Question Hi Family Language Coaches, Thanks for sharing so many useful tips and resources – I just discovered your website’s Q&A section and I really love it! I have a question about raising a trilingual child. I was raised bilingual (English and Italian) and grew up in Italy and the US. I was very lucky in this sense, because I did get enough exposure to both languages besides just hearing them from my parents. My husband is Dutch but grew up in the US. We have always spoken to each other in English, and even though we’ve now learned the basics of each other’s heritage languages ..read more

  Question Hi, I am Wadha from Kuwait. My partner and I live in Kuwait (Arabic is used in the community) and are bilingual parents: Arabic native speakers, but we both speak English as a second language. We have a two-month-old child and are planning to send her to an English international school where all subjects are taught in English, but Arabic language classes are given too. She will learn math, science, English, art, P.E, all in English but will have one Arabic language class per day with an Arabic native speaker. Our dilemma lies in that we cannot decide what language to speak wit ..read more

Question Hello, I’m a Russian mother living in the U.S with my two sons, ages 13 and 9. I may be an odd one out compared to other parents in regard to languages. My husband and I speak a mix of Russian and English, and though my boys understand Russian, they prefer to speak in English. I am personally fine with this and don’t feel this pressure to force them to speak in Russian (but I’m very happy to help them out whenever or if they want to speak). However, I just want to get something off my chest about language elitism, and thought I can just address and bounce it on a post written here a ..read more

  Question Hello! We are Americans living in Kuopio, Finland (for over 10 years). We have a daughter who is almost 19 months and goes to Finnish päiväkoti (=kindergarten). I was told by the neuvola doctor (paediatrician) to not mix languages and only speak English. We are not fluent (sadly!) anyway, but I am confused why we can’t encourage her speaking the majority languge, Finnish, at home. We understand a lot and I want her to feel comfortable communicating any way she needs to get her point across. This is a key time because she is developing her language skills. So, for example, she ..read more

  Question Hello, My name is Benedicte, and my husband and I are expecting a baby boy in the next few weeks. We live in France and are both bilingual French-English. My husband was raised by an American father and French mother. I was raised by French-speaking parents in Mauritius but went to English-speaking schools. We tend to speak English to each other, but with a lot of French thrown in and a lot of code-switching between the two. We want to raise our child to be bilingual, but we are torn about which language to speak to him as English and French are both important to us. The most ..read more

  Question Hello I´m a native speaker of Spanish and fluent in English, currently raising a 14-month-old boy in English. I speak to him in English 100% of the time while my husband speaks in Spanish (the community language as we live in Spain). My question is how likely it is that my son will become bilingual since I am not a native speaker of English. Most of what I’ve read is about native speakers raising bilingual children, and the few experiences I’ve read about non-native speakers passing on a language which is not their mother tongue are positive, so I’m strongly encouraged to do s ..read more

  Question Hello! Thank you for the helpful articles! My husband’s mother is Finnish, and all her family is living in Finland or other parts or Europe. Fortunately, they all speak English well so we all can communicate well. However, my parents are Korean American and although they have lived in the US for almost 40 years, they prefer to speak in Korean, their family language. My kids are now 11 and 13 years old and I really wish I had taught them Korean so they can better communicate with my Korean speaking family. I’m thinking of enrolling them in Korean language classes. My 13-year-ol ..read more

  Question Hello I’m British, living in France for the past 13 years. I speak French to my French husband, and we have two girls, a 3-year-old and a new-born. Our 3-year-old was a late speaker (first words at 17 months) and I am the only person who speaks English to her regularly. I am terrified she is going to become or is becoming, a passive bilingual. She understands everything I say to her, but always replies in French. I always repeat her sentence in English but I’m getting more and more frustrated (and tired) of doing this. I’ve tried lots of things, but she just always speaks Fren ..read more

International Day of Multilingualism 27th of March #multilingualisnormal Are you multilingual? If you speak more than one language or dialect, then the answer to that question is YES and this makes you part of a majority people in the world who can communicate in multiple languages and/or dialects. #multilingualisnormal As there are so many of us, shouldn’t there be a day when we can all together celebrate being multilingual? Of course there should be! This is the reason I have joined a group of language enthusiasts  in campaigning for the International Day of Multilingualism to be celebr ..read more

  Question Hello, My wife and I were ethnically Chinese, but she was mostly raised in Japan and considers her native language Japanese. Before we had our first child, we spoke a mix of Mandarin and English at home. While I have familiarity with Japanese (just catching keywords and such), I do not know the language well enough and unfortunately am not interested in learning. We now have two daughters and I was initially surprised when my wife started speaking Japanese to our older daughter. She explained to me the one-person, one-language concept, and I agree this is great for our daughte ..read more