Two languages, but they might speak one in the other. My kids are Spanish speakers living and getting educated in France, they know it’s two languages but given the closeness of the languages, they can confuse some false friends. They use “amar” in Spanish (to love) as “aimer” is used in French (to like). So when speaking in Spanish they love or don’t love a lot of stuff.
When i was growing up in hongkong i spoke 4 languages, i didnt realize they were different languages. I just spoke to my Aiee in one way (Tagalog) my parents in another way (English) my teachers in one way (Mandrin) and strangers in one way (Cantonese)
In my head it was more about the person i was talking too, rather than the words themselves, like saying “cat” casually, “kitty” to little kids, or “feline” academically. The words are different, but the meaning is the same, you just use the different word depending on who youre talking to.
It depends on how they hear it and how often.
My 2 daughters 5 and 9 have grown with us talking to them in “Spanglish” (English with some Spanish thrown in). They would have conversations with us and each other in the same way. When they would go visit their grandparents they were spoken to in Spanish only. It wasn’t until my youngest was about 4 when she began to understand some of the words she used were Spanish and some were English. Not the best way to teach a child to be bilingual pero nimodo. So in our case they learned both languages as 1 and learned to separate it later.
I became quad-lingual.. Gujarati, Hindi, Swahili and English but it’s now a “jack of all languages and master of none” type of situation.. born to Gujarati parents in Tanzania, sent to school in India till 4th grade where I learnt to read and write in Gujarati and Hindi along with English. Then moved back to Tanzania to pick up Swahili. Now I can only read Gujarati and Hindi but can’t write after not writing it for years and my English speaking lacks fluency
They are learning to recognize the phonemes (the sounds) of each language, and will eventually be able to put it together as far as understanding meaning and speaking goes. They are learning 2 separate languages, and they will be able to think in 2 languages. Bilingual/multilingual children have serious advantages:)
So from my personal experience: when raising a child billingual it’s important to seperate the languages. My mother only talked Hungarian with me, my dad only German. I am pretty sure that I could seperate the languages pretty early so I would guess they realize pretty fast that these are two different languages.
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