(ELI5) when babies are raised with bilingual families, are they learning it as just one jumbled language, or as two separate languages?

Question

Also would it become difficult to discern and seperate them when they join school for example, and interact with people that only speak one

In: 37

Answer 1

Bilingual person here, from a bilingual family 🙋‍♂️

It definitely starts off as one jumbled mess. For the first few years, they’ll speak both as one. But by the time they get to school, it will have started to separate. It’s usually not a problem anymore by the time they speak fluently.

Toddlers raised completely bilingual often start speaking a little later, but they also speak fluently quicker, once they start.