a weak leg and avoided using it. Strengthen it by using it, which means reducing the use of the good one (Danish).
Am in the u s. Native Spanish speaker , I speak only Spanish to 3 and 5 year old, girls, husband only speak English, but we both have been learning Chinese so teaching them also Chinese, but mostly Spanish, at first am thinking it's not working but keep going children automatically started speaking in Spanish, it's amazing to see , just stay consistent
how did you use OPOL if you also spoke to your daughter in a different language than spanish? I'm asking because I'm a native spanish speaker, live in the Netherlands (speak and understand dutch) but between dutch dad and I we speak ENGLISH. For now we use OPOL, I speak spanish, dad dutch, but I would very much like to introduce english as well to our daughter as we both speak it fluently and we have strong english skills.
You can combine the strategies. For example OPOL and OSOL. Subscribe to my mailing list to me informed when the new courses come out and get more helpful videos that will guide you on your way: www.multilingual.family/sign-up
Thanks for the inspiration and showing us what's possible :) I live in Fryslân where Frisian is the minority language and Dutch the majority language. So we raise our kids both languages. English is next obviously. The amount of trilingual immersion primary schools is growing in our province but unfortunately there are none in our neighborhood. But English is all over the place so I'm not concerned.
Andrea cuando hablaste de una abuela que le hable en el idioma, pues la abuela de mi hijo aunque si habla finlandés con su familia e hijo viviendo en Italia habla italiano con nosotros. Le he pedido que hable finlandés a su nieto però es dificil para ella. Vivimos en riferente ciudad. Como puedo animarla?
Hola Noemi, la pregunta es: que tan bien habla la abuela finlandes? Si por alguna razón no se sienye tan comoda hablando ese idioma (aún después de haber hablado tranquilamente con ella y haberme dicho cuan importante es ella como recurso para tu hij@), puedes talvez persuadirla a hablar en ciertas situaciones finlandes usando el método OSOL.
Ella es de Helsinky finlandés es su lengua madre. Sus hijos (3) eran bilingues de pequeños aquí en Italia hasta que ella declinó por no andar traduciendo todo (escuela doctor etc) del italiano al finés. Ella creció con 3 idiomas son 2 oficiales en Finlandia y el inglés que nunca falta. Ella manejaba 4 idiomas pero se ha quedado con el italiano país donde vive y el finés (familia en Finlandia que no va a visitar). Quisiera motivarla sin presionarla a que use más el finlandés con su nieto mi hijo cuando lo hace termina hablandole en italiano dice que es la rutina. Yo empecé a estudiar el idioma ya que me gusta, tengo amigos finlandeses y pretendo viajar a mediano plazo para visitar y abrirle las puertas de otra cultura a mi hijo.
Your daughter is amazing. I have a 1 month old baby girl. My wife is Chinese and I'm American (born Nicaraguan) and we live in China. Our plan is, while I'm at work, my wife will only speak in Chinese to our daughter, then we'll switch to English in the evenings and then I'll read Spanish bedtime stories before she goes to sleep. Do you think this is an effective plan?
Be careful with setting rules that are hard to follow. You need to be VERY disciplined to keep up with that for a long period of time. What languages do you speak to your wife? EN? You could stick to the OPOL method (your wife Chinese, you EN) and use the OSOL method, like reading out of books in ES to introduce ES. Your wife should stick to Chinese at all times if that is her strongest language. Which is your strongest language? I guess EN? Stay posted, as my next course for families like yours is coming out soon, and there you will learn tons of useful and important information to make the best choices for your family (www.multilingual.family/sign-up)
@@MultilingualFamily Hi! Thank you so much for your advice. That's right, my strongest language is English. My wife and I speak English when together so I thought it would be best, probably mistakenly, if we speak English when we are all together during the evenings. I will definitely stay posted.
@@JoseRodriguez-lq3gu Hi! I guess your daughter is 1 year old by now. Did your plan work? I’m bilingual (Japanese and Spanish) my husband is Turk (he speaks Turkish), we also speak English between us. So I wonder about how did you manage English and Spanish in your case? I’m thinking talking one day in Spanish and the other day in Japanese to my baby (I’m still pregnant). About the other options like reading or maybe listening music, (could be in another language? I’m indigenous from East Asia and we have a native language, I don’t speak it but I sing and use some words mixing with Japanese because we use it in that way in my island). I hope your your family is going well!
