Hi Y’all!
I’d like to teach my baby a second language and was wondering which second language you chose and why you chose that language. A little description of how you teach (or plan to teach) would be helpful to me, too.
Thank you! You guys are great! :biggrin:
im a Maldivian so we r teaching Maldivian language as the first and English as the second language. as English is an international language whee we have books and lots of teaching materials. i am teaching most by using there brillkid teaching materials and starfall and flash cards that i made on topics. Arabic is the third one this i started by flash cards and now use the arabic phonics songs from youtube
Hi THen,
I would say that depends a lot on the resources available to you. For my first, I taught him English as first language and Chinese as second language because English is spoken by everyone around him. For my second, I’m making an effort to speak mostly Chinese, and leave the English part to the others (although sometimes I forget so she’s still getting about 40% English and 60% Chinese from me). Since you speak Japanese, wouldn’t that be the natural choice?
I would love to teach them Spanish (since it’s the 3rd widely spoken language) but no one around us speaks Spanish. I could expose them to some Spanish but it’s not “live”. So if we get the opportunity to have regular contact with people who speak other languages, be it Indonesian, Arabic, Japanese, French, anything, I would choose that over Spanish.
Joan
I think the offer from the BBC for 5 languages, one of which is english, sounds like a bargain. The dvds immerse the child in the languages. Sounds like it would take them to kindergarten level in 5 languages. It is only $199. Haven’t actually tried it yet, but it has 30 day money back guarantee.
I am Russian,my husband Hungarian and we speak English to each other and our close friends. So English ended up their first, Hungarian second and now comes 
Russian. Though I think I missed it with that 
I guess for me the first choice of language was its practicality for our family so
No.1 is english as both me and my husband speak it ,and it’s the languague we use in all the places we worked.
No.2 is polish it’s my mother tounge .I speak to kids polish 60% none school related time.THey speak and read polish quite well.
No.3 is gujarati ,my husband teaches that one.Beacouse he can’t spend as much time with them it took them a bit longer but they are
progressing fast.
NO.4 Is russian as I can speak it too and we have alot of russian friends.I talk to them russian for 2 hours a day.Plus I use alot of word flash cards.
No.5 is spanish which we are working on this year and I’m learning it too. we started off with flash cards,and then we will move to short sentences.
I try to read to kids a lot in those languages, play games and with older ones we write poems for fun .
Wow, that is a list! Karma to you! Can you share your Russian word cards?
HI all,
My first language is Mongolian.
I speak english and mongolian language in my home… I grow up learniing russian…
Thanks Y’all for your replies!
My first language is definatley English, but I learned Japanese when my family moved to Japan when I was in second grade. My father spoke Japanese to my mother, but they spoke mainly English to the kids. I do speak Japanese, but after living in Russia (and having to learn Russian), then going to Germany and learning just a bit of German, it takes my brain a while to get into speaking Japanese. (Although, I can chat really well when I visit my Japanese-speaking grandmother.) Then, when I’m tired, I can hear an accent in my Japanese. 
And, there aren’t many Japanses speakers in the area (there are a lot of Spanish speakers).
So, we’ve been thinking of Spanish. My 12 year old says he wants to study Latin. He can do that on his own. I’m not sure I want to teach the others Latin right now.
I notice many people choose to teach their child Chinese. Is there a reason for this?
Thanks again y’all! 
Perhaps cos it’s the most spoken language in the world?
Yep, it’s true, although of course English is much more widely spoken across different countries and different races (whereas Chinese is ‘most spoken’ simply because something like 1/4 (or is it 1/3?!) of the world’s population is Chinese, though they’re mainly in China!).
Also because China is one of the fastest developing nation and it’s economic influence is getting stronger day by day, so if you ever imagine your child one day doing business with China or with Chinese, it’d be a useful language to learn.
For people in Asia, learning mandarin is starting to be seen by many as being mandatory now.
For us:
No.1 is Chinese. I am a Taiwanese, so teaching my kids Chinese is simply by talking to them. Since they live in the US, I do not worry about them learning English.
The problem I heard from a lot of Chinese parents here is that the kids will try to avoid speaking Chinese, but only English, once they go to school. Mainly because their friends all speak in English at school. My daughter started to talk to me in English a lot after she went to preschool. Anyway, I try to talk to her in Chinese most of the time so that she does not forget this language.
No. 2 is English. My husband does not speak Chinese, kids mainly pick up English from him.
No.3: My daughter asked to learn Japanese, so we are going to work on that.
No. 4: We are thinking to have the kids learn German or French.
We are teaching our daughter Spanish as the first language since both my husband and I are “native” speakers.
Second language is obviously english.
I’d love to teach her mandarin chinese. Why? It can give your kid a huge advantage, specially if they learn it at a young age. If they do, they can enroll in formal classes and learn how to read and write. This is a real big challenge for adults who need to learn it.
In a near future, after having a head start with those three languages, I’d love her to learn french. I lived in Montreal when I went to college so I know quite a bit.
Do you think it is bad idea to teach several languages at once? Do you wait till they start to talk with first language? Do you wait till they catch on with second before you start third?
I’ve been looking into it as I had the same question. Here I sumed up what I found.
It’s possible to teach as many languages as you would like simultaneously if there is a clear pattern to it. The child might start speaking later (as late as 2-2,5y.o.) Some samples of patterns:
Forgot to add. Choose your pattern and prepare to stick to it for years to see results Consistency is key
I agree consistency is the key. It doesn’t really matter how many languages you start as long as you not the only teacher .Especially with very small babies works great to have a language asigned to a person like Nikolle mentioned.My kids learned 3 languages at the same time and then I added more,but we still work on all of them.My brothers Grandkid learned 4 :mom speaks english,Dad portugese,Granddad afrikanse,Grandmom gujarati.All our kids spoke early.
I use the Teach Me (French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, etc) Series www.teachmetapes.com to expose my children and dayhome kids to a variety of languages. The songs and phases are in English and the foreign language. Nice introduction. I can’t remember the research - but what I remember is that as long as a child is exposed to various languages at a young age, their brains will be prewired to learn languages later if they choose to study them.
Rosetta Stone has a very good CDRom program for various languages (geared towards older children 4+)
With my older son - I taught him Latin and Greek prefixes suffixes and roots (flashcard format). Helped a lot with his vocabulary and comprehension.
Oh drat, doing it all wrong I guess! I am not super specific about which language when… just try to get it all in.
Teaching three languages (4 if you add ASL) is going very well.
His first born language was Chinese, as he was born there, and moved to Canada at 22 mos.
Now his first language is English, since it is my native language, that of my family and a lot of my friends. It’s the language I listen to radio in and watch tv and gte most books.
Second language is French, since we live in Quebec, French community. He is in daycare 2.5 days a week in FRench, and will likely go to French school. Though at home I emphasize it less…like most of the posters here, we work more on the nonmajority language within the home… I figure he will get better French from native Quebecois speakers than from me (I mostly learned it after 18 yrs old) in our neighborhood, schools etc.
Third language is Chinese. Beyond the obvious: that I want to keep some link to his original culture, it IS going to be a great business language, even if he is just working at McDonalds and can speak to Chinese tourists and visiting businessmen! Personally, I am artistic and I enjoy the characters in Chinese. It adds a little extra fun for me, compared to other languages I have studied a little (German, Swedish… which are languages of my grandparents)
The signing was Signing time, which was great for a toddler transitioning to English, and I still use it to help him understand Chinese and French words he doesn’t know.
Spanish, it is the only language I am fluent in other than English.
Spanish was first choice for me…but I am only teaching it as I have been learning to speak it myself. I think that teaching Chinese is a good choice as where I live there are a lot of people who speak it. I have heard that it is very hard to learn so wasnt too keen to try and teach my child it by myself.