Country: China (moved back from abroad). Languages: Mandarin at home and in school, English is now the "minority" language.

While we lived abroad, my daughter's English was her everyday language. She'd chat with friends, narrate her games, argue with us in English.

After we moved back, it stopped almost overnight. She still understands it, still knows the words. But she doesn't speak it anymore unless she has to, and when I try to start an English conversation she switches back to Mandarin.

I know the usual advice: books, shows, OPOL. We do some of that. What I'm really stuck on is the speaking part. Input is easy to find; a reason to open her mouth is not.

For those who moved back to a country where the language isn't spoken: what actually got your kid talking again? Calls with old friends, a tutor, a "English-only" time of day, something else?

Thanks for reading. Feel free to DM me too if you've been through this.

Me and my partner communicate in English, but we would love for our child to be somewhat fluent or at least understand our own native languages. However, we have no idea how to do that and not overwhelm their brain. Speaking to the our child in our respective native languages and having them learn English at school seems like our only option, but that seems like it would just overly confuse them and/or delay their overall speaking/understanding of any language.

I guess I am looking for advice on how to effectively go on about this situation? Maybe we could look into an immersion school, but those are expensive.

I would appreciate any advice about this, thanks!

I'm English, husband is Italian. I have a decent understanding of Italian but I'm not overly confident speaking (I do try). Husband is fluent in English. We live in the UK. My son is about to turn 4 next week and I'm heavily pregnant with our second.

Anyone's partners just make less and less effort to speak the minority language as time goes on? Like when it matters the most. Our son is bright and picks things up very quickly. He has a good grasp of Italian (basic level) but beyond that...

I am constantly having to nag my husband to remember to speak to our children in Italian and I feel like I'm losing the battle. Over the years I've put a lot of effort into learning and I'm so frustrated. He just doesn't seem to get how important it is. I even ask him to speak to me in Italian and he does for around 5 minutes, then goes back to English. His excuse is mostly it's easier. I'm increasingly frustrated as I feel this is a selfish approach.

I'm sure this is probably quite a common issue, so apologies if it's been asked a million times before, but any advice would be appreciated.

Hi everyone, Our minority language is English (living in Japan), and I'm trying to work with my 6-year old on practicing writing in English, as reading/writing fluency is a high priority for us. My question is not WHAT to do, but tips and ideas on how to make it a habit. What worked for you? Also, when do you do it?

Evenings feel busy, but that's probably the most realistic time for us to get it done (I get home from work at 6pm). I feel bad because he has his Japanese homework and once he's done with that he just wants to play/watch stuff/read. But I feel like I should just choose a time and have that be writing time... even if it's not every day. Mornings have even less time, so that's out.

I use a mixture of workbooks and free writing (for example, write 2 sentences about what happened at school today), and try to keep it light hearted and fun - but a lot of the time, I'm met with resistance or just overall reluctance to do it. Not always, but a lot of the time. But I also feel like not making it a habit and being consistent is adding to the relucatance.

Any tips on making this a habit, and also keeping your kid motivated to practice writing?!

Hi everyone!

I recently started a small independent publishing house in Canada focused on publishing Chinese stories in English.

I've noticed that many second-generation Chinese kids growing up abroad don't speak Chinese or can't read Chinese books on their own. Yet there are relatively few Chinese stories available in English.

We hope to bring more contemporary Chinese books loved by readers in China to English-speaking audiences.

Any feedback is welcome :-)

We had a late start to OPOL- around 2 years old with 100% consistency but mixed consistency before that. We regret not doing it more consistently since birth but here we are 🤣 Dad speaks Spanish and mom speaks English only.

Almost 2.5 year old is now in an immersion school with near 100% in the minority language (spanish). The teachers barely speak the community language (English) which is great.

Toddler still heavily responds in English but certain phrases and words she speaks Spanish without prompting. She also can sing full songs that she knows in Spanish. But it just feels like her English is so automatic and strong we’re concerned even with her fulltime immersion school and OPOL she will always default to English.

Suggestions or maybe stories of encouragement it can get better?

Mother (me) - native English 🇬🇧
Father (husband)- Swedish 🇸🇪
Community language- German (Kita) 🇩🇪
Country- Germany 🇩🇪

Child is 19 months old

We have done strict OPOL since birth and child is thriving and understands all 3 languages well. She’s very interested in the 3 languages and likes to compare. We totally think she could handle another language and her teachers think so too. She’s so interested and obsessed with letters and numbers and writing

Husband and I are separating and he will have much less contact with her. The Swedish will probably fade unfortunately but I can’t do much about that now. It’s more important she grows up with emotionally stable parents in a safe household

The new Kita I can send her to is either (1) fully German, or (2) Chinese 🇨🇳 & German 🇩🇪 . I don’t speak any German to her. I don’t speak any Chinese at all.

Do you have any opinions or experiences?

My aim isn’t for her to be fluent and perfect in Chinese but just to at least have exposure that can be built upon later. But I will be worried about her German which must be good for her to get into primary school

Title: How many languages are spoken in your family?
I’ve been curious about how many languages can end up being part of the same family.
In mine, we’ve always had European Portuguese, English and French. As our family has grown, Spanish and Swedish have also become part of the mix!
Obviously, we don’t all speak every language, but it’s interesting how different languages become part of family gatherings and everyday conversations.
I also think it’s lovely for children to grow up hearing different languages and getting to know different cultures.
So I’m curious, how many languages are spoken in your family? And do you try to introduce all of them to your children, or do you just let it happen naturally?

Hello everyone...

I moved to Austria 8 years ago because of my husband, and during those 8 years I learned German for him. I also speak English, French,Spanish and Estonian. My hubby has never learned Estonian.

We now have a little boy, and I’m trying very hard to pass Estonian on to him. I speak Estonian to him approx. 90% of the time, because I am his only real source of Estonian. If I don’t speak it with him, there is simply no one else who will and my family cannot communicate with him. The difficult part is that my husband often feels excluded when I speak Estonian with our son, especially when his family is around (2× a week). He would like me to translate, and I completely understand that nobody wants to feel excluded from conversations involving their own child. Bth I’m starting to feel resentful.

I love my husband very much, but I sometimes feel like I’m carrying the responsibility for our son’s Estonian almost entirely on my own while at the same time I’m also expected to manage my husbands feelings of being excluded. I already moved to Austria for him and learned German. He has never made the same effort with Estonian but I understand that he finds it very difficult and doesn’t really want to learn it. What is the solution?

I can't constantly translate everything I say to my son. It is also tiring to hear "what did you say?", after every single sentence. It is veeeery exhausting and I also don’t want my son’s exposure to Estonian. At the same time, I don’t want my husband to feel like an outsider in his own family.

Has anyone been in a similar situation?

One parent speaks a minority language, the other parent doesn’t speak it, and the minority-language parent is the child’s ONLY source of that language. Did the non speaking partner eventually learn some of the language? Did you translate everything, only certain thing or did you simply accept that there would sometimes be conversations between parent and child that the other parent didn’t understand? I would really appreciate hearing what happened in your families and what ultimately worked for you. Unfortunately this causes a huge crisis even in our marriage...

I want to get a yoto player for my toddler that’s turning 3 next month. We speak Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese at home. Although she’s exposed to English in school, I don’t want to get her English cards yet.

Where can I find them in those languages? What have you done if you have Yoto players?

Hi everyone! We’re raising our one-year-old daughter bilingually in Italian and Arabic, with each parent speaking their native language.
I have a question about bedtime stories. Our daughter absolutely loves one particular book that we read to her every night, but the book is in Italian (no translation in other languages).

Since we take turns putting her to bed, I’m wondering what would be the best approach: should we get a second copy of the same book and translate it into Arabic (adding tape with the translation over the words) , so she hears the same bedtime story regardless of which parent puts her to sleep, just in a different language? Or would it be better for each parent to have a different bedtime book in their own language?

I’d love to hear how other bilingual families approach this, thanks!

I have an 11mo old daughter and we all live in Sweden and my partner is Swedish. I speak Swedish fluently. But me myself, I come from a country where two languages co-exist harmoniously and often people speak both or speak one and understand the other (we are an ex colony so we have our native language and then the one of the colonizer). I spoke our native language to my dad and the colonizer’s language to my mom since they come from different regions where different languages dominate.

So the most natural for me is to speak both. ChatGPT says I should do what feels most natural. But sometimes I do have concerns that the lack of consistency will result in her not speaking any of them. I do try to make a stronger emphasis on my native language since it is a minority language even in my home country. So books I read only in my native language, routine phrases like lets go brush our teeth or we’re going to sleep she only understands in my native language. I only speak Swedish to her when I need her dad to understand what I am saying.

But we visited my home country last month and we were in a city where colonizer’s language is predominant and I could tell she didn’t understand much (obviously not too big of a concern at this age, i still have time to catch up). But I just feeling puzzled and not really knowing how i can provide both at an equal degree. I probably will not be able to and one of them will give in….

Just curious if anyone else is in a similar situation where they grew up in a bilingual household and feel the responsibility to provide both languages?

We are expecting our first little one in the new year and plan to raise her bilingual. My husband grew up in South America but we live in the United States so our kids will grow up around mostly English. He will be speaking Spanish to our children from birth but a second language never clicked in my brain and I have struggled to learn for years. I would love to have some resources that I can learn Spanish along side my baby. Not sure what might be easiest and best. I would greatly appreciate any resources!

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My wife speaks Portuguese and I speak Serbian and we live in Toronto. We have been doing OPOL with our 5 year old and it seems to be going decently well.

The time to enroll in school is coming up and we are wondering whether to put our child in French immersion. This starts when they are 7 years old and that school is a “better” one (based on ratings and local demographics) but we are mildly concerned about their language development across the 3 other languages learned to date.

Is 4 languages too much to ask of a kid at this age? Neither of us speak French for reference, I know some from my days at elementary school but not enough to speak at home with them especially when I want to keep my native tongue alive.

Hi everyone, I'm raising my baby to learn both Korean and English and I'm looking for some good content to show her as a supplement to my husband and me speaking/reading to her in Korean.

Ideally, I want something more in the Ms. Rachel vein:

-A real person, not animation

-Slow-paced

-Content on really basic words and concepts like colors, shapes, numbers

I'm having trouble finding something like this as the non-native speaker in the family. Any help is appreciated 😊

Edit: formatting

We do OPOL and is has been working out really good so far. Our oldest kid is 4 years old and speaks the majority language (Norwegian, native language of my wife) and the minority language (German, my native language) equally well. He loves being read for, recognizes all letters in the German alphabet and gets annoyed when I by mistake address him in Norwegian (which I speak fluently).

I am considering teaching him how to read, since he shows some interest in it. But also because I fear that it will be difficult to teach him to read and write German when he starts to go to school. The school he is going to attend (in a little less than 2 years from now) is of course in Norwegian. However, he will have to foreign languages right from the start, English and Spanish.

Should I try to teach him reading (and maybe even writing) German before he starts school? Or should I rather relax, keep doing what we do and teach it to him when he is learning reading and writing at school anyway?

Since it may be relevant: I am a teacher of Norwegian as a second language, and I have experience of teaching (older) pupils how to read.

I am (NL English) still very close with my Japanese exchange sister (of over 20 years) and our kids are very similar in age. Our oldest children being 8 and our youngest being 4 (our youngest kids were actually born on the same day, coincidentally). We have been talking about setting up a weekly video call so they can learn a bit of each other’s language in a fun way. We figured this type of learning could be better than the traditional way of learning. We are going to go visit them in a few years, so I think it would be useful to start introducing them to their native languages now.

I am assuming we will need some structure so it is actually useful, like starting with basic things like colors instead of just letting two 8-year-olds (and 4 year olds) who cannot really understand each other fend for themselves. We basically came up with this on a whim thinking what a great free resource to introduce our kids to another language in it's authentic form ha.

Has anyone done something like this? Are there any resources we could use (besides asking AI) for how to structure this, since it is not exactly a normal classroom setting and it involves two parents setting it up?

On a side note..

My 8-year-old is super into learning languages too. She started using an app for Spanish. I'm on level 18 of Duolingo, so she just hangs out with me while I practice. My brother-in-law’s family is from Puerto Rico, and they just moved back. A new cousin is on the way, and my sister-in-law and her husband visit PR all the time. We’re planning a trip there eventually, so that’s another incentive. Do you think introducing kids to two new languages at the similar times is a good idea?

Hey everyone! I recently started paying for English lessons on italki for my younger sister. She’s been learning English for a few months now, and she’s made really good progress for her age. But today she told me she’d like to learn French too. Do you guys think it’s possible for a kid to learn two languages at the same time?

Hi!

My twins are four months old and I'm trying to find a set-up that works for us. I'm a single parent, there is no other caregiver at all and we spend most of our time alone, just the three of us.

Language A (community language, but they won't start daycare until they are two years old so they need to pick it up at home before then to be able to communicate with friends and family, also my native language)

Language B - English (not a community language and not my native language, I'm fluent, though I do have an accent when speaking which has been getting worse since I've been on maternity leave with fewer people to talk to)

Language C (not a priority but I would like to at least introduce it in some way)

I was speaking to them in language A because it felt most natural to me, and easiest to bond with them since it's my native language. The problem is that they absolutely NEED to know English, we're around too many people who don't understand language A.

I've recently switched to speaking English when we are alone and A when we are around other people, except the people who don't understand A. Is that a reasonable way to split the languages long-term? It's not exactly intuitive...

I'm so lost. I don't even want to think about language C. I just want these kids to be able to understand family and friends when they talk to them. :')

My 22 MO absolutely loves books. I love English literature, and reading together started as a way to share that with her. She caught on a little too well 😂 We now have an amazing time reading dozens of books every day and talking about them.

She speaks in sentences, recognises letters and numbers, and knows the names of obscure animals, dinosaurs, sea creatures, and even some countries. She seems quite far along in communication and comprehension, and she’s now interested in letters and learning to read.

But this is all in English. All her media is in English too (audiobooks, songs, Tonies etc) - simply because that is the language we her parents understand best. We live in Germany, she currently attends daycare, and my German isn’t good enough to confidently support her in the same way.

We are Indian, my husband speaks our mothertongue with her (which she understands and speaks a bit) and I speak in English, so that we can pass on both languages to her. We’re leaving her to pick up German from the community and Krippe (daycare).

I’d love to follow her interest with English phonics and more books. I want her to have strong English and share this love of reading, but I worry about her German not being strong enough when she gets to Kindergarten and eventually Grundschule.

Maybe “wasted” is the wrong word, but will all this knowledge carry over if she only has the English words for it? Could learning English letter sounds first make learning to read in German confusing?
I’m not pushing early reading - she’s driving the interest, and I’m trying to figure out how best to support her.

How have other bi/trilingual families handled this? Did you keep reading and introducing phonics in English at home and rely on Kita for German, or actively support both?
Or should we enroll our daughter in a bilingual school so that her knowledge is not wasted?

Any resources or experiences would be lovely!

My husband and I are considering sending our son to WJLS when he is kindergarten age. He’s currently in preschool (3 going on 4) and gets some exposure to the language when my husband speaks to him. He’s inconsistent with speaking Japanese with our son because he’s worried it’s a heavy language and that our son will get confused and frustrated. We tried one parent, one language for a day and our son was pretty frustrated really quickly. Regardless we are going to continue doing it until it sticks and we are hoping if we are consistent enough he will be fluent enough to be eligible to go to this school. Assuming that’s the case we are looking for input on anyone’s experience with this school. It’s a Saturday on school but he’d be there 8:30-4:30 so I’m hoping that’s enough exposure to really get his fluency up. Any thoughts and pointers on our method or the school is greatly appreciated.