“Is it too late for my 3 (and three months) year old daughter to naturally acquire Spanish?
I am the only Spanish speaking parent, and English is spoken in the home. Her exposure to Spanish is limited, and I do what I can, but end up speaking in English to her.
I heard some of the theories that I might be approaching the point of no return at around 4 when she will no longer be able to acquire the language. True?
Veronica”
Dear Veronica,
Not true. People of all ages acquire languages. Exposure to the language is what is required. The more Spanish your daughter hears, the more she will understand and use it. I acquired Spanish at the age of 21.
There is research that suggests that people have a more difficult time acquiring the sounds of a language after a certain point. People disagree on when that point is. At 3, I think your daughter stands a great chance of acquiring both the sound system and the structure and vocabulary of Spanish.
¡Suerte!
Ellen Kester
Ellen Stubbe Kester, Ph.D, CCS-LLP – A bilingual (English/Spanish) speech language professional who earned her Ph.D. in Communication Sciences and Disorders from The University of Texas at Austin. She has provided bilingual Spanish/English speech-language services in schools, hospitals, and early intervention settings. Her research focus is on the acquisition of semantic language skills in bilingual children, with emphasis on assessment practices for the bilingual population. She is the President of
It’s abstolutely never too late. I only started learning Spanish in my 30′s and in fact, only took classes for 9months, 3hours per week. Beyond that, learning it was all about being motivated and being around people who didn’t speak English. Today, I use Spanish in about 80% of my personal life, and have a job where my boss depends on me having a passport and being fluent (translate, give a training seminar, or speak at a trade conference in Spanish). Often, customers or vendors from Spanish-speaking countries who have only known me by phone tell me they were very surprised when they met me, that I’m not hispanic at all. I would say that it is sometimes difficult for me to understand everything 100% in a loud room with a lot of people talking and laughing at once. And stand-up comedy in Spanish often escapes me. If I’d been a kid when I started, I probably wouldn’t have those obstacles.
I don’t know if this is the kind of question that can be answered here….but. I’m a native English speaker living full time in Mexico with my native Spanish speaking husband, and 2 bilingual daughters, 3 & 5. I speak almost exclusively in English with them (the occasional work here and there in Spanish) and my husband speaks probably about 60% English and 40% Spanish with them. They go to a ‘bilingual’ school that teaches half their subjects in English (by non native English speakers) and the other half in Spanish (by native Spanish speakers). The problem I’m having is not so much within our home, as we seem to have struck a workable balance here, but rather in the school. Since my kids are truly bilingual, they dominate in all contests and games in English, as well as their share in Spanish. It was agreed recently among the teachers and parents that when my kids win an event, that they will be praised or awarded, whichever is appropriate, but a tie will be declared between my child and the first place winner among their monolingual classmates. This practice always irks me just enough to write in and ‘ask an expert’. Is it fair to my child to declare her a tie winner with a child who isn’t scoring as well as she is? My eldest feels like she studies and practices and should be rewarded fairly for her efforts, and I’m inclined to agree. Am I being ‘one of those parents’? Because I guess I just can’t quite tell. If the class was evenly split between native English speakers and native Spanish speakers would they do the same thing? I think not. I’m at a loss, and I don’t necessarily like the way I am feeling about this situation, and need to resolve it. Advice?
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