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My husband is French, and I'm American. We live in France and speak almost entirely French together, which we are trying to change in the hopes that our kidlets will learn English at home and French outside of the home, thus giving them two 'almost' maternal languages. Has anyone tried this yet? Succeeded at it? Failed? Any pointers?
I'm American, and my husband's Austrian, and we're presently living in China. We always speak English together (lucky me!). We also want to go the bilingual (Austro-German/English) route with our kid(s). We're going to take the "One Parent, One Language" route, though. I've heard both methods (one parent, one language/in-home, out of home) have great success. I am currently trying to cram some German into my poor brain to hopefully make things easier (and to help in communication with my in-laws).
We live in Germany, and speak English "inside" and German "outside". Our kids have completely accepted this and speak both languages completely. I do have many friends where the parents speak different languages and it seems to work best for the children's acceptance if each parent sticks fairly rigidly to their mother tongue. I have noticed that once one parent sways to another language, the kids tend to follow.
Thanks for asking the question--I'm very curious about this, too. We live in Belgium, but speak almost entirely Catalan. When I've asked others about this, they tend to recommend that each parent speak only his/her language when speaking to the kids... Especially if, as in our case, the local language is not the mother tongue for either of us. I guess it could change if we end up living in the US or in Spain.
We haven't done this (we're both British) but in Cyprus, where I live, most children grow up bilingual, speaking English and Greek. Apparently children's brains are wired to be able to learn as many languages as they hear around them until the age of about six or seven, after which it becomes more difficult.
All you have to do is ensure they hear both languages around them. If you speak to your children in English, or read them English books, or whatever, then they'll learn English as well as French.
I once met a little girl aged four who lived on an International ship, and was fluent in five different languages!
Oh, God, I would LOVE to have bilingual kids. I'm actually completely single (disgustingly so - not a man in sight) and I can't imagine I'll be having kids any time soon (unless it's an immaculate conception) but I really do not like dating men who are native English speakers like I am.
My degree was in French and German, and I love languages, so I'd love to meet a man who isn't a native English speaker so my children can grow up bilingual. No wonder I'm single - I'm too goddamn picky!
