Comments on: Ask an Expert: I want my daughter to be trilingual, but I need my husband’s help http://spanglishbaby.com/ask-an-expert/ask-an-expert-i-want-my-daughter-to-be-trilingual-but-i-need-my-husbands-help-2/ Raising bilingual and bicultural kids Thu, 26 Jul 2018 07:12:43 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.2 By: BethO http://spanglishbaby.com/ask-an-expert/ask-an-expert-i-want-my-daughter-to-be-trilingual-but-i-need-my-husbands-help-2/#comment-14576 BethO Tue, 07 Dec 2010 20:09:34 +0000 http://www.spanglishbaby.com/?p=9731#comment-14576 I wonder if your husband loves the way he feels when he is speaking Italian because for him it is the language of YOU.
At first when my husband asked me to start speaking to him in English so he could learn it better, it felt very very strange. In fact he really had to pester me to do it. I am not usually so difficult, and he asked me why I was resisting, since I am a native English speaker so it should actually be a lot easier for me to speak in my native tongue. When I thought about it I realized that in my mind, Spanish was the language of us meeting each other, falling in love, and starting out our life together.

All we had to do then was to re-create that special feeling in a different way. For example, go to dinner at the restaurant where we had our first date and talk about our memories of the beginnings. And make new memories in the “new” language.
And I did get used to it, eventually. Although, if we happen to argue about something (all couples argue, right?), I usually switch back to Spanish for some reason… maybe that just seems more real to me.

Then our son was born, and we went back to speaking in Spanish pretty much all the time, to support our son being bilingual (Spanish is the minority language where we live). But when we are alone I speak to him in English because he likes it :-)

]]> By: Anke http://spanglishbaby.com/ask-an-expert/ask-an-expert-i-want-my-daughter-to-be-trilingual-but-i-need-my-husbands-help-2/#comment-14106 Anke Wed, 24 Nov 2010 20:05:46 +0000 http://www.spanglishbaby.com/?p=9731#comment-14106 This might be a bit late now, but I am just wondering: Do you (mum) speak/understand Portuguese? If you haven’t done so already, you could start studying Portuguese together with your daughter – maybe this will encourage your husband to use his own language more…
I am in a similar situation to you: I am German, my husband Spanish, and we live in the UK, too. I speak German to our daughter, my husband Spanish (supposedly). While I am more of a purist, he mixes quite a lot, putting in words in German and English. Even though he hardly knows any German (we speak Spanish to one another), he is very supportive, and, in the end, he is learning German at my daughters pace. I suppose in the end, there will always be one person in the couple who finds the whole language issue more important, that’s just how it is!
I would love to know how you are getting on now – all the best of luck!
Anke

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