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Monday, May 13th, 2013

Do I teach my child my native language even though I am not fluent?

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Do I teach my child my native language even though I am not fluent?
Dear Dr. Gupta,   Is it "worthwhile" to speak to my young baby (nine months) in my native Cantonese with the hope that he will acquire some of the language even though I have rudimentary fluency (grade school level)?   Although Cantonese is my native language and was what I spoke at home with my parents, English quickly became my dominant language once I started school and is currently my dominant language as an adult. Still, I would like my son to have some understanding or better yet, some fluency in Cantonese.  Read more »

My 3-Year-Old Understands Spanish but Only Speaks English. Help!

Dear Dr. Gupta,   I need some advice. I am from Guatemala but live in Texas. My husband and I have a three-year-old and a two- month-old. We want to raise our daughters bilingual. Our decision was that I would speak in Spanish and he in English. Reality is my three-year-old understands Spanish but only speaks in English. All of her friends and family around speak English.  Read more »

English is starting to replace Portuguese. What can I do?

Dear Dr. Gupta,   My three-year-old child speaks English everywhere and with my husband at home, and Portuguese with me. I recently noticed that she is adding more and more English words in her conversation with me and forgetting Portuguese words that are common in her world, such as the names of colors and animals.   I try to correct her gently by repeating the entire sentence she'd just spoken but entirely in Portuguese, and ask her to repeat it.  Read more »

Is TV in Mandarin helpful or overkill for my trilingual Cantonese-speaking child?

Dear Dr. Gupta,   I could do with some advice. We are an OPOL family, speaking Italian (father), Cantonese Chinese (mother) and English (between the parents) at home. For Christmas I bought myself a device to stream TV from China but find, of course, that it is mostly in Mandarin, not Cantonese. There are some lovely cartoons and children's shows--should I let our 22-month-old watch them? My Mandarin is so-so--I can understand children's shows but I'm nowhere near fluent (or even conversational), so I would get into trouble quickly if pushed.  Read more »

Is it Too Late to Teach My Kids My Native Language?

Dear Dr. Gupta,   I am Italian and living in California, and unfortunately my two kids, who are nine and 13, don't speak Italian, and barely understand the basic phrases. I understand they will never be fluent and will always have an accent, but I wonder if it is not too late to start speaking to them in Italian (will have to figure out how to make the transition).  Read more »

Are Four Languages Too Much?

Dear Dr. Gupta,   I am a very proud Hungarian mum of the greatest three-month old baby, Dominic, whose Dad is Albanian, but we live in Spain. However we communicate in English. As you can see there are four languages in Dominic's life and I know that a kid's brain is like a sponge but when is it too much? I speak to him in Hungarian, my husband in Albanian but we do talk with each other in English.  Read more »

When Trilingual is Not Necessarily Better than Bilingual

Dear Dr. Gupta: My partner and I are expecting and we are trying to determine a language plan now. I am a native English speaker, my partner is a native Italian speaker who also speaks Spanish and English fluently; he speaks Spanish better than English. We live in an English-speaking country but in an area where Spanish is widely spoken. There are limited opportunities to speak Italian, but he does have some friends who speak Italian, we Skype often with his family and we will visit Italy often.  Read more »

We speak Mandarin to our daughter but should I switch to Italian?

Dear Dr. Gupta, My husband and I live with our one-year-old daughter in Ann Arbor, Michigan. We both speak Mandarin Chinese to her (he is from China), and are leaving this week to take her on her first stay one-month in China. We also have many Chinese friends and hope to move to China for a few years when she is older so that she will become literate.  Read more »

Which method is best for raising bilingual kids when the main bilingual parent is not around much?

Dear Dr. Gupta, I am a native English speaker who married a native Spanish speaker. We currently have one 10-month-old daughter and have another child on the way. For numerous obvious reasons, we want our kids to be bilingual, but we are very torn on which method to use. I speak a fair amount of Spanish, and my vocabulary is growing all the time (my husband and mother-in-law speak to me in Spanish almost exclusively).  Read more »

Raising my son bilingual in non-native Spanish is exhausting me–should I continue?

Dear Dr. Gupta, I am an adoptive parent raising my son, Oakley, in non-native Spanish. Increasingly, I have moments where I feel like I can't keep on speaking to Oakley in Spanish. I'm exhausted.   Here are the reasons why speaking to him in Spanish is becoming onerous and, despite the cognitive value and specific educational productivity, unproductive:   1) Spanish is not my strong language, English is.  Read more »

How to go about Japanese-English bilingualism in the U.S.? I don’t want my kids feeling alone and like they don’t fit in.

Dear Dr. Gupta,     How do you suggest a parent work with, while protecting, her children from the strong pressures to conform to making English dominant in one’s head, in the context of the U.S. and Japan? U.S. bilingualism is short lived. Japanese bilingualism is even shorter. I have struggled with this all my life.     I was born as a youngest of three to Japanese parents and moved to Singapore and was put in the British school system for 4 years, then half a year of Japanese school, which I loved, in Singapore.  Read more »

Is it useful to start teaching my children my native language when they are 4 and 7 years old?

Dear Dr. Gupta, My children are 4 and 7 years old and we live in Australia. My first language was Russian, though I was born and raised in Australia and I remember being sent to kindergarten and school not knowing English—an experience I found terrible and isolating, even though I learnt English fast. For this, as well as various other reasons, I did not speak Russian to my children from birth and am now wondering whether it would be any use at all to start to speak Russian to them at this stage.  Read more »

Is bilingualism hurting my niece’s language skills in both Spanish and English? Are two languages causing her to have low verbal skills?

Dear Dr. Gupta, I am not sure what to do about my niece’s English and Spanish. She has grown up in a bilingual environment. Her Mom speaks to her only in Spanish and her Dad in a mix of English and Spanish (both are native Spanish speakers and my brother (her Dad) was born in the Dominican Republic like most of the family but moved to the U.  Read more »

Are grammatical errors ok when speaking a second language to a child?

Dear Dr. Gupta, I am a native English speaker with a passion for German. I studied it in college and lived and worked there after graduating. Dear friends communicate with me in German and I have command of a large expressive vocabulary; however, my grammar, tenses, gender of nouns, etc. are all extremely weak. My husband is half Filipino and half African-American.  Read more »
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I was in the same situation! I ended getting a Cantonese tutor and setting up a Cantonese playgroup so my son could get better Cantonese exposure. Feel free to contact me on info@playcantonese.com i...
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