I’m surprised how many people know several languages and how well people know English when it isn’t their first language. I only know English. I took Spanish in school so I know the vocabulary and I can understand some, but I could’t put a sentence together on my own.
We are doing Spanish. There are so many people in the US that speak it now that it seemed logical.
Malaysia is a multi-lingual country. I myself can speak English, Bahasa Melayu and Mandarin including a few dialects. At home, we speak English and my elder son, 7 years picked up mandarin when he is with his cousins and he learns his Bahasa Melayu from the maid.
In my opinion, you can teach children any second languages you like as long you are good and can guide your child. If you are not so good, when your child wants to learn more, then the knowledge you impart to your child will be limited.
So…start any languages you like. My younger boy going to be 3 years in August can speak English & Bahasa Melayu. Only a few words in Mandarin which he picked up from his older brother.
We live in the States and my husband is american, so my daughter’s first language is English. I’m from Colombia, so her second language is going to be Spanish which I have been teaching her since she was born (she is only four months old). We had decided to teach her signing language which we will start when she turns 6 months old. The last language we are going to be teaching her is chinese because we thing it is going to come very handy in the near future. Neither of us know chinese, but we think that with the materials you can find you can give them some good tools. We know we are going to be limited because we can’s speak it, but we want to take advantage of her bright brain and give her as much info as possible, so later in life it will be much easier for her to continuing learning chinese. Because of that same reason I have been considering to teach her some Arabic, since there are some many good resources in this website, but I have not been able to convince my husband yet lol
I think that the more languages you know the easiest it is to pick up new languages. So, I think that any language you pick will definetly give your kids an advantage.
Good luck in your adventure!
My son is already in contact with 3 languages.English,Hindi & kannada that is our mother tongue.Me n my hubby talk in English,n my in-laws speaks kannada.As Hindi is our national language we are teaching him that too.It is very common in India that people are fluent in more that 3 languages. :yes:
Hi…
We are fluent in 4 languages; English, Hindi, Tamil, and Malayalam our mother tongue. Our son speaks English, understands Hindi and Malayalam. Since we are staying @ B’lore, he is exposed to Kannada as well. Now we are looking forward to introducing him to French as well with Little Pim. Lets see how it goes… :rolleyes:
As varshak mentioned it is not uncommon to see Indians speaking different languages.
We’re from US and therefore English is our main language. But, I’m a Filipino so I talk to my babies in Tagalog & Visayan as much as possible. I want them to learn Spanish too hence I’m learning Spanish now with “Rosetta Stone” & “Tell Me More”. I watch with my babies lots of English-Spanish DVDs for kids like Fun With Languages, Kids Love Spanish, Preschool Prep, Brainy Baby Spanish & Little Pim so I can learn Spanish with them. And we’re considering another language someday. I’m a little worried though 'coz at 15mos they still can’t talk, they’re just babbling a lot but they do signing sometimes.
Thanks Nikolett. I speak English at home, though I live in Mexico. My kids are learning English and spanish at the same time, my family speaks to ehm in english, and myhusbands family sepak to them in spanish as well as everyone else around them. I want them to start with a third language, but I don’t know any language really well. I though about Chinese since it is the third language most studied on a professional level. There are some chinese people around, would it work getting a “babysitter” maybe three times a week just to play with them in chinese?
Anyone else have ideas.
I also have rosetta Stone and LR of course that could help a little more, but I have no clue on Chinese.
mmetlich,
If you can pay a babysitter to talk to them in chinese you will be set! :yes: That would be great! It doesn’t matter that you don’t speak the language. This link may help you a little bit with that part of your question.
Good luck! 
Hi!
We are hungarians, so hungarian is my daughter’s first language. I have been also using English with her. She says a couple of words and signs in English but of course she understands a lot more things in Hungarian. She is 14 months old.
I have lots of DVDs and CDs in English, I will try to have her watch cartoons in English (as she gets older). Also, I will look for a native English speaker who would talk to her or play with her in English. We have some English books, too.
Bilingual daycare and school can be also an option. And of course, visiting our american friends would help to improve her English, as well!
We live in the US. Both my husband and I are ABCs (American-Born Chinese).
My Hubby’s Experience
His mother spoke to him in Mandarin for his first year of life then promptly switched to English for the rest of his childhood. His father spoke English all the way through–that’s all he can speak. He went to Mandarin classes for many years as a child but told his parents that this was not necessary “because we live in the US”. He grew up in Alhambra, CA (a Chinese enclave of Los Angeles). Thus, my hubby speaks mainly English and had VERY halting mandarin when I married him 6 years ago. In the 3 years since we’ve had our first daughter, he’s progressed amazingly to holding full conversations with her in Mandarin!
My Experience
My parents spoke to me in Cantonese. The joke is that I didn’t know anything beyond my name, my siblings’ names, ABCs and numbers when I went started preschool at age 4. After 6 weeks, I came home trying to speak English to my mother–PERFECTLY FLUENTLY! I grew up in southern California. My mother promptly instituted a new rule: Cantonese was to be the language that we (my sisters and I) should use to speak to her. If we used any other language, we might as well be speaking to the wall. This definitely kept my ability in Cantonese intact. We were sent to Mandarin lessons every Sunday from age 4 to 16. So, now at age 33, I am fluent in English, Cantonese and Mandarin. I read and write in Mandarin but speak Cantonese better. English, by far, is my strongest language.
My Daughter’s Experience (so far)
She is 3 yrs 3 mths old currently. Because of our personal experiences, we decided before ever having her that we would REQUIRE all our children to be as multi-lingual as possible. So, from Day 1, my hubby would speak to my daughter in Mandarin (halting as it was) and ask for help from me. It was easy because babies can’t respond to you verbally at the beginning–so he just kept asking how to say words that he didn’t know. He would read to her in English because that’s all he could do. Now he’s learned to insert words in Mandarin as he is able. As for me, because I speak both Cantonese & Mandarin, I have been speaking to her in Cantonese when my hubby isn’t around and in Mandarin when he IS around. I am the main caregiver. So, currently her strongest language is Cantonese. She definitely can speak Mandarin AND English enough to get around and make her needs known clearly. NO CONFUSION at all. She speaks Mandarin to Daddy, Cantonese to Mommy, and English with everyone else. (We live in a mainly Caucasian area–English-predominance). We started learning Spanish together when she was 18 months. We listen to Christian songs (that I already know in English) in Spanish. That way, I already have a headstart because I know the tune and just have to work on getting the words along with her. Yes, learning several languages (Cantonese, Mandarin, and English) concurrently definitely delays your verbal output skills but once the speaking started, it has never stopped! She started saying single words around 15 months, full sentences by 20 months. We also used Baby Signs since age 6 months–she started responding with signs at 8 months and that helped alot since we knew she would be late in starting to talk due to multiple languages being taught concurrently.
So, for us, Cantonese/Mandarin #1 because it’s our culture/heritage and it will be useful in my children’s generation if they want to do business with or in China. English #2 because we live in the US. Spanish #3 because that’s the next most spoken language in the world–very useful in California (which is where we live).
I hope this helps! Kudos to all of you trying to teach your kids more than 1 language–I believe it really helps you think faster. It definitely helped me! :biggrin:
The second (or third…) language should be based on personal preferences first, in my opinion. There is no point teaching a language you do not feel attracted to (whether it is how the language ‘sounds’, the culture etc) because it is a popular/useful language to have.
On the other hand, I know of some people who did not teach their native Flemish (Dutch) language, or Danish because it was not ‘worthwhile’ (not widely spoken enough) There is no doubt in my mind than grand-parents, carers, parents would teach a language they love with more enthusiasm.
In my case my daughter will be at least bilingual (french/english), and we’re introducing her to a third language which is Mandarin. This is because we are close to China, Australia does a lot of trading with China and we love this language.
We have no choice for my baby. I am Chinese, my husband is Thai, so she has to learn these two languages. The third language has to be English.
For my first daughter, we did the same to her. She is now 13, and she can speak all these languages very frequently. But it’s a pity she is not very good at reading and learning Chinese.
In my personal experience, my baby has to learn english because daddy, and spanish because mommy, she is 14 months old and she understand both language really good,but I am thinking to sign her up in the future for an inmersion japanese preschool, because It is important she to be introduce to an other culture outside the house, and I have some japanese friends, I love their culture.
I think it is a personal opinion,which other language your baby should learn, I will see what she needs to learn, this is becaming a competitive world and bilingual kids need to learn not only 2 languages, but 3 ,and why not 4 languages!
I picked the languages for my daughter based on which Languages will be more in demand by the time she is an adult .
see below:
Interesting Note: most spoken languages by 2050
I’m having trouble deciding on languages. Besides English, Spanish and German are the only languages that I have had any classes on. Currently, I have listened to some Pimsleur Greek CDs and have a subscription for Rosetta Stone Chinese.
Spanish, since I live in Michigan, would be the easiest and most useful second language in my area. However, we live close to Dearborn, Michgian where a lot of people speak Arabic.
Ideally I would like to have my children learn the following: Russian, Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, German, French, Japanese, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, and ASL.
That’s a little ambitious though. Other people would think that I’m crazy. I guess, a more realistic goal would be simply to have an understanding of what other people are saying and to be able to communicate basic needs.
For computer languages, I’m going to start my boys off on GW basic (yes I know ancient), then C++, then visual basic. From there they can sprout off to whatever floats their boat.
Oh no, PurpleFungi, this is not too ambitious. If your children have an interest in all of these languages, it won’t make a difference for them whether they listen to 1 or 10 different languages.
I remember reading a text at Uni about a typical Indian man who would listen to 8 different language (and understand most of them) throughout is day. So many people master 3 & 4 languages and would use other ones in a limited way.
Wow what neat information. We have decided not to teach a second language just yet but had planned on french. It is the second most dominant language in Canada. However the information about most common(in demand) languages in the future was interesting. I may have to rethink my first thoughts.
I’m not a natural linguist, as I failed to even learn Mandarin, which is my parents’ native language. My high school French was far more easily learned, being much more like English.
I was impressed when I was in Cameroon, West Africa, how many people spoke multiple languages, because there were so many languages in that tiny country. Even then, sometimes we had to have multiple translators to take a history from a patient–as many as 5 bridging the gap. Talk about room for translation error!
A thought about learning computer languages–do they change so that what you may teach them now may be obsolete by the time they can use it? I remember when I was in 7th grade, our school system made us learn BASIC. Not truly helpful for most of us. However my 10th grade typing class was probably the most useful class I ever took in school.
Some become almost obsolete. Not many people use BASIC, however we were forced to take it in high school before we could move on to C++. It’s about as useless at this point as learning Fortran. I really like BASIC, though. It makes me hot, hot, hot!
Once you learn one computer language, though, it is easier to learn a second, and third, and fourth, and so on. Learning a computer language has helped me think more logically and ultimately has helped me in math and even in my profession (which ironically is a totally unlogical line of work). I used to make programs that would help me do my physic’s homework, and in turn, I would learn the material better because I would really have to understand what I wanted from the program that I was making in order make it function.
My children will learn computer science or bust!
Oh see I learn something new here everyday, I never thought about computer language!