Raising a bilingual child is rewarding for parents. Early exposure to languages that the parents speak by creating an environment, the home, to naturally aid the child’s language learning.
In the 2021 census, 6% of households or 1.5million had different main languages at home. Studies suggest that early exposure to other languages pave to openness to other languages and new learning. It also appears that active use of two or more languages provide protection to cognitive decline.
I have a bilingual daughter who speaks English and Filpino. I am going to share how we got her to speak English and FIlipino.
My husband and I agreed to raise our daughter bilingual. We wanted her to learn my native language which is Filipino and English, his native language.
We started at birth because we wanted to create an environment for our daughter to hear and various languages as early as possible. This way we would be able to introduce bilingualism or even multilingualism as normally as possible.
I have also learned to speak more than one language growing up. My parents spoke a non-official language as well as Filipino at home. At school I had to communicate in Filipino, our non-official language and some English. Early on I enjoyed the switch from one language to another. I guess that is part of being bilingual.
My husband learned French at school which counted him as bilingual. He learnt to speak Chinese, Japanese and still interested in learning more Thai and other languages.
We would like to support her journey to learn more than one languages by starting early and carry on. So that’s how it all started.
Raising a Bilingual Child
At home I speak Filipino with her and her Dad only speaks English with her. One might hear a few Thai or Chinese words whenever she speaks because her father and I speak a bit of both languages. In addition we go to Thailand and she watches Thai TV whenever we are there and occasionally on Youtube.
We could say we use OPOL method which is one parent one language. I always speak to her in Filipino so she could learn the language, the grammar and hopefully the accent but I am not really concerned about the accent.
It seems to me that we understand each other or she understands me. We talk about our days, anything under the sun in Filipino.
There are occasions when she speaks English to me even though I only speak Filipino. I do not force her to speak in my language because she automatically switches to it whenever she is ready.
My husband always speaks to her in English. He does not speak any Filipino, so no chance with him and her understand each other when my daughter suddenly speaks Filipino.
She translates for me when needed. It’s not that I need things to be translated but when she and I have a conversation and she wants to get Daddy on her side then she translates. There is a lot in the family dynamic that could be fun from having two languages at home.
Language at Home
If we are in a room together my husband does not mind that my daughter and I speak Filipino as long as we do not argue. He could always tell if our daughter and I have a disagreement so we try to talk it out which sometimes does not end well straight away and he becomes the arbiter.
When we socialize as a family for example we are playing a card game, I throw in my bit of English. And my husband and I only speak English not only because he does not speak Filipino but also because we agreed early on that that’s what’s we are going to do.
Since we live in England all the interactions outside the house are in English. To expose her in Filipino at home would benefit my daughter in the end. When she was younger we watched and listened to Filipino songs and played traditional Filipino games. She could communicate with my family back home in Filipino.
We try to only speak Filipino with Filipinos we meet. However, we do not have a big FIlipino community where we live, so her exposure to my native language is limited to me, my family, whenever we meet other Filipino-speaking people in England or wherever we are, through books, and some tv.
When there are two parents who speak two different languages, it is not much effort to impart that language or for kids to pick up. Young children absorb languages fast and learn and understand vocabulary.
Support a Bilingual Child
The full-time xposure to the languages at home through daily activities give children, our child, the opportunity to acquire the two languages, Filipino and English.
As Filipino alphabet is Romanized script, R could read and write Filipino but not as fluent as she does in English. She makes spelling mistakes according to her but that could be polished by practice.
I encourage her to speak Filipino, as it also keeps her open to different cultures, habits, values and ideas. She sometimes bursts into laughter when she understands a joke in Filipino. Or still laughing while she translates the joke to her father which becomes not funny because of the difference in the languages.
When we are out and she catches someone speaking Filipino and understands what she hears she throws me a smile. There was a time when we were at an Asian shop and people were talking about what they went to the shop for and compared it to the other shop.
She thought that was it was a big thing so she told me about it.
She only just realized that she speaks Filipino to me and only English with her father which I think is interesting. It is the only gift we could give her that is priceless I suppose.
Second Language overseas
When I moved to the England a few years ago, being able to speak some English helped.
However, there were still struggles and things that I had to learn like it is another world for me.
You can have a quick browse on the best part of moving abroad here.
Or things I like about living in the UK.
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Do you speak one or more languages with your children?
Are you a bilingual or multilingual yourself?
We would to hear about what you think about raising and supporting a bilingual child?
Please leave a comment below to let us know about your journey or experiences in learning more than languages.
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