teaching 2 languages

[Anneri]

Hi everyone
My native language is Afrikaans (i live in South Africa), i want my baby (now almost 3 and a half months) to be fluent in both English and Afrikaans.
We talk to him in afrikaans and my flashcards are in afrikaans. But i just downloaded the Ipad app and i love it...its obviously in english so now my question...

Will i confuse my baby if i show him afrikaans and english lessons from the start?
Should i "finish" with afrikaans first and then only start with english?

Thank you

[Scruff]

Hi Anneri
Welcome to the forum :-) Are both your husband and yourself Afrikaans?

I speak English to my little girl and my husband speaks Afrikaans.  (Those our are first languages).  My little girl is 26 months old and speaks English predominantly.  She repeats some Afrikaans words if you ask her to but comprehends Afrikaans 100%.

With regards to teaching, I show her English things because I do most of the Early Learning but my husband reads to her in Afrikaans.  (He reads in English to her too when she chooses those books).  In general, "They say" you should let each adult speak a language to a child as opposed to say you both speaking English and Afrikaans.  Kids are amazing, they know and understand when you speak to them.

To answer your question, I don't think your little one will be confused. Is there someone who can predominantly speak English to her?

Eg:  I have showed my little one Little Read French, not consistently enough though and after a few lessons she could repeat some of the words but I can't speak a word and she hasn't been exposed to anyone else who can unfortunately.

Enjoy your early learning journey.

I wholeheartedly recommend Little Reader.

[Anneri]

Thanks for the reply Scruff!!

We are both afrikaans.
no one she see on a regular basis speaks english.

My granny just suggested i simply do all the flash cards and so on in both eng and afr.
like: ball/bal

....and most people think im totally nuts for teaching my baby to read... hahaha, one day we will surprise them.

Your little girl...can she read the words in your training methods yet?

[MamaOfWill]

My situation is the same Scruff's, only I'm Afrikaans and my hubby is English.  My boy is turning 3 on Saturday, English people think he's predominantly English, Afrikaans people think he's Afrikaans, and speaking both languages very well.  As far as early learning is concerned, initially I treated both languages equal, but as there are a lot more resources available in English, Afrikaans got left behind.  I've got about 1000 Afrikaans flashcards that I've created in LR (these will only work on your PC's Little Reader and not on your iPad) and then about 15% of our reading is done in Afrikaans, that's the extent of his Afrikaans schooling, unfortunately.  I do talk to him in Afrikaans all day long, and I'm still home full time with him, so that's a lot of Afrikaans communication practice.

Wilhelm was a late talker, but once he got going he was ahead in both languages.  Now at 3 years, his French is also coming on ever so slowly, he's been exposed to quite a bit of Chinese and a little of Zulu too.  He's not confused at all, in fact, he sometimes tells me when I'm using English words and what the correct Afrikaans is!

Something that stands out for me but most people will not really notice is that he has a larger English vocabulary, but his Afrikaans language is better than his English use of language.  I think it has to do with the fact that he gets a lot of Afrikaans, but he gets quality English time, maybe...

Yes, the world things we're nuts, but this forum doesn't!

Welcome!  Can't wait to here more from you.

[Anneri]

wow MamaOfWill sounds as if your little one gets a lot of love and attention - love it and good job!!

as i am still learning too..I'll start off with the afrikaans (build up a nice inventory if you will) with flash cards and power point and then ill replicate everything to english.

Im going back to work in Feb    will try my best to make sure my grandmother use the cards throughout the day.

hope to get a few good tips from you ladies

...and happy birthday yo little Wilhelm! 

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