It’s starting to happen. English is slowly creeping into our house. My almost four-year-old is consistently using more and more English. She never fully speaks solely in English to me, but whereas before she’d say an English word or two in a sentence, lately she’s been known to say full sentences. I know there’s nothing wrong with this and I was expecting this would start happening, but it seems like it’s happening a bit faster than I anticipated. I can’tRead More ...
The following post was originally published on September 18, 2009 under the title “How To Create a Perceived Need for the Minority Language.” My 18-year-old goddaughter, Veronika, was recently in town for the weekend and I noticed something pretty interesting that I’m still trying to figure out. Although she was raised bilingual by my (Peruvian) sister and her father, who is Cuban, (but moved to New York as a toddler and thus speaks more English than Spanish,) ever since IRead More ...
I used to be pretty harsh on myself if I couldn’t finish a sentence without going back and forth between English and Spanish when speaking with other bilinguals, an action commonly known as code-switching among linguists. Like many bilinguals and monolinguals alike, I simply believed this was wrong. I thought it meant I wasn’t really proficient in either language—even when I knew this not to be the case—or that I was simply forgetting my Spanish. I was wrong! In theRead More ...
My husband and I are raising our sons to be trilingual. Using the OPOL method, I speak to the children in Spanish, and he speaks to them in German. While our baby is still in the babbling stage, our two and a half year old is quite verbal, constantly commenting on what he sees and asking questions to learn more. I am often told what a wonderful gift I am giving my children by speaking to them Spanish. Our pediatrician,Read More ...
Every four years an excellent opportunity arises to expose your children to the various cultures of the world when 32 nations unite in one country to vie for the FIFA World Cup. Starting next week on June 11th, seven Spanish-speaking countries will be amongst the 32 qualifying teams competing in South Africa during el Mundial: Honduras, México, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile and Spain. In my house we are rooting for both México and the U.S.A. We are counting the daysRead More ...
Ana
Roxana
We are two Latina moms – best friends since college – who are extremely passionate about ensuring our children not only speak both our languages, English and Español, but that they also grow up proud of both their cultures, Latino and American. Over three years ago we realized there's was a lack of information available for parents raising bilingual + bicultural children, so using our background in media, we launched SpanglishBaby.
