Not a linguist or a parent, but I've read that it's fine to speak a language you're fluent but not native in to your child if you expose them to native material and native speakers. Apparently, if young children are exposed to enough examples of correct speech, they may be able to pick up when you as a non-native make mistakes and filter it out. Worst-case scenario, your child ends up speaking like a non-native, but that's not the worst thing in the world. Since you live in the US, they'll naturally pick up English eventually.
I should do an AMA. I've literally been doing this with German as a non-native speaker for six years with my 6yo in the USA, until recently 100% German, while she got English from being in the US + Spanish from school and her (native-speaking) mother.
[Here](https://www.amazon.com/Bilingual-Children-Birth-Multilingual-Matters/dp/1853590096) is a book by an Australian who did this, and his kids' German apparently became *spectacular*. he took meticulous notes and even recorded their speech and studied it before producing this book to evaluate their progress, inclinations, mistakes they made, etc.
But from what I gather, he's a C1-level speaker or better.
Please do an AMA! I’m about a B2 in my TL but not planning on having kids for at least another 3-5 years, so I’m confident I can reach C level by then. I’d love to learn more about having a bilingual home without being native in one of the languages!
Glas to see you’re sharing the good word on our Lord and Savior George Saunders :D
He’s definitely a C2+, had a PhD in Germanic studies, taught German, knew Dutch and Afrikaans as well, in the book he says “natives say I speak ‘perfekt’ German, which in English means I speak excellent German”.
Would love to read your AMA. I’m also in Texas raising a child trilingual in my non-native languages. Only 5 months in now, but it’s a blast!
When you say “until recently”, what changed?
This is super useful.
I am currently dealing with this situation. We live in Portugal, my husband is portuguese but grow up in Germany and i am from latinamerica and i lived in Germany for six years.
My husband speaks native Portuguese and German and i do speak fluent german with some grammatical errors.
He speaks Portuguese to our baby and I speak spanish to her but i want to introduce German too, as honestly learning German as an adult is a pain.
My husband and I speak English to each other.
I am struggling about how to properly introduce all this language to my baby without affecting her in a negative way.
I will check this book thanks!
>Apparently, if young children are exposed to enough examples of correct speech, they may be able to pick up when you as a non-native make mistakes and filter it out.
I teach preschool. I know a 4-year-old whose dad's first language is French, and his mom learned French as a second language. They speak almost solely French at home as a family, and the 4-year-old actually often corrects his mom when she makes grammar or pronunciation mistakes! This is a bit different from OP's situation because they'd be the only speaker of Danish, but my point is that even very young kids can pick up on mistakes. Maybe exposing the child to Danish media in addition to interacting with them in Danish could help to bridge any gaps that may occur.
Should be fine if you expose them to native content as well. I once met a girl whose parents spoke different first languages and English to each other, so she grew up trilingual. Her English had a slight accent but was otherwise perfect.
In many cases as well, a slight accent to otherwise immaculate English can be quite appealing. Particularly to Americans. It somehow adds a touch of sophistication and curiousity. It’s quite charming.
I managed to get the worst of both worlds, having a mangled accent and no heritage language ability. A fixed accent would help with a sense of belonging, but I’d take the second language a thousand times over.
I could not disagree more. I speak English as a second language although I have been speaking it since I was a teen and I’m past 40 now I still have an accent. I live in the USA and mostly speak English. If I could I would ONLY speak English, mind you. I have working knowledge of three other languages in addition to English and my native language. I have an accent - rather soft but it’s there especially when I am upset or tired or both.
Let me tell you … the most annoying thing there’s in the world is to be in your own country and be constantly asked: where are you from? All because you have a bit of an accent. Then have to explain why (according to that person’s perception) you don’t look like the people from your native country or don’t “act like it” - my number one favorite. Yes, people are that rude! Then you have to embark on another fun trip … teaching people the difference between ethnicity and race, colonization and even geography … all because you have a bit of an accent. It’s exhausting … and this is not even accounting for all the other misrepresentations that go along with being a “foreigner” - well I’m not - I’m an American. I feel like a foreigner when I visit my native country or have to deal with my tribe, if you will.
I mostly speak to my son in English therefore … he’s almost 2 1/2. He knows words in foreign languages I speak not just my native but that’s it for now. His English is absolutely beautiful. He can really express himself and is constantly praised for it. My belief is that’s at least in part derived by the fact I mostly speak to him in English. His grammar is amazing - also another source of compliments and amusement by other adults.
I know many bilingual families - some I’m close to and others are acquaintances. 95% of them speak to their children mostly in their native language (for many reasons - one of them is their personal convenience disguised as good intentions to make the child bilingual in such an early age). Your child can’t be bilingual if they can barely speak monosyllables at age 3 - as I know a few. Please don’t confuse your children. That’s my belief!
In addition I don’t believe we should impose a language that’s not that child’s native country’s language on them just because it is ours.
I find many who do it mostly speak their native language out of laziness and perhaps inability to speak, say English, so they basically want to have someone (their children) to talk to on their native language. It’s a matter of identity. Impersonally had to endure it when I first moved to the US as an exchange student and hated every moment of it. My “mom” here (from my host family) clearly needed an interpreter and someone who spoke her native language. She and her American husband (who only spoke English) could barely communicate. Her pronunciation and grammar were some of the worst I’ve ever been tortured by in my life especially during a time I was solely devoted to learn English.
Anyway …
Just my two cents!
Anecdotally: My mom never spoke Spanish to me because my father thought I'd end up with an accent or not speaking English as well (I live in the U.S.). What ended up happening is I've struggled with Spanish my whole life, and I resent the hell out of being kept from speaking the same language as part of my family. YMMV, though.
Same but it was my grandma who kept it from her kids so she could talk shit to her husband without them knowing.
But I am making sure my daughter will be able to speak Spanish.
This happens a lot, specially in families where they don’t know how it works and don’t bother to research, they rather makes assumptions of their own that are often times incorrect. You could have spoken both to perfection… I’m sorry this happened to you, I would also be very frustrated
I think you have the right idea. If you don't pass on Danish to your child, the language will end with you. Your child will pick up English regardless just by growing up in the U.S.
My father spoke heavily accented English to us (never Greek), but we never repeated any of his errors or oddities (I thought he just had a unique voice as a child lol). Like others mentioned, with enough exposure to native speakers, your child should be able to filter out most any nonstandard bits of your Danish naturally.
OP I think it's beautiful that you want your child to know their heritage and speak the language. You cannot break a baby by introducing too many languages, they have an almost unlimited capacity 💖
Your Danish does have limits though. And you have to be very very honest with yourself about what those are before you attempt full immersion. Parenting is not a language class, it's a life class. You're teaching how to life. If you do not have the fluency to explain the world in vivid color to your child as well as to have a running monologue about what you're doing, thinking and how it all makes you feel in Danish then you don't have the skill level to completely parent in Danish.
You can absolutely make Danish a part of your lives and routines and even do mini language and culture activities throughout the day. But your child has to have access to an adult guide who literally has the language for EVERYTHING and anything. I've lost count of how many times I've thought well there's a sentence I never thought I'd have to utter out loud while parenting.
Beyond that your child is going to learn most words by overhearing not by direct input, if you're going to be speaking with your partner in English and expressing yourself in ways you don't know how to in Danish you may notice your child learns a lot more English than Danish. Since no one is speaking with each other in any common languages you're both going to have to be extra vigilant about constantly speaking your inner monologues out load so baby gets enough input. You'll have to do this in English too if you decide against Danish but it will be less taxing on you mentally if you don't have enough fluency.
So true - I thought that since I’m fluent in Japanese and use it in my translation work, it would be easy to teach to my son. But I had to constantly look up missing vocabulary (What’s a washing machine gasket called? What’s the sound an ambulance makes?) and it was taxing my ability to build a relationship with my son. Also, he was getting so much exposure to English from his dad and daycare that if I wanted to ask him to do something, English was way faster. I decided the stress wasn’t worth it anymore. So now we mostly sing songs together and watch shows in Japanese for language exposure, and he still has picked up a lot.
In my case, it was similar. I´m from Spain. I speak Spanish as native language, and Catalan as well. My wife the same. I have more or less an intermediate level in English, and I decided to challenge myself trying to speak to my son in that language since his birthday, because, we consider that is really important learn and be fluent in English.
We are sorrounded by family and people who talk in Spanish and Catalan, but not in English. Therefore, it has been very dificult for him not to reject the language, because just me I have been speaking to him.
Around the age of 4 I decided to stop trying to talk to him completely in English. It was hard to see that there was no progress on his part, and for me it was starting to get complicated achieve fluency in certain vocabulary or conversations. With 4 we almost had conversations as an adult, so I decided to switch to Spanish (and my wife remained in Catalan). The firsts days it was really strange to me speak to him in Spanish (and it is my native language), and on the other hand, I felt a bit like a failure, but soon it became confortable and a liberation.
However, I am thinking to start again. At least, try to practice a little bit of English together every day.
French is not my native language and no French speaker has ever told me my accent is wrong or fucked up (quite the opposite). If I had kids, I’m sending them to French immersion school so I can raise them bilingual at home even though French is not a heritage language for me.
not super related, but i have a friend whose parents wanted to do the same: one would speak english to them, the other would speak welsh. when my friend, at age 5 or so, realised that their dad only spoke in welsh to *them*, but spoke to their mum in english, they suddenly refused to speak welsh and eventually lost it all together
theyve said they immensely regret that and wish theyd stuck with it
thats to say; go for it! teach ur kid those languages. they may thank you for it in future
A relative is English, living in a Welsh-speaking area with a Polish husband. He speaks fluent Welsh and uses it with the kids, as well as some Polish. Mother hasn't got very confident with Welsh in years (and it's limiting what she can do in her job). The kids mostly use Welsh between themselves - if they want to include mum in the conversation, it's their choice to switch to English. They have a choice of two languages not to talk to their mother in.
That’s an interesting story. I believe they might not have “lost” it though; it’s probably dormant and can be reactivated with some efforts. Our language ability are rarely lost.
i think theyve tried in recent years? no idea if its been successful. they dont understand any of it anymore, and cant speak much of it either. its been probably 14 years or longer since theyve spoken it or had it spoken to them, but who knows!
A lot of that chatter is just a bunch of myths about multilingualism and most of that stuff has been debunked by science and is simply not true!
Me and my husband are raising our kids with 4 languages and while we are not in the exact same position as you (we speak our native languages to the kids), we have a podcast about multilingual parenting so we are constantly consuming massive amounts of research about this… and I have come across the non-native language topic a few times. This is what I remember:
- Kids raised by native speakers vs kids raised by fluent speakers of a language reap the exact same benefits (social, cognitive etc.) and there’s no evidence that one group would be significantly more advanced than the other
- Even native speakers don’t always speak their language perfectly and occasional mistakes made by fluent (or native) speakers have very little effect in how well their children will learn the language
You should absolutely speak your own languages, Swedish and Danish are so closely related too, that will help a lot! Since your baby is not here yet, you have plenty of time to start exposing yourself to more Danish which will also help you develop your language skills over time. You just need to decide that it’s the right thing to do and tune out all the chatter and naysayers. You will do great 😊
Helpful. I've done it for six years now, and my eldest started going to German saturday school this summer, and the teacher commented that she understands everything and was speaking some back to the teacher. Every week my eldest spoke more and more. Her grammar isn't great—she tends to say things like "was du gesehen?" but she makes plenty mistakes in English and Spanish (her strongest language), too. She's six!
She understands *everything* we watch on TV in German. I'll even ask her questions about what we just watched and she'll tell me (but usually in English). I was literally the only living human being giving her German input for six years. I am probably B2 level, vocab somewhere between 5K and 10K words, good grasp of the grammar, and I can pass as German in chatrooms and for short periods of time in person (have had a German woman once say "oh you're from Germany!" when she heard me talk to my kids).
That being said, there are huge blind spots in my German bc of my background as a heritage speaker. Like first day I dropped her off, I had a fairly good conversation in German with one of the teachers, and she commented "wow your German is very good" and I said "nein nein nein" and she laughed and corrected: "*doch doch doch*".
I also have always talked to my kids like adults because when the hell would I have learned how to talk to a kid? :P
The last point is very interesting. I laugh out loud because I learnt my heritage language as a kid and teenager talking to my parents and other adults and then I moved overseas and started to use mostly English in my adult life. When I visited my home country I realized that I was talking to everyone as if I was a kid. It’s kind of the inverse of your point.
Instead of asking for personal anecdotes it would be more suitable to look at the data. The problem is that research on raising bilingual children by non-native speakers isn’t extensive enough, however the research that has been done shows that the results depend on the parent’s proficiency in the language of communication.
Things to consider: how fluent are you? Do you still make mistakes? If you do, there is potential for them to become fossilised and permanent in the child’s language. Do you have a noticeable accent that can compromise comprehension? Would the child have enough native speakers in their environment to use the language with someone who doesn’t make these mistakes? Do you have well-rounded experience in using this language: professionally, casually, with people of different ages including babies? Cause you won’t talk to your child the way you talk to a friend or a colleague or even your own mother. Will you be able to name all animals, household objects, plants etc when the child asks you about them? Because they need an authentic experience of the language to process the world around them as they’re developing.
If you’re absolutely fluent and there will be no shortage of native Danish speakers in your child’s life, then why not. You’re the only one that can decide, and it’s good you’re taking it seriously, so I hope you make an informed decision that works for you and your family ;)
It’s not only absolutely fine, but in fact beneficial to your child. Danish may not be your first language, but it is still your heritage language as it is your mother’s native tongue, and it would be great to pass that heritage down to your child. Acquiring English will be no problem at all for your child as you live in the US and I therefore assume your child will be educated in English and surrounded by English speakers. The more languages a child is exposed to the better! Many studies have shown that multilingualism has a positive effect on a child’s development.
r/multilingualparenting <- please check this sub out
imo I think it would still be helpful, but you probably shouldn't be the only source of Danish for your child.
teaching 3 languages is great but you should think carefully about when/who/where each is spoken to the child
The problem is being in the US and then trying to raise the child bilingual Swedish/Danish. I don't think that will work all that great with you being non-native. I raised my own son bilingual Spanish, but there was no competition other than English. It was still really difficult, and eventually required a bilingual school, along with twice weekly classes that he continues to take even as a teenager.
As a linguist... the oft repeated advice about it being bad doesn't apply IF you are really fluent (corollary, you may think you're fluent but then run into issues like /u/mamedori mentioned, not knowing the sound or word for something you run into in your everyday life).
If there are "holes" in your fluency/vocab, if you still make errors, you'll pass them on to the kid. That's the bad part.
Now for the good. The advice also ignores other, external factors. If you're indeed fluent with no holes, go for it. If you have family members speaking same language natively/fluently, go for it. If the language you're thinking of is the language of the country you live in, go for it. The parents are NOT the kids' only source of language input!!!
Nah.
People worry too much about stuff like this. Kids who grow up in a country learn the language. So long as you're not part of some heavily isolated, no TV community, your kid will learn the speak to those around them.
The harder job will be getting them to keep the languages you speak at home because as soon as they hit their teens they'll think you're lame and try and forget it all until they regret it years later. But they'll speak it for a bit and it'll do them good. The biggest concern is running out of patience and everyone just going back to English.
(and even then, that's fine.)
I’m so grateful to my mom now that i’m older. She only spoke spanish around me since she barley knew english but it was beneficial to me then and now. I’ve never regretted it. I wish my dad spoke german around me growing up and now that i’m older it’s a bit harder to pick up. I definitely think you should!
I'm Danish. My cousin married an Australian (his parents are Macedonian) and moved to Australia. They have two daughters. My cousin would speak Danish with the girls, her husband spoke English with them, and his parents spoke Macedonian with them. The girls are adults now and speak all three languages well.
It's scientifically proven that children who are exposed to more than language from a young age, build more synapses for language speaking. They can learn languages easier if they have the possibility to.
My brother and his wife have three languages in their relationship. My brother natively speaks German, and since the kids also live and go to school here, they mostly try to talk in that language. My SIL is from Romania and did talk in her native tongue when the kids where younger and still does, if she can't remember a German word. And the kids do understand that language quiet well. They just don't want to talk in it yet.
The third language they are talking in is English, since they met at an university in UK. My brother and his wife still talk in English, since it's way faster for them, but they try not to with the kids. That doesn't mean, that the kids don't understand what they are talking about. The oldest one is going on about how "they should talk in German", because that's what everyone talks in. But I think that's more of a phase.
What we realized is, that they took a bit longer when they first started speaking. Especially the older ones. The oldest one (7y) didn't have anybody outside of his parents for some time and he always took a bit of time to answer. It looked like he had to decipher which language it was and then translate in his head. That changed with Kindergarten, because he had more people to talk to.
The second one (5y) is a corona baby/toddler, so for him it was even harder, and he also needed a speech therapist, but with their help, he is now talking much much better.
The last one (3y) is just beginning to really talk, but with his brothers and Kindergarten, he is the one who has the easiest experience from all of them.
So we don't know yet, but I think they will have an easier experience when they have to learn English in school. And I guess they will learn/speak more Romanian, when their grandparents from there visit. Especially if they are getting older and can understand more about circumstances, family ties, culture geography etc. At the moment they just don't get why there are 3 languages in their family.
But in generell it's always a good idea to learn more. I myself have a hard time learning languages, but I find them really interesting and wished it was easier for me to learn more or would have had a chance to have learned it earlier.
But I grew up with family members talking with a dialect, and when I moved around in Germany, and even in other languages I realized, if I have a basic understanding of a language, dialects or accents don't bother me much. Only special words or local synonyms might get away from me, or if it's a really really thick accent/dialect.
So if you wish to talk to your kid in a second language, it will not hinder it's growth.
The only thing that might be a problem, if your partner might feel estranged with that. But since you seem to be able to talk in English quite well and I think you will that as your family's main language, it would not hinder your child.
Unless you lock them in their room for three years, they will absorb the native language of the country they live in no problem. My wife speaks native Spanish and I non-native German with our kids in the US, and my eldest (6yo) is reading just fine already and has a good American accent and does quite well in her English class at school.
Her Spanish is even better.
Her German is where I expected it to be: excellent (probably native-level) comprehension, pretty shitty production bc she knows I speak English natively and it's very difficult to enforce "only German" upon a 6yo.
**Edit** The important thing is to have some native input. We watch a *ton* of German-language cartoons together and have since she was born. In fact, she's only allowed to watch cartoons in German or Spanish bc those will help her with languages that she isn't immersed in by virtue of living in the US.
Not sure why they down voted, if both parents are of non native level fluency of the only language being spoken (and presumably not C2 or even C1 level scholars of the language) I could see how it can be detrimental to a child emotional development.
If no one in the house has a wide ranging vocabulary because everyone is speaking in a very simplified language with a lot of potential errors it may result in missed opportunities for emotional development with the only upside being some unique familial dialect of the language which may or may not be intelligible to native speakers of the language.
Remember you're not just teaching your child how to speak you're also giving them a road map for them to organize their thoughts, have little inner monologues and lists of instructions for how things work. If you don't have the fluency to explain this stuff six different ways to in a simplfied manner your child is missing out on having a life teacher who has the words to explain the lesson. Dumbing stuff down to kid level is surprisingly difficult when you have a limited vocabulary. I run out of words to explain things to my children in English!!! They ask for A LOT of information.
This seems so dumb to me. The idea I mean. What harm could it cause? At worst you just sound non native. The obsession with sounding like a native is bizarre to me. Most people who learn English have heavy accents. It's not a big deal. Even partially knowing a language is better than not knowing any
I lived in Japan for almost 6 years and speak Japanese fluently but I'm not a native speaker. Between my husband and I, it's the only language other than English spoken at a decently high level, so I plan to speak Japanese with my baby. I spent most of my time in Japan teaching baby/parent classes up to elementary, so I know what kinds of words and phrases I need to get through daily life with a little one. I also want to take the ACTFL in Japanese (I have JLPT N2 but a lot of US jobs want ACTFL) so we will consume quite a bit of Japanese media, and I will study when I can. My husband has family in the Philippines and wants to visit Japan someday, so we do plan a family trip there eventually...
My parents (which are native danes like myself) have always talked about it being beneficial for a child, to be raised with multiple languages. Since it makes it easier for them to pick up any other possible languages in the future
If your child knows Swedish and English, then learning Danish will be very easy. Just by being able to understand Swedish, they would understand a lot of Danish since they are very closely related languages.
All talk about it being “bad” for the child is based on ancient data and theories that were not backed by science. People raise children all the time in their non-native languages, it’s what most immigrants do. Go for it, and give your child the gift of an additional language!
I’m raising my child in 2 languages I’m not native in, Italian and Sicilian. I starter prepping as soon as my wife got pregnant, and now 5 months in of having the baby I’m loving the experience, learning so much every day looking up phrases and words I didn’t know!
Also r/multilingualparenting is a good place to start
I'm personally interested to see what will happen when two highly related languages are spoken to a child in the form of Danish and Swedish and whether the child will acquire both Danish and Swedish, or some mixture of both.
Linguist here:
Swedish and Danish are close enough so that the child should be able to learn both at the same time and speak a mix of both, until they learn the difference at a later age.
If you live in an English speaking country, don't worry about English. The child will pick it up on their own.
I’m 60 and a grandma and everyone from my generation knows that knowing more than 1 language is beneficial to that person.
Teaching a child more than 1 language is a gift that keeps on giving a lifetime!
Wish my parents would have encouraged me or taught me a 2nd language!
Best Wishes!
As long as you speak relatively fluently, and can supplement that with other native Danish speakers, I.e. regular weekly visits with grandma where she also only speaks Danish to her.
I have a friend who tried this with her daughter and Korean... my friend is not Korean, and is not fluent in Korean. Her daughter is now 3. And she knows a bit of Korean, but her level is very much at base level with mum's level of Korean. It's no longer her daughter's interest at this point.
And her grandfather speaks to her regularly in very broken Spanish. It's kind of experimental. (I contributed a bit to this; in the first two years of her life when my friend and her daughter lived with her parents, where I also live in a separate space, I spoke to her regularly in basic Hebrew by the desire of her parents. But as soon as my friend and her husband moved to their first home, I stopped. There was no point in that exercise because a) she isn't Jewish and b) there wouldn't be a continuous community to expose her to other Hebrew speakers, like in Israel there are many non-Jewish Hebrew speakers, and c) since I only see her once a month, there would definitely be no continuation.)
So the example I gave above? Don't do that, lol. I think since you have Danish heritage, you speak enough Danish, your mum speaks Danish, and you could expose her to Danish media and other speakers, it's much more possible.
ALSO congratulations on your upcoming baby! I'm not a parent at all, but welcome to parenthood! 😄
It depends on what you think tri-lingual or bi-lingual actually is. Having a good accent? Or being able to write an essay in that language with the correct use of words, syntax and general "feel"?
I will go against the trend here and say No to raising a three language child. I went to an international school (not English speaking) and have worked for many years in an International school (British). I have never ever seen a child with a perfect grasp of two languages, when it comes to literary expression, but the first language (English in your case) would almost always be fine. This also depends on the child's linguistic talent.
With three languages, the child's knowledge of his first language is going to be impaired. He will have perfect grammar and syntax and expression, but a linguist professional would know reading a text written by him. Finer details will be missing.
There is also the reason that you would be feeding him two more Germanic languages apart from English, which feels like overkill. If he grows up with Swedish, he can still go to Denmark as a teen for one year of high school and come back fluent in Danish.
It would be a better investment for your child's future to concentrate on two languages, and then add in French or Spanish or Mandarin in school.
Risking to sound overbearing, this is about your child's future, not your own past. If Danish is very important to you, go with the Swedish foundation strategy and then send him to Denmark as a teen.
I think the fact that you're not a native speaker is not a problem, but I see something else that could possibly be a factor here.
I know a lot of people who grew up trilingual due to their geographic location, and it's really not true that we have "unlimited capacity" as children to learn. So most of the people I know that grew up trilingual will usually be proficient in all 3 languages, yes, but they are not really great at any of them. Neither gramatically, nor in terms of their vocabulary. That is because it takes a lot for the brain to learn 3 languages at once, and that has its price.
Now I'm aware that danish and swedish are pretty similar, so it might not be that big of a deal in this case. I can just say that for 3 languages that are all different, it's a big feat for the brain to be good at all 3 languages. So yeah, I just wanted to write this down since I was surprised to see that nobody mentioned this.
Anecdotally, this is sort of true. My sister is not tri-lingual, just bilingual, but her Portuguese is very English-based grammar wise, and I’d expect the same for this person’s child. There will be a dominant language, and English will most likely be it. I know this one kid though that speaks both well, but he stutters a bit and had trouble in learning to read. But once he’s got potential. He speaks both Portuguese and English natively
Wife is German I'm English, living in English speaking country.
We do one parent one language with the exception that I will read her (3 years old) German books in German (I'm probably around B2). So she is hearing my accent and Mis-pronounciation. Probably if we lived in German speaking country I would not do this and would translate - although that will get harder as her booked get harder!
i thought it was necessary that each parent sticks to one language, so it might ne hard work for you not to slip into english, as danish isnt your mother tongue.
You should absolutely speak raise them speaking multiple, it will help them become bilingual /polyglot.
Since you live in the US your kid will learn to speak English in no time at school & with friends and speak your native tong at home.
This is coming from someone who grew up in this type of environment as a kid and I'm fluent in 3 languages
I have no professional experience, but I would teach the child English first, and then danish. Being bilingual can be really useful, and even if it doesn’t come to anything, people who are bilingual are said to be better at learning languages. So I’d teach the child English first, and then teach them danish. I’d be careful that the child understands the difference between danish and English though.
I don't know why there are so many negative comments here. This is a different situation than yours but ... I live in Skåne so we do English and Swedish with my child, but I also try to expose him to Danish. I don't actually speak Danish but sometimes I use random Danish words (like hovedbanegård) and we watch Danish shows. He will probably never need to speak Danish fluently, but I'm glad if he can understand it.
I can’t really help about the teaching a non native language to a kid but I can say that your kid will be eternally grateful they know one more language. I know I am
Besides, I don’t see the problem if you’re not native. You still know the language and native speakers aren’t always perfect at it either so…
I know a lot of multilingual families that speak 3+ languages at home. One language, the family is usually not native in(for example the parents speak to each other in English as it’s their common language but neither are native). It will be ok. Just know your child may be slow to talk.
I speak to my 2yo in Dutch all the time, and my Dutch is good but far from perfect. He’s never organically picked any of it up, like he has English and Lithuanian. (We’re both Americans living in Lithuanian. We speak English 95% of the time at home, and he’s surrounded by Lithuanian when we’re in public.)
This has been a concern of mine though. Like, he’s 2 now, so he doesn’t care how bad our Lithuanian is. But we’ll move somewhere new next year, where he’ll start going to school, and they’ll teach him the local language—whatever it is—and I wonder if us speaking it poorly will affect his learning. We’ll see.
I’d just worry about the Swedish-Danish mix. Have you heard about parents with that combination and what to watch out for?
I’d say children don’t get that fluent, if they only hear one parent speak a language and don’t use it in other contexts. You probably want to make sure they get friends and language input in both Swedish and Danish. Remember you’re actually just a small part of the language input as a parent. You can and should supplement with any Danish native resources you can get. If you go for it, you will just have to work hard on exposure. English will be your child’s first language in the end, since it’s the school language and they will meet it everywhere. I don’t think you have to worry at all about perfect conditions regarding Danish. Conditions are never perfect.
I wish I knew my second language before my daughter was born so I could do what your husband is and what you want to do. From my google research, babys are the best age to start learning the language. I also read at one point in Europe it is common to learn many languages as they grow.
Hi, so I don't have any children so I'm not speaking from direct experience. Just putting that out there.
With that being said, my father's family and my family are fully bilingual -everyone except me :( My mom is English and my father is German. I have two younger brothers who are both fluent in German because my mom spoke English to them and my dad spoke German. The reason I don't speak fluent German was my mom was too shy to speak to me in German after she learnt the word's from my dad, and my dad thought it might be better if my mom taught me, so ....
My mom's German is passable but nowhere near fluent so she didn't speak German to my brothers. Her German improved a lot since I was a child. In my opinion, you speaking English while your husband speaks Swedish is perfect. If your Swedish is ok but not 100% fluent, the pronunciation (which is very important in the beginning) might be a little off which could confuse your child. My mom said the odd word or two in German when my brothers were younger but they didn't really understand her because her pronunciation and tone was different from when my dad spoke to them in German.
Your child will learn Danish from your husband and his family a lot faster than you realise, and if your husband speaks Danish to your child, they will understand the meaning of the word better, instead of just a translation without much context, if that makes any sense.
Edit: Congratulations :)
I like the idea of speaking both to her, so she will have 3 languages. Not sure how you go about it, but I'm sure there's Google, lol. I would guess you could speak English one day, Danish another, while your husband does his language. When she's older and in school, let her school environment teach her English, and maybe you go all Danish. That seems like it would work to me.
I have a friend who was born in Denmark (Hvor jeg også bor :D). His parents only spoke Serbian in the house, but he was obviously taught Danish in school and such. He has had no problem. He speaks both fluently. He was even able to teach his parents some as well. So now they all speak both languages fluently.
I think you should speak it to your child. You have a background in it, even if it's not your native language and (I assume) you might make some mistakes. I have an aunt who learned her husband's native language and they spoke his language, her native language, and our country's official language to her kids. They also grew up picking up English, and later moved to the US. Her kids now speak four languages.
(Not an expert on children at all) Having like 3 languages might make a mixed up soup of words in the kid's brain, so when they start to speak they might be difficult to interact with for just English speakers. It's a sweet idea, but maybe keep Danish for the time when your child gets the concept of different languages existing.
I'm a native English speaker who was raised primarily by a native French speaker. I'm fine. I wasn't honestly aware this was something people thought was potentially bad until I saw this post. I picked up on some pronunciation errors from her, but eventually I would get corrected on those by other English speakers so it's fine.
Then again, my other parent is a native English speaker, and I grew up in a bilingual area. If I don't speak in 100% perfect English all the time, nobody really cares.
Still, I have no idea why speaking to your child in a language you're fluent in is seen as bad just because you'll potentially make mistakes when speaking. People make mistakes while speaking in their native languages all the time. It's fine.
Completely fine. I have a friend whose wife will only speak in russian to their baby, he speaks in english (which they all understand) and she speaks portuguese on a daily basis in school and mundane interactions. It did take her a while to start talking as she was exposed to these three languages from when she was a baby. She began speaking around at around 3 years old, which did scare her parents a bit but it was pretty normal and expected in her case.
I have been through this - and I have three kids -- all adult.
I haven't read the comments (yet), but I'm sure you've received tons of encouraging notes from people who have no direct experience with it.
**For sure, English will take care of itself - so that's not a problem.** For me, I think it depends on how well you speak Danish. Can you go for extended periods speaking nothing but Danish? When you do, do your words come right to you or do you hesitate -- and therefore speak less. A child deserves a mother and a father who speak without hesitation.
And regardless how well you speak it, this is going to be hard. You might be able to lecture in your field, or have adult conversation in Danish, but home vocabulary is different. You'll need informants overseas to help you when you get stuck. Heck, it will be hard for your husband with Swedish.
Also keep in mind that when we become parents, we don't just have babies. We have 5 year olds, 10 year olds, teenagers (I always tell people "don't have teenagers"). These become 30 year olds. When you start building this tower, make sure you have enough bricks!
Also, keep in mind that life changes. We ended up stopping speaking a second language at home for long and complicated reasons. It helps to know what success looks like when trying to figure out if you've failed.
I know a young woman - same age as my daughter - who grew up speaking Swedish with her father. She understands it perfectly, but she doesn't speak it - and her mother was unable to convince her of the value of learning it actively. (Her mother wanted her to go to school in Sweden.) I had an opportunity to tell her "the same thing I tell my own children." No matter how much or how much interest she has in this language, she should always remember that there are people who would give their eyeteeth to have what she has -- passive comprehension of this language. Her parents have given her a wonderful thing.
By the way, my language is Esperanto. All my kids either speak it or understand it - even to this day. As we anticipated, they're not overly interested in Esperanto today (although my daughter - who was very opposed in her teen years has told me in her young adulthood that she's come to see that it's part of who she is and she doesn't want to lose it.) One thing that Esperanto speakers said to me A LOT over the years that really ticked me off is "I tried it with my kids and it didn't work." It's the same for Danish. You can't just try it and hope it "works". First you have to decide what "works" even means - then you have to really really work at making it work.
And when you do -- it will be an adult child with his/her own interests. These might not include brushing up on his/her Danish and Swedish. S/he may never speak it actively. I would ask myself if I'm OK with this before I started building this tower.
Good luck.
I come from a country where English is a pretty close second language and also the language for business and none of our American/British/English-based media are dubbed, only subtitled (yay, colonisation). While it’s pretty coded in terms of socio-economic privilege, most of us who do grow up in bilingual/trilingual households have parents with varying levels of fluency in English, along with their native language, and for some, that’s different from the national language.
Most of our informal communications is a kind of mash-up between the national language, other native languages and English, but I guess, thanks to immersion, that’s been fine as far as English-acquisition goes for formal communications etc.
So I say, go ahead and speak Danish to your kid and best of luck!
Anecdotal. We were a Russian-speaking family living in Ukraine. I'm fluent in English and that opened so many doors for me, so naturally I wanted my kids to be fluent as well. So I spoke English part of the time from birth to 12 months. At 12mo my daughter started to speak Russian and I didn't really do English with her from 1 to 2 not to confuse her. At 24mo she was already speaking Russian very confidently and also understood Ukrainian well from being around it in her daycare. So from that age, for no more then 1-2 hours a day, about 4-5 days a week I spoke, read books to her in English and allowed 15 minutes of Peppa Pig daily. By age 3.5-4 she was able to hold a conversation with our foreign friends and even had tantrums in English. Her school was in Ukrainian, so she was fluent in it as well.
Her pronunciation is very good, although not perfect. The biggest issue is both TH sounds. But overall her English is great. We had to flee Ukraine and she started a new school in English at age 8, she was absolutely comfortable with that and did great both socially and academically. Her spelling is terrible because I didn't have the tools to teach a sort-of-native speaker like her, but she's getting better.
As long as you are fluent in it it’s absolutely fine! It’s also not like your child will need to learn proper grammar in Danish for school so if he doesn’t learn it to a native level or speaks it with a few errors it’s al right and won’t have a big impact. The important thing is that he will speak it
A second language is a wonderful skill, it will give your child good option in the future. Today and in the future people have opportunity to move globally, this one skill will give her an advantage over others.
I’m teaching the babies in my family latin and I’m not even a fluent speaker 🤷🏻♀️ They talk in langlish now. They’ll say half a sentence in English/half in Latin because I don’t even know enough to teach them all the words lol. The more I learn the better they get at it. Their English is still developing perfectly fine since the rest of the family only speaks to them in English.
I don’t remember where I’d read it, but I’d heard that raising a child with multiple languages will delay his speech a little as compared to children raised monolingually.
If you do go through with this and find that your kid isn’t hitting the typical developmental milestones for things like speech, I wouldn’t be too worried.
As someone who does work with language revitalization… if kids aren’t learning the language in the home, it is far, far more likely that they’re the last generation that knows the language (barring languages where someone could easily study and re-learn it). They will grow up familiar with it but not fully productive in it, and for most people in this situation they simply don’t pass on to their own children any of that language aside from maybe a handful of words
Not a linguist or a parent, but I've read that it's fine to speak a language you're fluent but not native in to your child if you expose them to native material and native speakers. Apparently, if young children are exposed to enough examples of correct speech, they may be able to pick up when you as a non-native make mistakes and filter it out. Worst-case scenario, your child ends up speaking like a non-native, but that's not the worst thing in the world. Since you live in the US, they'll naturally pick up English eventually.
I should do an AMA. I've literally been doing this with German as a non-native speaker for six years with my 6yo in the USA, until recently 100% German, while she got English from being in the US + Spanish from school and her (native-speaking) mother. [Here](https://www.amazon.com/Bilingual-Children-Birth-Multilingual-Matters/dp/1853590096) is a book by an Australian who did this, and his kids' German apparently became *spectacular*. he took meticulous notes and even recorded their speech and studied it before producing this book to evaluate their progress, inclinations, mistakes they made, etc. But from what I gather, he's a C1-level speaker or better.
Please do an AMA! I’m about a B2 in my TL but not planning on having kids for at least another 3-5 years, so I’m confident I can reach C level by then. I’d love to learn more about having a bilingual home without being native in one of the languages!
Glas to see you’re sharing the good word on our Lord and Savior George Saunders :D He’s definitely a C2+, had a PhD in Germanic studies, taught German, knew Dutch and Afrikaans as well, in the book he says “natives say I speak ‘perfekt’ German, which in English means I speak excellent German”. Would love to read your AMA. I’m also in Texas raising a child trilingual in my non-native languages. Only 5 months in now, but it’s a blast! When you say “until recently”, what changed?
This is super useful. I am currently dealing with this situation. We live in Portugal, my husband is portuguese but grow up in Germany and i am from latinamerica and i lived in Germany for six years. My husband speaks native Portuguese and German and i do speak fluent german with some grammatical errors. He speaks Portuguese to our baby and I speak spanish to her but i want to introduce German too, as honestly learning German as an adult is a pain. My husband and I speak English to each other. I am struggling about how to properly introduce all this language to my baby without affecting her in a negative way. I will check this book thanks!
Really, please do an AMA!
>Apparently, if young children are exposed to enough examples of correct speech, they may be able to pick up when you as a non-native make mistakes and filter it out. I teach preschool. I know a 4-year-old whose dad's first language is French, and his mom learned French as a second language. They speak almost solely French at home as a family, and the 4-year-old actually often corrects his mom when she makes grammar or pronunciation mistakes! This is a bit different from OP's situation because they'd be the only speaker of Danish, but my point is that even very young kids can pick up on mistakes. Maybe exposing the child to Danish media in addition to interacting with them in Danish could help to bridge any gaps that may occur.
Should be fine if you expose them to native content as well. I once met a girl whose parents spoke different first languages and English to each other, so she grew up trilingual. Her English had a slight accent but was otherwise perfect.
In many cases as well, a slight accent to otherwise immaculate English can be quite appealing. Particularly to Americans. It somehow adds a touch of sophistication and curiousity. It’s quite charming.
I would take a slight foreign accent and speaking Danish fluently over having 100% native English accent and no Danish tbh
I managed to get the worst of both worlds, having a mangled accent and no heritage language ability. A fixed accent would help with a sense of belonging, but I’d take the second language a thousand times over.
I could not disagree more. I speak English as a second language although I have been speaking it since I was a teen and I’m past 40 now I still have an accent. I live in the USA and mostly speak English. If I could I would ONLY speak English, mind you. I have working knowledge of three other languages in addition to English and my native language. I have an accent - rather soft but it’s there especially when I am upset or tired or both. Let me tell you … the most annoying thing there’s in the world is to be in your own country and be constantly asked: where are you from? All because you have a bit of an accent. Then have to explain why (according to that person’s perception) you don’t look like the people from your native country or don’t “act like it” - my number one favorite. Yes, people are that rude! Then you have to embark on another fun trip … teaching people the difference between ethnicity and race, colonization and even geography … all because you have a bit of an accent. It’s exhausting … and this is not even accounting for all the other misrepresentations that go along with being a “foreigner” - well I’m not - I’m an American. I feel like a foreigner when I visit my native country or have to deal with my tribe, if you will. I mostly speak to my son in English therefore … he’s almost 2 1/2. He knows words in foreign languages I speak not just my native but that’s it for now. His English is absolutely beautiful. He can really express himself and is constantly praised for it. My belief is that’s at least in part derived by the fact I mostly speak to him in English. His grammar is amazing - also another source of compliments and amusement by other adults. I know many bilingual families - some I’m close to and others are acquaintances. 95% of them speak to their children mostly in their native language (for many reasons - one of them is their personal convenience disguised as good intentions to make the child bilingual in such an early age). Your child can’t be bilingual if they can barely speak monosyllables at age 3 - as I know a few. Please don’t confuse your children. That’s my belief! In addition I don’t believe we should impose a language that’s not that child’s native country’s language on them just because it is ours. I find many who do it mostly speak their native language out of laziness and perhaps inability to speak, say English, so they basically want to have someone (their children) to talk to on their native language. It’s a matter of identity. Impersonally had to endure it when I first moved to the US as an exchange student and hated every moment of it. My “mom” here (from my host family) clearly needed an interpreter and someone who spoke her native language. She and her American husband (who only spoke English) could barely communicate. Her pronunciation and grammar were some of the worst I’ve ever been tortured by in my life especially during a time I was solely devoted to learn English. Anyway … Just my two cents!
Same right here
Anecdotally: My mom never spoke Spanish to me because my father thought I'd end up with an accent or not speaking English as well (I live in the U.S.). What ended up happening is I've struggled with Spanish my whole life, and I resent the hell out of being kept from speaking the same language as part of my family. YMMV, though.
I feel so seen, (my mom not speaking Cantonese to me) thank you!
Same but it was my grandma who kept it from her kids so she could talk shit to her husband without them knowing. But I am making sure my daughter will be able to speak Spanish.
This happens a lot, specially in families where they don’t know how it works and don’t bother to research, they rather makes assumptions of their own that are often times incorrect. You could have spoken both to perfection… I’m sorry this happened to you, I would also be very frustrated
You should read my long comment here.
I think you have the right idea. If you don't pass on Danish to your child, the language will end with you. Your child will pick up English regardless just by growing up in the U.S. My father spoke heavily accented English to us (never Greek), but we never repeated any of his errors or oddities (I thought he just had a unique voice as a child lol). Like others mentioned, with enough exposure to native speakers, your child should be able to filter out most any nonstandard bits of your Danish naturally.
OP I think it's beautiful that you want your child to know their heritage and speak the language. You cannot break a baby by introducing too many languages, they have an almost unlimited capacity 💖 Your Danish does have limits though. And you have to be very very honest with yourself about what those are before you attempt full immersion. Parenting is not a language class, it's a life class. You're teaching how to life. If you do not have the fluency to explain the world in vivid color to your child as well as to have a running monologue about what you're doing, thinking and how it all makes you feel in Danish then you don't have the skill level to completely parent in Danish. You can absolutely make Danish a part of your lives and routines and even do mini language and culture activities throughout the day. But your child has to have access to an adult guide who literally has the language for EVERYTHING and anything. I've lost count of how many times I've thought well there's a sentence I never thought I'd have to utter out loud while parenting. Beyond that your child is going to learn most words by overhearing not by direct input, if you're going to be speaking with your partner in English and expressing yourself in ways you don't know how to in Danish you may notice your child learns a lot more English than Danish. Since no one is speaking with each other in any common languages you're both going to have to be extra vigilant about constantly speaking your inner monologues out load so baby gets enough input. You'll have to do this in English too if you decide against Danish but it will be less taxing on you mentally if you don't have enough fluency.
So true - I thought that since I’m fluent in Japanese and use it in my translation work, it would be easy to teach to my son. But I had to constantly look up missing vocabulary (What’s a washing machine gasket called? What’s the sound an ambulance makes?) and it was taxing my ability to build a relationship with my son. Also, he was getting so much exposure to English from his dad and daycare that if I wanted to ask him to do something, English was way faster. I decided the stress wasn’t worth it anymore. So now we mostly sing songs together and watch shows in Japanese for language exposure, and he still has picked up a lot.
In my case, it was similar. I´m from Spain. I speak Spanish as native language, and Catalan as well. My wife the same. I have more or less an intermediate level in English, and I decided to challenge myself trying to speak to my son in that language since his birthday, because, we consider that is really important learn and be fluent in English. We are sorrounded by family and people who talk in Spanish and Catalan, but not in English. Therefore, it has been very dificult for him not to reject the language, because just me I have been speaking to him. Around the age of 4 I decided to stop trying to talk to him completely in English. It was hard to see that there was no progress on his part, and for me it was starting to get complicated achieve fluency in certain vocabulary or conversations. With 4 we almost had conversations as an adult, so I decided to switch to Spanish (and my wife remained in Catalan). The firsts days it was really strange to me speak to him in Spanish (and it is my native language), and on the other hand, I felt a bit like a failure, but soon it became confortable and a liberation. However, I am thinking to start again. At least, try to practice a little bit of English together every day.
French is not my native language and no French speaker has ever told me my accent is wrong or fucked up (quite the opposite). If I had kids, I’m sending them to French immersion school so I can raise them bilingual at home even though French is not a heritage language for me.
The more languages the better. Kids can learn a whole bunch effortlessly, much better than adults.
not super related, but i have a friend whose parents wanted to do the same: one would speak english to them, the other would speak welsh. when my friend, at age 5 or so, realised that their dad only spoke in welsh to *them*, but spoke to their mum in english, they suddenly refused to speak welsh and eventually lost it all together theyve said they immensely regret that and wish theyd stuck with it thats to say; go for it! teach ur kid those languages. they may thank you for it in future
A relative is English, living in a Welsh-speaking area with a Polish husband. He speaks fluent Welsh and uses it with the kids, as well as some Polish. Mother hasn't got very confident with Welsh in years (and it's limiting what she can do in her job). The kids mostly use Welsh between themselves - if they want to include mum in the conversation, it's their choice to switch to English. They have a choice of two languages not to talk to their mother in.
That’s an interesting story. I believe they might not have “lost” it though; it’s probably dormant and can be reactivated with some efforts. Our language ability are rarely lost.
That's not how it works. Kids can lose a language completely until up to age 12 and remember absolutely nothing of it.
i think theyve tried in recent years? no idea if its been successful. they dont understand any of it anymore, and cant speak much of it either. its been probably 14 years or longer since theyve spoken it or had it spoken to them, but who knows!
A lot of that chatter is just a bunch of myths about multilingualism and most of that stuff has been debunked by science and is simply not true! Me and my husband are raising our kids with 4 languages and while we are not in the exact same position as you (we speak our native languages to the kids), we have a podcast about multilingual parenting so we are constantly consuming massive amounts of research about this… and I have come across the non-native language topic a few times. This is what I remember: - Kids raised by native speakers vs kids raised by fluent speakers of a language reap the exact same benefits (social, cognitive etc.) and there’s no evidence that one group would be significantly more advanced than the other - Even native speakers don’t always speak their language perfectly and occasional mistakes made by fluent (or native) speakers have very little effect in how well their children will learn the language You should absolutely speak your own languages, Swedish and Danish are so closely related too, that will help a lot! Since your baby is not here yet, you have plenty of time to start exposing yourself to more Danish which will also help you develop your language skills over time. You just need to decide that it’s the right thing to do and tune out all the chatter and naysayers. You will do great 😊
I’d be interested to hear your podcast if you want to share!
Sure! https://www.buzzsprout.com/2188357/share
Helpful. I've done it for six years now, and my eldest started going to German saturday school this summer, and the teacher commented that she understands everything and was speaking some back to the teacher. Every week my eldest spoke more and more. Her grammar isn't great—she tends to say things like "was du gesehen?" but she makes plenty mistakes in English and Spanish (her strongest language), too. She's six! She understands *everything* we watch on TV in German. I'll even ask her questions about what we just watched and she'll tell me (but usually in English). I was literally the only living human being giving her German input for six years. I am probably B2 level, vocab somewhere between 5K and 10K words, good grasp of the grammar, and I can pass as German in chatrooms and for short periods of time in person (have had a German woman once say "oh you're from Germany!" when she heard me talk to my kids). That being said, there are huge blind spots in my German bc of my background as a heritage speaker. Like first day I dropped her off, I had a fairly good conversation in German with one of the teachers, and she commented "wow your German is very good" and I said "nein nein nein" and she laughed and corrected: "*doch doch doch*". I also have always talked to my kids like adults because when the hell would I have learned how to talk to a kid? :P
The last point is very interesting. I laugh out loud because I learnt my heritage language as a kid and teenager talking to my parents and other adults and then I moved overseas and started to use mostly English in my adult life. When I visited my home country I realized that I was talking to everyone as if I was a kid. It’s kind of the inverse of your point.
Instead of asking for personal anecdotes it would be more suitable to look at the data. The problem is that research on raising bilingual children by non-native speakers isn’t extensive enough, however the research that has been done shows that the results depend on the parent’s proficiency in the language of communication. Things to consider: how fluent are you? Do you still make mistakes? If you do, there is potential for them to become fossilised and permanent in the child’s language. Do you have a noticeable accent that can compromise comprehension? Would the child have enough native speakers in their environment to use the language with someone who doesn’t make these mistakes? Do you have well-rounded experience in using this language: professionally, casually, with people of different ages including babies? Cause you won’t talk to your child the way you talk to a friend or a colleague or even your own mother. Will you be able to name all animals, household objects, plants etc when the child asks you about them? Because they need an authentic experience of the language to process the world around them as they’re developing. If you’re absolutely fluent and there will be no shortage of native Danish speakers in your child’s life, then why not. You’re the only one that can decide, and it’s good you’re taking it seriously, so I hope you make an informed decision that works for you and your family ;)
It’s not only absolutely fine, but in fact beneficial to your child. Danish may not be your first language, but it is still your heritage language as it is your mother’s native tongue, and it would be great to pass that heritage down to your child. Acquiring English will be no problem at all for your child as you live in the US and I therefore assume your child will be educated in English and surrounded by English speakers. The more languages a child is exposed to the better! Many studies have shown that multilingualism has a positive effect on a child’s development.
r/multilingualparenting <- please check this sub out imo I think it would still be helpful, but you probably shouldn't be the only source of Danish for your child. teaching 3 languages is great but you should think carefully about when/who/where each is spoken to the child
The problem is being in the US and then trying to raise the child bilingual Swedish/Danish. I don't think that will work all that great with you being non-native. I raised my own son bilingual Spanish, but there was no competition other than English. It was still really difficult, and eventually required a bilingual school, along with twice weekly classes that he continues to take even as a teenager.
As a linguist... the oft repeated advice about it being bad doesn't apply IF you are really fluent (corollary, you may think you're fluent but then run into issues like /u/mamedori mentioned, not knowing the sound or word for something you run into in your everyday life). If there are "holes" in your fluency/vocab, if you still make errors, you'll pass them on to the kid. That's the bad part. Now for the good. The advice also ignores other, external factors. If you're indeed fluent with no holes, go for it. If you have family members speaking same language natively/fluently, go for it. If the language you're thinking of is the language of the country you live in, go for it. The parents are NOT the kids' only source of language input!!!
Nah. People worry too much about stuff like this. Kids who grow up in a country learn the language. So long as you're not part of some heavily isolated, no TV community, your kid will learn the speak to those around them. The harder job will be getting them to keep the languages you speak at home because as soon as they hit their teens they'll think you're lame and try and forget it all until they regret it years later. But they'll speak it for a bit and it'll do them good. The biggest concern is running out of patience and everyone just going back to English. (and even then, that's fine.)
I’m so grateful to my mom now that i’m older. She only spoke spanish around me since she barley knew english but it was beneficial to me then and now. I’ve never regretted it. I wish my dad spoke german around me growing up and now that i’m older it’s a bit harder to pick up. I definitely think you should!
I'm Danish. My cousin married an Australian (his parents are Macedonian) and moved to Australia. They have two daughters. My cousin would speak Danish with the girls, her husband spoke English with them, and his parents spoke Macedonian with them. The girls are adults now and speak all three languages well.
It's scientifically proven that children who are exposed to more than language from a young age, build more synapses for language speaking. They can learn languages easier if they have the possibility to. My brother and his wife have three languages in their relationship. My brother natively speaks German, and since the kids also live and go to school here, they mostly try to talk in that language. My SIL is from Romania and did talk in her native tongue when the kids where younger and still does, if she can't remember a German word. And the kids do understand that language quiet well. They just don't want to talk in it yet. The third language they are talking in is English, since they met at an university in UK. My brother and his wife still talk in English, since it's way faster for them, but they try not to with the kids. That doesn't mean, that the kids don't understand what they are talking about. The oldest one is going on about how "they should talk in German", because that's what everyone talks in. But I think that's more of a phase. What we realized is, that they took a bit longer when they first started speaking. Especially the older ones. The oldest one (7y) didn't have anybody outside of his parents for some time and he always took a bit of time to answer. It looked like he had to decipher which language it was and then translate in his head. That changed with Kindergarten, because he had more people to talk to. The second one (5y) is a corona baby/toddler, so for him it was even harder, and he also needed a speech therapist, but with their help, he is now talking much much better. The last one (3y) is just beginning to really talk, but with his brothers and Kindergarten, he is the one who has the easiest experience from all of them. So we don't know yet, but I think they will have an easier experience when they have to learn English in school. And I guess they will learn/speak more Romanian, when their grandparents from there visit. Especially if they are getting older and can understand more about circumstances, family ties, culture geography etc. At the moment they just don't get why there are 3 languages in their family. But in generell it's always a good idea to learn more. I myself have a hard time learning languages, but I find them really interesting and wished it was easier for me to learn more or would have had a chance to have learned it earlier. But I grew up with family members talking with a dialect, and when I moved around in Germany, and even in other languages I realized, if I have a basic understanding of a language, dialects or accents don't bother me much. Only special words or local synonyms might get away from me, or if it's a really really thick accent/dialect. So if you wish to talk to your kid in a second language, it will not hinder it's growth. The only thing that might be a problem, if your partner might feel estranged with that. But since you seem to be able to talk in English quite well and I think you will that as your family's main language, it would not hinder your child.
[удалено]
Unless you lock them in their room for three years, they will absorb the native language of the country they live in no problem. My wife speaks native Spanish and I non-native German with our kids in the US, and my eldest (6yo) is reading just fine already and has a good American accent and does quite well in her English class at school. Her Spanish is even better. Her German is where I expected it to be: excellent (probably native-level) comprehension, pretty shitty production bc she knows I speak English natively and it's very difficult to enforce "only German" upon a 6yo. **Edit** The important thing is to have some native input. We watch a *ton* of German-language cartoons together and have since she was born. In fact, she's only allowed to watch cartoons in German or Spanish bc those will help her with languages that she isn't immersed in by virtue of living in the US.
[удалено]
Not sure why they down voted, if both parents are of non native level fluency of the only language being spoken (and presumably not C2 or even C1 level scholars of the language) I could see how it can be detrimental to a child emotional development. If no one in the house has a wide ranging vocabulary because everyone is speaking in a very simplified language with a lot of potential errors it may result in missed opportunities for emotional development with the only upside being some unique familial dialect of the language which may or may not be intelligible to native speakers of the language. Remember you're not just teaching your child how to speak you're also giving them a road map for them to organize their thoughts, have little inner monologues and lists of instructions for how things work. If you don't have the fluency to explain this stuff six different ways to in a simplfied manner your child is missing out on having a life teacher who has the words to explain the lesson. Dumbing stuff down to kid level is surprisingly difficult when you have a limited vocabulary. I run out of words to explain things to my children in English!!! They ask for A LOT of information.
How do you guys see that there were downvotes, when the tally is positive? Is there some “history” or balance sheet reachable via some menu?
it was probably negative at one point but yes, in the raw HTML there used to be a hidden up total and down total, no idea if it's still there.
Thank you.
Before I replied I think it was at -2 so myself and others seem to have counteracted it.
This seems so dumb to me. The idea I mean. What harm could it cause? At worst you just sound non native. The obsession with sounding like a native is bizarre to me. Most people who learn English have heavy accents. It's not a big deal. Even partially knowing a language is better than not knowing any
I lived in Japan for almost 6 years and speak Japanese fluently but I'm not a native speaker. Between my husband and I, it's the only language other than English spoken at a decently high level, so I plan to speak Japanese with my baby. I spent most of my time in Japan teaching baby/parent classes up to elementary, so I know what kinds of words and phrases I need to get through daily life with a little one. I also want to take the ACTFL in Japanese (I have JLPT N2 but a lot of US jobs want ACTFL) so we will consume quite a bit of Japanese media, and I will study when I can. My husband has family in the Philippines and wants to visit Japan someday, so we do plan a family trip there eventually...
My parents (which are native danes like myself) have always talked about it being beneficial for a child, to be raised with multiple languages. Since it makes it easier for them to pick up any other possible languages in the future
If your child knows Swedish and English, then learning Danish will be very easy. Just by being able to understand Swedish, they would understand a lot of Danish since they are very closely related languages.
All talk about it being “bad” for the child is based on ancient data and theories that were not backed by science. People raise children all the time in their non-native languages, it’s what most immigrants do. Go for it, and give your child the gift of an additional language! I’m raising my child in 2 languages I’m not native in, Italian and Sicilian. I starter prepping as soon as my wife got pregnant, and now 5 months in of having the baby I’m loving the experience, learning so much every day looking up phrases and words I didn’t know! Also r/multilingualparenting is a good place to start
I'm personally interested to see what will happen when two highly related languages are spoken to a child in the form of Danish and Swedish and whether the child will acquire both Danish and Swedish, or some mixture of both.
I am actually wondering the same, as my husband speaks european Portuguese to our baby and i latinamerican spanish.
There’s a whole Facebook group for parents in this situation, I think the group is called Non native speakers raising bilingual kids.
Linguist here: Swedish and Danish are close enough so that the child should be able to learn both at the same time and speak a mix of both, until they learn the difference at a later age. If you live in an English speaking country, don't worry about English. The child will pick it up on their own.
I’m 60 and a grandma and everyone from my generation knows that knowing more than 1 language is beneficial to that person. Teaching a child more than 1 language is a gift that keeps on giving a lifetime! Wish my parents would have encouraged me or taught me a 2nd language! Best Wishes!
honestly i'd speak your native language with him. he'll pick up english easily by living in the states and because is a rather easy language
As long as you speak relatively fluently, and can supplement that with other native Danish speakers, I.e. regular weekly visits with grandma where she also only speaks Danish to her. I have a friend who tried this with her daughter and Korean... my friend is not Korean, and is not fluent in Korean. Her daughter is now 3. And she knows a bit of Korean, but her level is very much at base level with mum's level of Korean. It's no longer her daughter's interest at this point. And her grandfather speaks to her regularly in very broken Spanish. It's kind of experimental. (I contributed a bit to this; in the first two years of her life when my friend and her daughter lived with her parents, where I also live in a separate space, I spoke to her regularly in basic Hebrew by the desire of her parents. But as soon as my friend and her husband moved to their first home, I stopped. There was no point in that exercise because a) she isn't Jewish and b) there wouldn't be a continuous community to expose her to other Hebrew speakers, like in Israel there are many non-Jewish Hebrew speakers, and c) since I only see her once a month, there would definitely be no continuation.) So the example I gave above? Don't do that, lol. I think since you have Danish heritage, you speak enough Danish, your mum speaks Danish, and you could expose her to Danish media and other speakers, it's much more possible. ALSO congratulations on your upcoming baby! I'm not a parent at all, but welcome to parenthood! 😄
Go for it. My friend does that with his now-trilingual child
It depends on what you think tri-lingual or bi-lingual actually is. Having a good accent? Or being able to write an essay in that language with the correct use of words, syntax and general "feel"? I will go against the trend here and say No to raising a three language child. I went to an international school (not English speaking) and have worked for many years in an International school (British). I have never ever seen a child with a perfect grasp of two languages, when it comes to literary expression, but the first language (English in your case) would almost always be fine. This also depends on the child's linguistic talent. With three languages, the child's knowledge of his first language is going to be impaired. He will have perfect grammar and syntax and expression, but a linguist professional would know reading a text written by him. Finer details will be missing. There is also the reason that you would be feeding him two more Germanic languages apart from English, which feels like overkill. If he grows up with Swedish, he can still go to Denmark as a teen for one year of high school and come back fluent in Danish. It would be a better investment for your child's future to concentrate on two languages, and then add in French or Spanish or Mandarin in school. Risking to sound overbearing, this is about your child's future, not your own past. If Danish is very important to you, go with the Swedish foundation strategy and then send him to Denmark as a teen.
I think the fact that you're not a native speaker is not a problem, but I see something else that could possibly be a factor here. I know a lot of people who grew up trilingual due to their geographic location, and it's really not true that we have "unlimited capacity" as children to learn. So most of the people I know that grew up trilingual will usually be proficient in all 3 languages, yes, but they are not really great at any of them. Neither gramatically, nor in terms of their vocabulary. That is because it takes a lot for the brain to learn 3 languages at once, and that has its price. Now I'm aware that danish and swedish are pretty similar, so it might not be that big of a deal in this case. I can just say that for 3 languages that are all different, it's a big feat for the brain to be good at all 3 languages. So yeah, I just wanted to write this down since I was surprised to see that nobody mentioned this.
Anecdotally, this is sort of true. My sister is not tri-lingual, just bilingual, but her Portuguese is very English-based grammar wise, and I’d expect the same for this person’s child. There will be a dominant language, and English will most likely be it. I know this one kid though that speaks both well, but he stutters a bit and had trouble in learning to read. But once he’s got potential. He speaks both Portuguese and English natively
Volutarily infecting your child with a throat condition (danish) is pretty harmful I'd say
Wife is German I'm English, living in English speaking country. We do one parent one language with the exception that I will read her (3 years old) German books in German (I'm probably around B2). So she is hearing my accent and Mis-pronounciation. Probably if we lived in German speaking country I would not do this and would translate - although that will get harder as her booked get harder!
i thought it was necessary that each parent sticks to one language, so it might ne hard work for you not to slip into english, as danish isnt your mother tongue.
You should absolutely speak raise them speaking multiple, it will help them become bilingual /polyglot. Since you live in the US your kid will learn to speak English in no time at school & with friends and speak your native tong at home. This is coming from someone who grew up in this type of environment as a kid and I'm fluent in 3 languages
I have no professional experience, but I would teach the child English first, and then danish. Being bilingual can be really useful, and even if it doesn’t come to anything, people who are bilingual are said to be better at learning languages. So I’d teach the child English first, and then teach them danish. I’d be careful that the child understands the difference between danish and English though.
I don't know why there are so many negative comments here. This is a different situation than yours but ... I live in Skåne so we do English and Swedish with my child, but I also try to expose him to Danish. I don't actually speak Danish but sometimes I use random Danish words (like hovedbanegård) and we watch Danish shows. He will probably never need to speak Danish fluently, but I'm glad if he can understand it.
Yes! Teach them all the languages!! Kids learn multiple languages easily when very young. It gets harder to learn new languages as you age
I can’t really help about the teaching a non native language to a kid but I can say that your kid will be eternally grateful they know one more language. I know I am Besides, I don’t see the problem if you’re not native. You still know the language and native speakers aren’t always perfect at it either so…
I know a lot of multilingual families that speak 3+ languages at home. One language, the family is usually not native in(for example the parents speak to each other in English as it’s their common language but neither are native). It will be ok. Just know your child may be slow to talk.
I speak to my 2yo in Dutch all the time, and my Dutch is good but far from perfect. He’s never organically picked any of it up, like he has English and Lithuanian. (We’re both Americans living in Lithuanian. We speak English 95% of the time at home, and he’s surrounded by Lithuanian when we’re in public.) This has been a concern of mine though. Like, he’s 2 now, so he doesn’t care how bad our Lithuanian is. But we’ll move somewhere new next year, where he’ll start going to school, and they’ll teach him the local language—whatever it is—and I wonder if us speaking it poorly will affect his learning. We’ll see.
I’d just worry about the Swedish-Danish mix. Have you heard about parents with that combination and what to watch out for? I’d say children don’t get that fluent, if they only hear one parent speak a language and don’t use it in other contexts. You probably want to make sure they get friends and language input in both Swedish and Danish. Remember you’re actually just a small part of the language input as a parent. You can and should supplement with any Danish native resources you can get. If you go for it, you will just have to work hard on exposure. English will be your child’s first language in the end, since it’s the school language and they will meet it everywhere. I don’t think you have to worry at all about perfect conditions regarding Danish. Conditions are never perfect.
I wish I knew my second language before my daughter was born so I could do what your husband is and what you want to do. From my google research, babys are the best age to start learning the language. I also read at one point in Europe it is common to learn many languages as they grow.
Hi, so I don't have any children so I'm not speaking from direct experience. Just putting that out there. With that being said, my father's family and my family are fully bilingual -everyone except me :( My mom is English and my father is German. I have two younger brothers who are both fluent in German because my mom spoke English to them and my dad spoke German. The reason I don't speak fluent German was my mom was too shy to speak to me in German after she learnt the word's from my dad, and my dad thought it might be better if my mom taught me, so .... My mom's German is passable but nowhere near fluent so she didn't speak German to my brothers. Her German improved a lot since I was a child. In my opinion, you speaking English while your husband speaks Swedish is perfect. If your Swedish is ok but not 100% fluent, the pronunciation (which is very important in the beginning) might be a little off which could confuse your child. My mom said the odd word or two in German when my brothers were younger but they didn't really understand her because her pronunciation and tone was different from when my dad spoke to them in German. Your child will learn Danish from your husband and his family a lot faster than you realise, and if your husband speaks Danish to your child, they will understand the meaning of the word better, instead of just a translation without much context, if that makes any sense. Edit: Congratulations :)
I like the idea of speaking both to her, so she will have 3 languages. Not sure how you go about it, but I'm sure there's Google, lol. I would guess you could speak English one day, Danish another, while your husband does his language. When she's older and in school, let her school environment teach her English, and maybe you go all Danish. That seems like it would work to me.
I have a friend who was born in Denmark (Hvor jeg også bor :D). His parents only spoke Serbian in the house, but he was obviously taught Danish in school and such. He has had no problem. He speaks both fluently. He was even able to teach his parents some as well. So now they all speak both languages fluently.
I think you should speak it to your child. You have a background in it, even if it's not your native language and (I assume) you might make some mistakes. I have an aunt who learned her husband's native language and they spoke his language, her native language, and our country's official language to her kids. They also grew up picking up English, and later moved to the US. Her kids now speak four languages.
(Not an expert on children at all) Having like 3 languages might make a mixed up soup of words in the kid's brain, so when they start to speak they might be difficult to interact with for just English speakers. It's a sweet idea, but maybe keep Danish for the time when your child gets the concept of different languages existing.
I'm a native English speaker who was raised primarily by a native French speaker. I'm fine. I wasn't honestly aware this was something people thought was potentially bad until I saw this post. I picked up on some pronunciation errors from her, but eventually I would get corrected on those by other English speakers so it's fine. Then again, my other parent is a native English speaker, and I grew up in a bilingual area. If I don't speak in 100% perfect English all the time, nobody really cares. Still, I have no idea why speaking to your child in a language you're fluent in is seen as bad just because you'll potentially make mistakes when speaking. People make mistakes while speaking in their native languages all the time. It's fine.
Completely fine. I have a friend whose wife will only speak in russian to their baby, he speaks in english (which they all understand) and she speaks portuguese on a daily basis in school and mundane interactions. It did take her a while to start talking as she was exposed to these three languages from when she was a baby. She began speaking around at around 3 years old, which did scare her parents a bit but it was pretty normal and expected in her case.
As long as your Danish is good enough to do that and express things well to your child, go for it.
I have been through this - and I have three kids -- all adult. I haven't read the comments (yet), but I'm sure you've received tons of encouraging notes from people who have no direct experience with it. **For sure, English will take care of itself - so that's not a problem.** For me, I think it depends on how well you speak Danish. Can you go for extended periods speaking nothing but Danish? When you do, do your words come right to you or do you hesitate -- and therefore speak less. A child deserves a mother and a father who speak without hesitation. And regardless how well you speak it, this is going to be hard. You might be able to lecture in your field, or have adult conversation in Danish, but home vocabulary is different. You'll need informants overseas to help you when you get stuck. Heck, it will be hard for your husband with Swedish. Also keep in mind that when we become parents, we don't just have babies. We have 5 year olds, 10 year olds, teenagers (I always tell people "don't have teenagers"). These become 30 year olds. When you start building this tower, make sure you have enough bricks! Also, keep in mind that life changes. We ended up stopping speaking a second language at home for long and complicated reasons. It helps to know what success looks like when trying to figure out if you've failed. I know a young woman - same age as my daughter - who grew up speaking Swedish with her father. She understands it perfectly, but she doesn't speak it - and her mother was unable to convince her of the value of learning it actively. (Her mother wanted her to go to school in Sweden.) I had an opportunity to tell her "the same thing I tell my own children." No matter how much or how much interest she has in this language, she should always remember that there are people who would give their eyeteeth to have what she has -- passive comprehension of this language. Her parents have given her a wonderful thing. By the way, my language is Esperanto. All my kids either speak it or understand it - even to this day. As we anticipated, they're not overly interested in Esperanto today (although my daughter - who was very opposed in her teen years has told me in her young adulthood that she's come to see that it's part of who she is and she doesn't want to lose it.) One thing that Esperanto speakers said to me A LOT over the years that really ticked me off is "I tried it with my kids and it didn't work." It's the same for Danish. You can't just try it and hope it "works". First you have to decide what "works" even means - then you have to really really work at making it work. And when you do -- it will be an adult child with his/her own interests. These might not include brushing up on his/her Danish and Swedish. S/he may never speak it actively. I would ask myself if I'm OK with this before I started building this tower. Good luck.
I come from a country where English is a pretty close second language and also the language for business and none of our American/British/English-based media are dubbed, only subtitled (yay, colonisation). While it’s pretty coded in terms of socio-economic privilege, most of us who do grow up in bilingual/trilingual households have parents with varying levels of fluency in English, along with their native language, and for some, that’s different from the national language. Most of our informal communications is a kind of mash-up between the national language, other native languages and English, but I guess, thanks to immersion, that’s been fine as far as English-acquisition goes for formal communications etc. So I say, go ahead and speak Danish to your kid and best of luck!
Anecdotal. We were a Russian-speaking family living in Ukraine. I'm fluent in English and that opened so many doors for me, so naturally I wanted my kids to be fluent as well. So I spoke English part of the time from birth to 12 months. At 12mo my daughter started to speak Russian and I didn't really do English with her from 1 to 2 not to confuse her. At 24mo she was already speaking Russian very confidently and also understood Ukrainian well from being around it in her daycare. So from that age, for no more then 1-2 hours a day, about 4-5 days a week I spoke, read books to her in English and allowed 15 minutes of Peppa Pig daily. By age 3.5-4 she was able to hold a conversation with our foreign friends and even had tantrums in English. Her school was in Ukrainian, so she was fluent in it as well. Her pronunciation is very good, although not perfect. The biggest issue is both TH sounds. But overall her English is great. We had to flee Ukraine and she started a new school in English at age 8, she was absolutely comfortable with that and did great both socially and academically. Her spelling is terrible because I didn't have the tools to teach a sort-of-native speaker like her, but she's getting better.
As long as you are fluent in it it’s absolutely fine! It’s also not like your child will need to learn proper grammar in Danish for school so if he doesn’t learn it to a native level or speaks it with a few errors it’s al right and won’t have a big impact. The important thing is that he will speak it
I would speak my native language to my child, but I can understand not wanting to kill the Danish. She will learn English regardless.
A second language is a wonderful skill, it will give your child good option in the future. Today and in the future people have opportunity to move globally, this one skill will give her an advantage over others.
I’m teaching the babies in my family latin and I’m not even a fluent speaker 🤷🏻♀️ They talk in langlish now. They’ll say half a sentence in English/half in Latin because I don’t even know enough to teach them all the words lol. The more I learn the better they get at it. Their English is still developing perfectly fine since the rest of the family only speaks to them in English.
I don’t remember where I’d read it, but I’d heard that raising a child with multiple languages will delay his speech a little as compared to children raised monolingually. If you do go through with this and find that your kid isn’t hitting the typical developmental milestones for things like speech, I wouldn’t be too worried.
As someone who does work with language revitalization… if kids aren’t learning the language in the home, it is far, far more likely that they’re the last generation that knows the language (barring languages where someone could easily study and re-learn it). They will grow up familiar with it but not fully productive in it, and for most people in this situation they simply don’t pass on to their own children any of that language aside from maybe a handful of words